ciousness and behaviour; the arts and
sciences respond; a restructuring of laws and of the administration of
social affairs takes place. Slowly, but irresistibly, a new civilization
emerges, one that so fulfils the ideals and so engages the capacities of
millions of human beings that it does indeed constitute a new world, a
world far more real to those who "live, move, and have their being"(151)
in it than the earthly foundations on which it rests. Throughout the
centuries that follow, society continues to depend for its cohesion and
self-confidence primarily on the spiritual impulse that gave it birth.

With the appearance of Baha'u'llah, the phenomenon has recurred --this time
on a scale that embraces the totality of the earth's inhabitants. In the
events of the twentieth century can be seen the first stages of the
universal transformation of society set in motion by the Revelation of
which Baha'u'llah wrote:

I testify that no sooner had the First Word proceeded, through the potency
of Thy will and purpose, out of His mouth ... than the whole creation was
revolutionized, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth
were stirred to the depths. Through that Word the realities of all created
things were shaken, were divided, separated, scattered, combined and
reunited, disclosing, in both the contingent world and the heavenly
kingdom, entities of a new creation, and revealing, in the unseen realms,
the signs and tokens of Thy unity and oneness.(152)

Shoghi Effendi describes this process of world unification as the "Major
Plan" of God, whose operation will continue, gathering force and momentum,
until the human race has been united in a global society that has banished
war and taken charge of its collective destiny. What the struggles of the
twentieth century achieved was the fundamental change of direction the
Divine purpose required. The change is irreversible. There is no way back
to an earlier state of affairs, however greatly some elements of society
may, from time to time, be tempted to seek one.

The importance of the historic breakthrough that has thus occurred is in
no way minimized by recognition that the process has barely begun. It must
lead in time, as Shoghi Effendi has made clear, to the spiritualization of
human consciousness and the emergence of the global civilization that will
embody the Will of God. Merely to state the goal is to acknowledge the
great distance that the human race has y