chase price being $17,000. The contributions for the year having been $7,292.45.
The sixth convention was entertained by the friends of New York City, April 28 and 29, 1913. Regarding this wonderful convention ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote to Mr. Wilhelm saying:
“Praise be to God, that the New York believers became confirmed in the accomplishment of a great service and held in that city the consultation convention for the erection of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár. They displayed the utmost of effort until that convention was inaugurated with infinite perfection. They exercised the greatest love and kindness towards all the delegates who had come from the different states. They united and entertained the delegates in their homes. With perfect affection they spread before them the banquet of hospitality. Everyone became grateful and happy. This event will adorn an important and blessed page in the Bahá’í history.”
At this convention the commemoration of the ninth day of every month as Mashriqu’l-Adhkár day was proposed and afterward confirmed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and has proved a very great impetus to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár work. The friends of other countries join with us in observing the day; very beautiful are the letters from our four American sisters in Teheran telling of their holding this ninth day with us.
The first contribution for the fiscal year April 30, 1912 to April 19, 1913 was a gift from the Center of the Covenant at the closing session of the previous convention in Chicago. Also this year marked the completion of the payment on the site dedicated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and an indebtedness of $9,000 on the Lake Shore tract remained only, its entire liquidation being urged before the expiration of 1913. The contributions for the year having been $14,206.42.
Another year soon rolled around and Chicago was again blest with a Mashriqu’l-Adhkár convention, which was the seventh convention. It also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Bahá’u’lláh.
At the close of the year 1913 the money came literally rolling in for the cancellation of all land debts and a cablegram was sent to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá announcing that the Bahá’í Temple Unity had completed its land obligations. Thus the new year, 1914, dawned free of any clouds for the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár work so that the building fund might be started. The financial secretary reported contributions for the year $13,503.79 and the Unity entirely out of debt with land holdings for which $51,500 had been paid and which was worth almost double the price paid. Complete unity and harmony marked the sessions of this seventh convention.
And now the eighth Mashriqu’l-Adhkár convention and first Bahá’í congress has convened in San Francisco. Thus our conventions held in the United States of America have travelled from coast to coast.
Almost immediately after the second convention, when the Bahá’í Temple Unity resulted, the president of the first Executive Board, Mr. Mountfort Mills, of New York City, visited the Center of the Covenant who was still a prisoner of the Turkish Government, though liberated in July of that same year, 1908. Mr. Mills wrote: “At the temple convention, he seemed most pleased and satisfied and assured us that the future would see many more, constantly increasing in numbers, attending and bringing together representatives from all parts of the world. He said that these gatherings would be to the spiritual body of the world what the inrush of the spirit is to the physical
