Nothing perhaps testifies so strikingly to the response the believers made to this appeal than the fact that the unity established among them did not inhibit their vivid individual ways of expressing the truths of the Faith. The relationship between the individual and the community has always been one of the most challenging issues in the development of society. One has only to read, even cursorily, accounts of the lives of the early Bahá’ís in the West to become aware of the high degree of individuality that characterized many of them, particularly the most active and creative. Not infrequently, they had found the Faith only after intensive investigation of various spiritual and social movements current at the time, and this broad understanding of the concerns and interests of their contemporaries no doubt helped make them such effective teachers of the Faith. It is equally clear, however, that the wide range of expression and understanding among them did not prevent them or their fellow believers from contributing to building a collective unity that was the chief attraction of the Cause. As the memoirs and historical accounts of the period make clear, the secret of this balancing of individual and community was the spiritual bond connecting all believers to the words and example of the Master. In an important sense ‘Abdu’l-Bahá _was_, for all of them, the Bahá’í Cause. No objective review of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mission to the West can fail to take into account the sobering fact that only a small number of those who had accepted the Faith—and infinitely fewer among the public audiences who had thronged to hear His words—derived from these priceless opportunities more than a relatively dim understanding of the implications of His message. Appreciating these limitations on the part of His hearers, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá did not hesitate to introduce into His relations with Western believers actions that summoned them to a level of consciousness far above mere social liberalism and tolerance. One example that must stand for a range of such interventions was His gentle but dramatic act in encouraging the marriage of Louis Gregory and Louise Mathew—the one black, the other white. The initiative set a standard for the American Bahá’í community as to the real meaning of racial integration, however timid and slow its members were in responding to the core implications of the challenge.