To strengthen, safeguard and increase this unity and love Bahá’u’lláh appointed a successor to whom all should turn for guidance and illumination after His own departure; naming in the Book of the Covenant written by His own blessed hand, His eldest son, the Greatest Branch, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Center of the Covenant in whom Bahá’ís throughout the world recognize the authority of perfect servitude at the threshold of the manifest Word. This is the essence of His title, entity and being, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Servant of Bahá.

The great wisdom of this appointment is shown in many ways. It is particularly evident when we realize that from His earliest childhood ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had been inseparably associated with Bahá’u’lláh. Born in Ṭihrán May 23, 1844, the day and date of the Báb’s declaration, His very birth foretokened the significance of His life and being in the divine processes and consummations of this luminous cycle. At the age of eight years He was one of the little band of exiles who crossed the Persian border into ‘Iráq-‘Arabi, sharing vicissitudes and suffering with heroic strength and subjected with the rest to continuous imprisonments in various cities until they reached the prison-fortress of ‘Akká in Syria, August 31, 1868. Throughout this long and faithful vigil of devotion to Bahá’u’lláh and loyalty to the cause of God, the record of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life is pure and spotless, wonderful in its exaltation and effulgent with the beauty of holiness. When the tyrannous regime of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd ended, the gates of ‘Akká were thrown open and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá came forth free upon the fortieth anniversary of His enterance into that neglected and unspeakable place. This was August 31, 1908. In 1911, two years after His release from a living martyrdom of fifty-six years and at the age of sixty-seven He visited Europe, returning to Egypt from whence in 1912 He sailed for America as stated.

Thus far the evidences of divine forces and influences surrounding the life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá should be sufficient to impress and convince any thoughtful soul that we are viewing an unusual and majestic personality, a world-commanding figure who has appeared for the uplift, unification and peace of mankind. Dark indeed are the world-horizons unless we behold the shining beauty of this Sun of Reality. The human world plunging deeper and deeper with ever-increasing momentum into seas of materialism is crying out in its crucial need and stress for help and remedy—for a new creative spirit of life and regeneration—a power and healing direct from God. And just at this time ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Messenger of Universal Peace and the oneness of the world of humanity, is sounding His call of salvation to the nations of the earth in heavenly words fortified by an impelling dynamic spiritual power and surcharged with the pure breaths of the Holy Spirit.