And for a Bahá’í the ultimate issues _are_ spiritual. The Cause is not a political party nor an ideology, much less an engine for political agitation against this or that social wrong. The process of transformation it has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses to everyone who would serve it is to free oneself from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age. Paradoxically, even the distress caused by prevailing conditions that violate one’s conscience aids in this process of spiritual liberation. In the final analysis, such disillusionment drives a Bahá’í to confront a truth emphasized over and over again in the Writings of the Faith: He hath chosen out of the whole world the hearts of His servants, and made them each a seat for the revelation of His glory. Wherefore, sanctify them from every defilement, that the things for which they were created may be engraven upon them.(150) XII The opening statement of the Gospel attributed to Jesus’ disciple, John—“In the beginning was the Word...”—has fascinated readers for two thousand years. The passage goes on to assert with breathtaking simplicity and directness a spiritual truth that has been central to all revealed religions, vindicated time and again in a succession of civilizations down the ages: “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him”. The promised Manifestation of God appears; a community of believers forms around this focal centre of spiritual life and authority; a new system of values begins to reorder both consciousness 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Bahá’u’lláh wrote: