'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who incarnates an institution for which we can
find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world's recognized religious systems,
may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the
one in which we are now labouring. His Will and Testament should thus be
regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is
the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three
ages that constitute the component parts of the Bahá'í Dispensation. The period
in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined
both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age
in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit.
- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated 8 February 1934, printed as ‘The Dispensation of
Bahá'u'lláh’ in ‘The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh’)
