The Bahá’í 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 Bahá’u’lláh’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-Bahá 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 soul of Amatu’l-Bahá Rúḥíyyih _Kh_ánum, beloved consort of Shoghi Effendi and the Bahá’í world’s last remaining link with the family of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was released from the limitations of this earthly existence.... Her twenty years of intimate association with Shoghi Effendi evoked from his pen such accolades as “my helpmate’, ‘my shield’, ‘my tireless collaborator in the arduous tasks I shoulder’.... As the initial shock of grief began to lift, appreciation of yet another of the inexhaustible bounties of Bahá’u’lláh gradually took its place. To a figure whose long lifetime had spanned most of the century—and whose indomitable spirit had sustained Bahá’í struggles and sacrifices throughout its latter half—it had been given to live and celebrate the magnificent victories to which she had so magnificently contributed. * * * * *