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[Page 1]Child’s Way

THE NATIONAL BAHÁ’Í CHILD EDUCATION COMMITTEE

A GUIDE FOR BAHÁ’Í PARENTS AND TEACHERS

Published bi-monthly ($1 a year) DECEMBER 1956 (Bahá’í Year 113) No. 48

The power of the Covenant is as the heat of the sun which quickeneth and promoteth the development of all created things on earth. The light of the ‎Convenant Covenant‎, in like manner, is the educator of the minds, the spirits, the hearts and souls of men. —‘Abdu’l-Bahá

THE GREAT PROMISE

Through the fulfillment of His great promise to mankind, God has opened the books of the past to human understanding. The real meaning of the Covenant of God is evident to man for the first time. This is not a promise confined to one man, one family, one tribe, or one nation. In this day all who believe in and obey the Manifestation of God, Bahá’u’lláh, are the chosen people.

In the time of every Prophet parents have been faced with the problem of rearing their children in two worlds—that of the unbelievers, who constitute the majority and thus control the current standards of their society and that of the believers, who are few and must therefore abide all the more strongly by the new standard. Today parents have an even more difficult task because they must honor the free will of their children, as a fundamental principle of the Faith. It is therefore more than ever essential that true understanding of the religions of the past and the Faith of the present be fostered, in order to create a desire for acceptance of the Faith on the part of the child.

The opportunity to teach our children the meaning of the books of the past is derived directly from the Covenant itself, for the promise of God is the underlying theme of every Divine Revelation. And in using this opportunity to relate all our teaching to the Revelations of the past through the Covenant we are offering the children an approach to religion that is positive, yet broad—not dogmatic.

The Ark of the Covenant which Noah entreated His people to enter is an obvious illustration of how we can correlate the Bahá’í Faith and past Revelations. And in such examples, we are explaining the symbolism of the Holy Books, thereby precluding any unreasonable interpretation which might create a later doubt in the child’s mind. The true meaning of the story of Cain and Abel (Abel was a Prophet of God; Cain represented the people who slew Him—Iqan pp. 148-149) is another example of God’s Covenant with man, proclaimed by His Messenger.

Jesus reiterated the Covenant in the Lord’s Prayer, which holds the promise of the Kingdom of God on earth. Children should be taught this beautiful prayer and its fulfillment in this era.

As belief in the Manifestation is the condition of the Greater Covenant, obedience to His Laws is the condition of the Lesser Covenant. As all Bahá’ís realize, this means first and foremost, turning to the established Center of the Faith. The words of Bahá’u’lláh “We have made Thee (‘Abdu’l-Bahá) a shelter for all mankind” explicitly refer to

Bring us together again, O Lord, by the power of Thy ‎Convenant Covenant‎. Gather our dispersion by Thy Promise, and unite our hearts in the dominion of Thy love. Make us to love each other, that we may sacrifice our spirits, expend our money and scatter ourselves for the love of one another. O Lord, cause to descend upon us quietness and tranquility. Shower upon us the clouds of Thy mercy in great abundance and make us to characterize ourselves with the characteristics of the spiritual. O Lord, make us firm in Thy noble command, and bestow upon us Thy gifts, through Thy bounty, grace and munificence. Verily, Thou art the Merciful, the Generous, and the Beneficent. —‘Abdu’l-Bahá [Page 2]the interdependence of the Greater ‎and and and‎ Lesser Covenants.

Those who repudiate the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh disobey the Manifestation, Who authored the Covenant; they are the spiritual counterparts of the followers of Moses who disobeyed the Ten Commandments. Symbolically graven on stone as an evidence of their eternality, the Tablets were broken by the Hebrews and revealed again. Bahá’u’lláh states in the Tablet of the Branch: “They who deprive themselves of the shadow of the Branch are lost in the wilderness of error; are consumed by the heat of ‎wordly worldly‎ desires, and are of those who will assuredly perish.”—Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 43.

The intensified materialism of our age is an even greater threat than in the time of Lot’s wife, or the worshippers of Baal, the Golden Calf, which is as much a symbol of the desires of the world as it was in the days of Moses.

It is important that children recognize the stations of the Manifestation, the Center of the Covenant, and the Guardian: That ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s authority was derived from His direct appointment as the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant by the Manifestation Himself; that the Guardian’s authority is established by his direct appointment by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Thus the creative energies released by Bahá’u’lláh are linked, through the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, with the Guardianship. Shoghi Effendi states that the purpose of the Covenant is to “direct and canalize these forces” and insure their “harmonious and continuous operation.”—God Passes By, p. 237.

