Opening paragraph: The power of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation has engendered a metamor- phosis in humanity's collective life—vast, steady, and irresistible. Shoghi Effendi explains that the creative spirit of the Revelation has generated mysterious processes whose operation "has provoked a tumult in human society such as no mind can fathom." "Through the emergence of its slowly crystallizing system," he adds, the Faith has "induced a fermentation in the general life of mankind designed to shake the very foundations of a disordered society, to purify its life-blood, to reorientate and reconstruct its institutions, and shape its final destiny." This unfolding historical drama calls for ceaseless effort on our part to reach ever-higher levels of understanding and action.