CORRESPONDENCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 987, 4 May 1911, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

(to the editor.) Sir. —ln your issue of Saturday last you give prominence to the Anglican incumbent,s views on the religious instruction of the young. I am not intending to criticise the views put forth by that gentleman, but I wish it to be clearly understood that I am not in sympathy with the proposals he makes. He says the “Presbyterians who are keen religious educationalists” “could” rollow the example of the Anglicans aud Roman Catholics in establishing denominational schools. Now, let me say in a word that what the Presbyterian Church “could” do in this connection, is very different Irom what she would do. The Presbyterian Church does not, L and never did, stand for denomiuationalism aud never would be a party to any system of denominational education. I am not overlooking the system of parish schools, introduced into Scotland by John Knox, after the Reformation, aud which became the basis of the education system throughout the United Kingdom, but the system of Knox was far from denominational in the sense that the Anglican vicar means. What Presbyterians desire, aud what every section of the Christian Church should desire, is not to have the primary secular education of our children carried on in some five or six little schools in a place like Foxton, where the results in the qature of things could not be by any means as satisfactory as the present system ; but to have the Bible in the school just as any other book of historical instruction is used, but no dogmatic teaching in any shape or form should be connected with it. Then, if there is any further teaching desired by any particular religious denomination on their interpretation of the Bible, they must undertake that wholly on their own account and outside the work of the State. It is not the function of the State to give religious instruction ; it is the duty of the State, however, to introduce a book into the school curriculum that stands for all that is highest aud noblest in literature, art, aud ethics, and with which the national life has been so intimately identified. —I am, etc., Geo. K. Aitken, Presbyterian Minister.