This distinguishing feature of the Faith—the Covenant—should be emphasized in the training of our children, so they will not conceive of the Faith as a synthesis of all religions and so they will recognize the advancement from human interpretation to Divine meaning; so they will know the difference between order and disorder—that unlimited liberty leads to sedition and that multifarious interpretations lead to doubt, intellectual pride and ultimately, independence of God.

Only when all Bahá’ís are unified in a divine relationship through the power of the Covenant can a new creation come into being in the next generation, through children who have been reared in the atmosphere of this spiritual affinity.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

The following article is a reprint of chapter V from Stanwood Cobb’s book, Character, A Sequence in Spiritual Psychology, published in 1938 by the Avalon Press, Washington, D.C.

—CONTINUATION

The physical qualities of man are not in themselves evil. It is the use we put them to that may make them harmful. In themselves they are part of the biological foundation for existence. In animals they are necessary and quite innocent. In man they are also necessary—but not innocent unless sublimated by the power of the spirit.

It is those fundamental urges in a human being which he shares with the animal world that give him energy and power of achievement. This physical side of man is as important to his existence on this earthly plane as is the spiritual side.

The first application of intelligence to our self-training in character should be the awareness of our duality and the effort to transubstantiate our animalistic qualities into spiritualized correspondences on a higher plane.

Thus one’s tendency to anger can be modified into a power for controlling other human beings for noble ends. George Washington knew how to change his fierce and at one time ungovernable temper into a powerful factor for governing men.

The instinct for self-preservation which is expressed in the animal as greed and cruelty can be modified in man to an expression of energy and efficiency for career-success. In a spiritualized humanity, such expression of the will-to-exist need not be cruelly competitive nor egoistic. On such a spiritualized plane of humanity there will not remain any distressing struggle for existence.

Every individual starts life with a certain hereditary or destined endowment. This is his working capital. It is important for him to realize as early as possible in life those tendencies toward good and evil, toward failure and success with which he started existence on this earthly plane. To be wisely aware of one’s faults and ignoble tendencies is to make constant effort toward overcoming them. To be aware of one’s proficiencies and gifts is essential to a wise and successful choice of career.

One should make a daily practice of self-examination, not in any morbid way, but from a spiritual standpoint—daily reaffirming one’s resolution to overcome one’s faults and strengthen one’s virtues.

What would I be tomorrow that I am not today? Thus we should examine our accounts each night, and each morning start forth to increase our treasures of perfection. The only wealth we intrinsically possess is the richness of personality we have gained through self-unfoldment. By means of this wealth, all things we would gain are directed unto us. This is the universal law of growth.

In the analysis of self or of others, this truth is very helpful: that our faults are the shadows of our virtues. In other words, faults are but the excess of some quality in us which is valuable when exercised under proper restraint.

We have already spoken of how capacity for anger may be a danger or a value to man. So every quality in excess becomes a fault and danger to one’s success and happiness. For instance, thrift may become penury and stinginess; efficiency may become overbearing; amiability tends toward irresponsibility.

In fact, there is not a single virtue but which tends toward a vice when in excess. On the other hand, there is no fault of temperament which may not be modified into a valuable trait.

The first claim which life makes upon us is the claim of perfecting our bodies. The proper care and use of the body is in reality a spiritual obligation. Christianity emphasized our sacred duty to our bodies, that they are temples of the living God. We may not abuse them. To do so is a sin, even though it brings no harm to other people.

Dr. Stanwood Cobb and Mrs. Helen Eggleston at Louhelen Summer School, where Dr. Cobb first gave the talks later incorporated in his book Character, A Sequence In Spiritual Psychology.

This responsibility to our bodies as vehicles of our mind and of our soul is strongly emphasized by every religion. Control of the appetites and passions is the beginning of spiritual development. Lack of control of them injures body, mind and soul.

Even in the simplest things we should practice ‎self-restrain self-restraint‎ and wisdom. Our diet should be wholesome and not over-indulgent as to amount. We should keep to regular and adequate hours of sleep. We should take what recreation is needed, avoiding however that which tends to deplete one’s vitality or which is merely a waste of time.

Youth owes a sacred duty, then, to his body during the important formative period of post-adolescence leading into manhood and womanhood. Parents should instill in their children this sense of responsibility and should train them in wholesome methods of eating and of bodily care and send them out into life intelligent managers of their own physical system.

There is no demand that spirituality can make upon us which would betray the body and its needs. Spirit does and can control and guide through matter, Marie Watson reports ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to have said; but matter has its own laws upon ‎its’ its‎ own plane and will exact its own toll; he who fails to acknowledge and recognize this truth will lead to a wrong psychology and the result is difficult to remedy.

TO BE CONTINUED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

THE ITALO-SWISS Children’s Hour News article, appearing in the Sept.-Oct. issue of CHILD’S WAY was submitted by MRS. ANNA KUNZ.