Do You Teach the Spiritual Things?
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When in Bahá'í history
Paris (today: Paris, France)
Stanwood Cobb recorded that ‘the most important interview’ he had with the Master was while in Paris in 1913. He wrote, “I was one of the staff of Porter Sargent’s Travel School for Boys. On my first visit He inquired about the school and asked me what I taught. I told Him that I taught English, Latin, Algebra and Geometry. He gazed intently at me with His luminous eyes and said, ‘Do you teach the spiritual things?’
“This question embarrassed me. I did not know how to explain to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that the necessity of preparing the boys for college-entrance exams dominated the nature of the curriculum. So I simply answered: ‘No, there is not time for that.’
“‘Abdu’l-Bahá made no comment on this answer. But He did not need to. Out of my own mouth I had condemned myself and modern education. No time for spiritual things! That, of course, is just what is wrong with our modern materialistic ‘civilization’. It has no time to give for spiritual things.
“But ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s question and His silent response indicated that from His viewpoint spiritual things should come first.”
Source: Annamarie Honnold, Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Do you teach the spiritual things?”, pp. 139–40; from Stanwood Cobb, Memories of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Avalon Press; reprinted from Bahá’í News, July and August 1962), p. 16.
Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: spiritual-life).
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