No segment of the community made a more energetic or significant contribution to this dramatic process of growth than did Bahá’í youth. In their exploits during these crucial decades—as, indeed, throughout the entire history of the past one hundred and fifty years—one is reminded again and again that the great majority of the band of heroes who launched the Cause on its course in the middle years of the nineteenth century were all of them young people. The Báb Himself declared His mission when He was twenty-five years old, and Anís, who attained the imperishable glory of dying with his Lord, was only a youth. Quddús responded to the Revelation at the age of twenty-two. Zaynab, whose age was never recorded, was a very young woman. _Sh_ay_kh_ ‘Alí, so greatly cherished by both Quddús and Mullá Ḥusayn, was martyred at the age of twenty, while Muḥammad-i-Báqir-Naq_sh_ laid down his life when he was only fourteen. Ṭahirih was in her twenties when she embraced the Báb’s Cause. Following in the path that these extraordinary figures had opened, thousands of young Bahá’ís arose in subsequent years to proclaim the message of the Faith throughout all five continents and the scattered islands of the globe. As an international youth culture began to emerge in society during the late nineteen sixties and seventies, believers with talent in music, drama and the arts demonstrated something of what Shoghi Effendi had meant when he pointed out: “That day will the Cause spread like wildfire when its spirit and teachings are presented on the stage or in art and literature....”(122) The spirit of zeal and enthusiasm characteristic of youth has also provided an ongoing challenge to the general body of the community to explore ever more audaciously the revolutionary social implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings. The burst of enrolments brought with it, however, equally great problems. At the immediate level, the resources of Bahá’í communities engaged in the work were soon overwhelmed by the task of providing the sustained deepening the masses of new believers needed and the consolidation of the resulting communities and Spiritual Assemblies. Beyond that, cultural challenges like those encountered by the early Persian believers who had first sought to introduce the Faith in Western lands now replicated themselves throughout the world. Theological and administrative principles that might be of consuming interest to pioneers and teachers were seldom those that were central to the concern of new declarants from very different social and cultural backgrounds. Often, differences of view about even such elementary matters as the use of time or simple social conventions created gaps of understanding that made communication extremely difficult.