BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 29 January 1913, Page 3

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOH.

Sir, —Your " cordial welcome of correspondence of general interest" is my plea for the intrusion of my thoughts principally reminiscent, on the vexed question now being discussed in your columns, the Bible iri Schools. Looking back through the dim vista of over fifty years, I can yet recall vividly the impressions left at school upon my youthful mind " when I was a boy." Heigho ! how long ago its seems. My first teachers, up to about the age of ten, were two widowed ladies, ladies in every sense of the term, who kept a small private school in my native town " in the old countree." Whether from regard for the prejudices of the parents of a few Roman Catholic pupils (our teachers were Protestants), or from a desire not to treat the reading of the Bible as an ordinary school task, I cannot say, but this I do know, there was no Bible in.my first school, nor did we miss it. There was, instead, the personal example—better than precept — of our teachers, their gracious presence, the motherly interest which they took in each and all of us, their wise discretion in the selection of passages for our reading exercises, calculated to impress us, at a most impressionable age, with the goodness of the Creator towards all the " works of his hand." Not a single reference to hell, with its." unquenchable fire " and its worm that dieth not" to rob us poor kiddies of the right to be as happy as the birds are, though they "have no understanding," singing their delightful melodies all day long. My next teacher, alas, was a man, a " Lord of Creation," an autocrat more powerful and more terrible in, my boyish eyes than the Autocrat of all the Russians. Metophorically, he ruled us with a rod of iron, actually with nothing more imposing than a rod birch, but he found it ample to support his authority, so did we ! An authority that seemed to be absolute, for although his was not a private school, there was no School committee to keep him in check or to find fault with his ' methods. To put it briefly, he was'a terror, a " holy terror," perhaps, I should say, because he treated us daily to a liberal application of the terrors of the Bible as well as those of the birch. Fancy at the close of a long school day, from ten o'clock to four, with no interval for lunch or play ; most of the time on our legs in " classes," our poor brains racked with the perplexities of a varied curriculum, the distractions of Euclid, algebra, arithmetic, trigonometry, etc., etc., our anatomies smarting from the carefully administered strokes of a master who, " if severe in aught, the love he bore to learning ( and incidentally to us) was in fault," fancy, at such a time having to read for our spiritual edification such passages as these —"He that believeth not shall be damned," " The wicked shall be turned into hell with all the nations that forget God," " The smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever," " There shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth," etc., etc. Of course there were " the promises " of good things for the good, but as a counterblast to our hopes was the assurance that" few there be that find them!" For my part at such a time, I looked for no heaven beyond such as was provided for me at home, when the terrors of the day were over, in the shape of a warm dinner and a mother's smile. \ I am, etc., * /Iftokai, Claud Hopper. J~"\ Jan. 24/13.