mission, therefore, has been the creation of a
global community that would reflect the oneness of humankind. The ultimate
testimony that the Baha'i community can summon in vindication of His
mission is the example of unity that His teachings have produced. As it
enters the twenty-first century, the Baha'i Cause is a phenomenon unlike
anything else the world has seen. After decades of effort, in which surges
of growth alternated with long stretches of consolidation, often shadowed
by setbacks, the Baha'i community today comprises several million people
representative of virtually every ethnic, cultural, social and religious
background on earth, administering their collective affairs without the
intervention of a clergy, through democratically elected institutions. The
many thousands of localities in which it has put down its roots are to be
found in every country, territory and significant island group, from the
Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, from Africa to the Pacific. The assertion that
this community may already constitute the most diverse and geographically
widespread of any similarly organized body of people on the planet is
unlikely to be challenged by one familiar with the evidence.

The achievement calls out for understanding. Conventional
explanations--access to wealth, the patronage of powerful political
interests, invocations of the occult or aggressive programmes of
proselytism that instil fear of Divine wrath--none have played any role in
the events involved. Adherents of the Faith have achieved a sense of
identity as members of a single human race, an identity that shapes the
purpose of their lives and that, clearly, is not the expression of any
intrinsic moral superiority on their own part: "O people of Baha! That
there is none to rival you is a sign of mercy."(57) A fair-minded observer
is compelled to entertain at least the possibility that the phenomenon may
represent the operation of influences entirely different in nature from
the familiar ones--influences that can properly be described only as
spiritual--capable of eliciting extraordinary feats of sacrifice and
understanding from ordinary people of every background.

Particularly striking has been the fact that the Baha'i Cause has been
able to maintain the unity thus achieved, unbroken and unimpaired, through
the most vulnerable early stages of its existence. One will search in vain
for another association of human beings in history--political, religio