…advance in the rise of its institutions, whether as
administrative centers or places of worship—institutions, clandestine and
subterrene in their earliest beginnings, emerging imperceptibly into the broad
daylight of public recognition, legally protected, enriched by pious endowments,
ennobled at first by the erection of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of Ishqábád, the
first Bahá’í House of Worship, and more recently immortalized, through the rise
in the heart of the North American continent of the Mother Temple of the West,
the forerunner of a divine, a slowly maturing civilization.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
