The surfaces both without and within are to carry an intricate scheme of decorative carving in which Mr. Bourgeois has translated into mural art the profound significance of ancient religious symbolism and the cosmic pattern created by the orbits of astronomical bodies sweeping through space. The full story of this architectural glory, pregnant with scientific truth yet at the same time as joyously spontaneous in its total effect as a fruitful tree in the sun, must be told at a later time. The purpose of the present brief sketch is confined to an explanation of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár as an institution bringing religion nearer than ever before into the structural life of society.

The Mashriqu’l-Adhkár is a channel releasing spiritual powers for social regeneration because it fills a different function than that assumed by the sectarian church. Its essential purpose is to provide a community meeting-place for all who are seeking to worship God, and achieves this purpose by interposing no man-made veils between the worshiper and the Supreme. Thus, the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár is freely open to people of all Faiths on equal terms, expressing in this the universality of Bahá’u’lláh who affirmed the oneness of all the Prophets. Moreover, since the Bahá’í Faith has no professional clergy, the worshiper entering the Temple hears no sermon and takes part in no ritual the psychic effect of which is to establish a separate group consciousness. Not even music-only the reading of the text of the Holy Books will condition the experience of free worship and meditation in this edifice dedicated to the unity of mankind.

Integral with the Temple are its accessory buildings, without which the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár would not be a complete social institution. These buildings are to be devoted to such activities as a school for science, a hospice, a hospital, an asylum for orphans. Here the circle of spiritual experience at last joins, as prayer and worship are allied directly to creative service, eliminating the static subjective elements from religion and laying a foundation for a new and higher type of human association.

The establishment of a Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in the community will effect a permanent revolution in its psychology and collective action. Where religion has sanctioned division and difference, the Bahá’í institution sanctions unity, fellowship, co-operation. Like a healing element, it will remove the physical and mental reasons for religious, racial and class prejudice, and uphold a divine standard of reality embracing every member of the community. What has been true and effective in the life of the churches-the educational effect of noble sermons and the esthetic inspiration of beautiful service-will be restored to the creative arts, sciences and crafts, raising all human action and experience to a higher plane by concentrating the force of religion upon the single function of awakening the soul by the power of the Word of God.

A special significance will always be connected with the first Bahá’í Temple to be erected in America, through the fact that its building fund has received contributions from members of this Faith in all parts of the world. Its spiritual sources, like the roots of a majestic tree, penetrate far outside the local community of Wilmette, outside North America, deriving sustenance from the entire fellowship of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh,—Muslim, Jew, Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist, as well as Christian. An inestimable force of self-sacrificing faith has entered into the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, flowing into America from Europe, Asia and Africa as if imploring for that day when the America people, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá so clearly foretold, shall firmly establish the true World Peace.