Bahá’í Site Dedicated

PROPHET OF UNIVERSAL PEACE CONSECRATES PLOT TO CAUSE

Brief Ceremony Marks Exercises on North Shore After Discourse on America Is Given at the Plaza Hotel.

Chicago turned back the hands of time today for a pastoral spring epic on its north shore hills that might have graced the shores of the Mediterranean.

His patriarchal beard waving in the wind on the crest of a wooded and grass-covered hill overlooking Lake Michigan at the mouth of the drainage canal, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, prophet of universal peace and the brotherhood of the races, dedicated the site of his western temple this afternoon.

Hundreds of women in gayly colored spring costumes, and here and there Persians, with heads covered with oriental fezes, added to the picturesqueness of the general tableau. A brilliant white tent, pitched to guard against the threatening rain, flapped in the wind.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá was in somber European garb on his arrival at the temple grounds, which are on a commanding knoll, overlooking the new and handsome bridge by which Sheridan road crosses the drainage canal. To the northeastward there was presented a broad view of the lake, sparkingly blue in spite of the cloudy skies, while to the west there stretched grassy meadows, across which knots of belated pilgrims were hurrying to the temple grounds.

The ceremony by which Mashrak-el-Azkar (Dawning Point of Prayer) was dedicated was simple and brief. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke a brief ritual in Persian, waved his hands and the ground was turned over to its future use. Early in the day, however, he had received his followers at the Plaza Hotel and had given them for the first time a glimpse of American civilization through his eyes.