We can likewise discern a no less appreciable 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 (‘Preface to God Passes By’)