the Arc and the flights of terraced gardens rising from the foot
of the mountain to its summit, the Cause whose influence had steadily
expanded throughout the world during the century of light emerged finally
as a visible and compelling presence. In the crowds of visitors from every
land thronging the stairs and pathways each day and the stream of
distinguished guests who are welcomed to the World Centre's reception
rooms, perceptive minds already sense the dawning fulfilment of the vision
recorded twenty-three hundred years ago by the prophet Isaiah: "And it
shall come to pass in the last days, _that_ the mountain of the Lord's
house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be
exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it."(158)

The Baha'i Cause is distinguished above all else by its nature as an
uncompromised organic whole. Embodying the principle of unity that lies at
the heart of Baha'u'llah's Revelation, this nature is the sign of the
presence of the indwelling Spirit that animates the Faith. Alone among the
religions of history--and despite repeated efforts to break this unity--the
Cause has successfully resisted the perennial blight of schism and
faction. The success of the community's teaching work is assured by the
fact that the instruments it uses were created by the Revelation itself,
that it was the Faith's Founders who conceived the methods for the
prosecution of its Divine Plan, and that it was They who guided, in every
significant detail, the launching of the enterprise. During the twentieth
century, through the efforts of 'Abdu'l-Baha and the Guardian, Mount
Carmel itself has become an expression of this oneness of the Faith's
being. In contrast to the circumstances of other world religions, the
spiritual and administrative centres of the Cause are inseparably bound
together in this same spot on earth, its guiding institutions centred on
the Shrine of its martyred Prophet. For many visitors, even the harmony
that has been achieved in the variegated flowers, trees and shrubs of the
surrounding gardens seems to proclaim the ideal of unity in diversity that
they find attractive in the Faith's teachings.

Nothing so dramatically marked the conclusion of one hundred years of
achievement as an event that also plunged believers the world over into
deep sorrow. On 19 January 2000, a message from the Universal House of
Justice announced:

In the early hours of this morning, the