CHURCH SCHOOLS AND SECULARISTS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 89, 8 January 1918, Page 8

CHURCH SCHOOLS AND SECULARISTS

Sir,—lf your correspondent Mr. J. D. M'Naughton will read again my letter you were good enough to publish yesterday ho will be convinced, I think, that L did not brand all State school teachers as secularists. 1 am, I hope, too canny a Scot and too charitable a Christian to do anything of the sort. And I have too wide an acquaintance with and too high an opinion of teachers and too much sympathy with them in their labours of love and their great difficulties and disabilities to brand them all as secularists. And not the least difficulty they have to labour under is the hidebound, secular and sectarian system ot' national feducation that so many or them, including their leaders, are loudly denouncing. But Mr. M'Naughton must' admit that if he does not like to be called secularist (and apparently he takes exception to such suggestion), then he must dissociate himself from the recent secularist deliverance of the executive of the Educational Institute. That deliverance is not only secularist, it is bitterly sectarian. .And it is bitterly intolerant. And its accusations and implications arc absolutely unfounded and untrue. Will the secularist dare to say that the churches that promote church schools are less intelligent than he is? Less patriotic? Less desirous for the unity of tbe nation? And of its "civic, aud moral development"?" Why, Sir, the deliverance charges the churches with attempting to retard the civic and moral development of the people. Why, Sir, I heard a secularist say that the secularist cared no more for the soul of man than he cared for the colour of Satan's boots. He was an honest man. .. I thank Mr. M'.Naughton for his admission of sincerity of soul. But he. may spare his sympathy with my "vexation" at the apparent failure of the Church. For the vexation does not exist. Nor does the churches failure exist except in the desire or the secularist. Unless, of course, its "apparent" failure is that of its founder. But that failure is the Church's glory and its song of triumph. t It is easy t° make statements at large, as Mr. M'Naughton does when he says "Leaders of blind" (meaning, I suppose, ministers of the Church) . . . hare succumbed to the so-called higher criticism of German theologists which has shaken the faith of manv in the inspiration of the word of God." Of course, Mr. M'Naughton is introducing extraneous matter into the subject under discussion, and drawing a herring across the track, partlv perhaps because ho wants to have a'slap at the churches, but principally I perceive because he is hard pushed- for 'arguuientettve stock-in-trade. Let me ask him to be less general and sweeping. Will ho _ai_vG me the names of administer, or ministers, of nnv church of any standing m New Zealand who have shaken the faith of their people in the inspiration of thei word of God? If he does not - care to put the names in print, will he write m© a letter? Aud I will dertake to put myself in touch, witlj such men and to publish the gist of ' their replies. ' : When I said mmy letter that one after another of olir educationists denounce our education, system m no > measured language I was makinsr no • sweeping general .statement. \Yby. the honorary secretary of the. Julucational Institute is reported m t.i-dav s i paper as saying that ''only an lmoroved system of education could save New Zealand from disaster. rlie churches in New Zealand have known that' for forty years. And as true ■patriots and in the spirit of their , Head they will-continue to do all tliey can to avert the calamity as they havO in years past.—l am. etc.. \ JAMES M'CAW." i Knox Manse, __ Lower Hutt, " January 5, 1918.