During the century’s concluding years, many National Spiritual Assemblies won impressive victories of their own in the field of external affairs. Two outstanding examples suggest the character and importance of these advances. The first was achieved by the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany, where the nature of Bahá’í elected bodies had been challenged by local authorities as being technically incompatible with the requirements of German civil law. In upholding the appeal of the Local Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Tübingen against this ruling, Germany’s constitutional High Court concluded that the Bahá’í Administrative Order is an integral feature of the Faith and as such is inseparable from Bahá’í belief. The High Court justified its taking jurisdiction in the case by adducing evidence that the Bahá’í Faith itself is a religion, a judgement with far-reaching implications in a society where church opponents have long sought to misrepresent the Cause as a “cult” or “sect”. The definitive language of the judgement merits repetition: ...the character of the Bahá’í Faith as a religion and of the Bahá’í Community as a religious community is evident, in actual every day life, in cultural tradition, and in the understanding of the general public as well as of the science of comparative religion.(142) It was left to the Brazilian Bahá’í community to win a victory in the field of external affairs that is so far unique in Bahá’í history. On 28 May 1992, its country’s highest legislative body, the Chamber of Deputies, held a special session to pay tribute to Bahá’u’lláh on the centenary of His ascension. The Speaker read a message from the Universal House of Justice and representatives of all of the parties rose, one by one, to acknowledge the contribution to human betterment of the Faith and its Founder. A moving address by one prominent deputy described the Bahá’í teachings as “the most colossal religious work ever written by the pen of a single Man”.(143) Such appreciations of the nature of the Cause and of the work it is trying to accomplish—coming as they did from the highest judicial and legislative levels, respectively, of two of the world’s major nations—were victories of the spirit as important in their way as those won in the teaching field. They help to open those doors through which Bahá’u’lláh’s healing influence begins to touch the life of society itself. XI The image used by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to capture for His hearers the coming transformation of society was that of light. Unity, He declared, is the power that illuminates and advances all forms of human endeavour. The age that was opening would come in the future to be regarded as “the century of light”, because in it universal recognition of the oneness of humankind would be achieved. With this foundation in place, the process of building a global society embodying principles of justice will begin.