“Divine Education is the sum total of all development. It is the safeguard of humanity.”

If a child is left to its own natural proclivities, without education, it will embody all human defects. Education makes of man a man. Religion is Divine Education. There are two pathways which have been pointed out by the Heavenly Educators. The first is Divine Guidance and reliance upon the Manifestations of God. The other is the road of Materialism and reliance upon the senses. These roads lead in opposite directions. The first leads to the world of the Kingdom; the other ends in the world of human vices, and is contrary to the cause of Divine Guidance. For example, consider a babe at the mother's breast, observe its natural aggressiveness, its instinctive antagonism. It claws and bites the mother, even attacks the fountain of life itself.

A barbarous and savage country is a country which has been deprived of education, where men are utter materialists like animals. Such a nation embodies all human defects and vices. They even kill and eat each other.

Divine Education is the sum total of all development. It is the safeguard of humanity. The world of nature is a world of defects and incompleteness. The world of the Kingdom is reached by the highway of Religion and is the Heaven of all Divine Virtues. 

(Words of Abdul-Baha delivered during his sojourn in America; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 6, June 1913)

“man has descended from the Divine Spirit”

Material scientists endeavor to show the evolution of the species man from the monkey. The Prophets of God have been occupied in explaining that man has descended from the Divine Spirit. The professors and learned scientists of materialism glory in the evidences that the ape is the progenitor of humanity and make exhaustive efforts to discover proof of it. If we should ask the ape, he would say "Unquestionably we are all one,—of this I am certain without the aid of scientific inquiry, ethnological proof, biological deductions or geological findings; I believe what I see"—for the ape is a real, a true materialist. 

(Words of Abdul-Baha delivered during his sojourn in America; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 6, June 1913)

“Baha’u’llah has said two steps are necessary for human development;—Material and Divine Education.”

The heart of man is a garden. The real garden is in order, well planted, watered and cultivated. This is not so with the jungle. The jungle gives no evidence of cultivation. Where there is no gardener disorder prevails. Wild growth produces nothing. Human education is of great importance. It is especially necessary to educate the children. They are the young tender trees of God's planting. But the supreme education is Divine Teaching. Through it the most ignorant become wise and the lowest are elevated to the loftiest heights. This transformation in man is made by the Manifestations of God. Through them the wicked become righteous, the weak firm, the barren fruitful. One day's education under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is better than ten years material training in the universities of the world. Baha’u’llah has said two steps are necessary for human development;—Material and Divine Education. In the world of humanity, we see some seeking upward, some downward. 

(Words of Abdul-Baha delivered during his sojourn in America; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 6, June 1913)