The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2895, 30 May 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1872.

When men attempt to reconcile right and wrong, and make them work together, they rush into all sorts and manners of absurdities. The two do not fit together ; they cannot work smoothly. It is no use trying to fit a new piece of cloth into an old garment. It never wears well: it never looks well. The new patch is continually obtruding itself upon the view, and at length they part—the new from the old; the old is again torn through the unequal power to resist a strain and the rent is made worse. This is no new philosophy. It was pointed out two thousand years ago by one wiser than our Provincial Councillors. No doubt many of them knew it

but forgot Just at the very moment (they) ought not. They have spent thirteen hours in trying to patch our old educational system and have succeeded in making a botch of it. They found it in very workable condition. They found a system that had given great satisfaction to men of all religions until the advent of the Yeryi Reverend Bishop Mob an, who very soon picked out the excrescence in it. It was one that could easily have been dealt with, so as to satisfy all the requirements of justice, and with great advantage to the growth of true religion amongst us, He found fault with

the version of the Bible read in the schools, and with some of the school books. No doubt it would be very difficult, to satisfy a man whose claims to interfere are made so arrogantly as he has chosen to assert them. But whether presented in a form so obnoxious and insulting to men of other professions, or in a mild and conciliatory form, so far as they are just they ought to receive due consideration. It would have been very easy to say “Your objection to the reading of the authorised version of the Bible, so far as your religion is concerned should be respected ; but we are equally bound to assert our view; and as there is only one common ground of right on which to stand, the schoolmaster shall have nothing to do with Bible reading; we will remit that branch of education to those associations instituted to teach it—the Churches.” This would have been too simple and straightforward a plan : it does not suit Dr. Moran : it does not suit the clergy of any denomination : it does not suit the superstitious: it commends itself only to those who have learnt rightly to estimate the duty of man to man. Thirteen hours did our Council spend in discussing this question which might have been settled in live,

minutes had they understood the mean-;, ing of the sumt&aiy of the moral law;; . “ Do unto all men as you would have others do unto you,” And this thirteenhours, with its exhibition of bigotry, intolerance, obstinacy, superstition, and ignorance of social and moral science, should point out to any man who can put two and two together and conclude that the sum is four, that the new patch pinned on to our educational system will make the rent worse than before. Thirteen weary hours were spent in discussing what the patch should be, and when it was agreed on, it proves to be very motley ; suitable only for a merry andrew ; calculated to make us in Otago a laughing stock. That which the superior intellect could not agree upon, is to be left to the inferior to wrangle over. Our Council could not agree to exclude Bible reading but they leave it to School Committees to decide upon ; as if they are likely to agree better than their legislators. But if so wide a gulf separated the two parties in the Council, what right had they to suppose the question will be more easily settled by the School Committees ? It is just ns likely to become a bone of contention in eVery school district throughout the Province, and to be as fiercely fought as it was in the Council; and if so, the rent made by Dr Moran - , instead of being permanently mended by the patch, will be soon again tom open, and immeasurably widened, and made infinitely worse than at first. But if our patched system looks badly now, how would it have appeared to the world had Mr Macassey’s proposition to excuse rating Roman Catholics been adopted 1 Dr Moran could not have devised a more tempting bait, nor achieved a more complete victory. Surely such a dodge must have had its origin in the Vatican as the most potent aid to conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. We do not wish to be at all uncharitable, nor to suppose that religion sits so loosely ujxm the majority of our ratepayers as to be guided in its form by their pockets. But it cannot be denied that if they resisted the temptation that would have been pi-esented to them to attach themselves to the Church of Rome, it would not have been the fault of our Provincial Council Threepence in the pound saved annually to every convert to Romanism would he a pretty fair bonus to offer, and as it would bo only at the expense of a little mental reservation, it would not have been at all unlikely that the result would have been a pretty considerable transfer of proselytes to that Church. The patch is bad enough now, but such social distinctions would have colored it infinitely worse. Let ns be thankful that we have been saved from that. It is bad enough to flourish a distasteful volume before the faces of the Roman Catholics, but to have added to this a pecuniary penalty for being a Protestant would have been going from bad to worse.