BIBLE READING IN SCHOOLS. Is It to be enforced Irrespective of Belief?

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 105, 5 July 1902, Page 8

BIBLE READING IN SCHOOLS. Is It to be enforced Irrespective of Belief?

THERE are several Ms.H.R. who have returned to Wellington with their loins girded up, and their swords upon their thighs, ready to fight for the introduction of Bible-reading in the State schools. Probably, they, and the people who are such ardent advocates of compulsory Bible-reading, are actuated only by the best impulses, and are unable to see that anything but good can result therefrom. The very bitterest differences recorded in history have been religious differences, and you cannot touch nations or individuals on a sorer point than their creed. • • • Compulsory Bible - reading m schools is bound to cause sectarian strife. You cannot compel the child of the Hebrew, the Catholic, the Agnostic, and the Freethinker to allow his child to read the Bible, If you do you interfere with the moral laws of the land, and the country is no longer a free one. Those Ms.H.R. who are so confident of the benefits to be derived from scriptural teaching in schools, must, if they wish to be just, get a bill passed providing for the erection of State schools for those secta who object to the reading of the the scriptures from the standpoint of their several religions. • * • Education is free in New Zealand, and you cannot debar the child of any parent, be he Jew or Gentile, Parsee or Pagan, from his share m its benefits Bible-reading m the schools may be a desirable thing, but from only one standpoint. Perhaps, the majority of parents in New Zealand would be willing that their children shouold study the scriptures. Supposing, however, a section of the parents of New Zealand asked that the Koran should be a school-book, has anyone in the country a right to take that book from its students and substitute a Bible ? • # * Seeing that we have long since done away with burning believers in a certain form of worship at the stake, it is certainly not conducive to the fraternity of all sects that the people's religion should be served out to them by Act of Parliament. As it is, parents and the Sunday schools take over the whole business of religious instruction to children, and it seems to us a very reasonable method. We do not find that the law and order of those countries where religious intolerance is most marked is of a better sort than it is in our at present free colony. • * * Furthermore, if even we scripturally instruct the whole of the State school children, and turn them out to a given pattern, it will not necessarily follow that the children will be any the better from a moral standpoint It may be that the people will be apathetic on the subject, and submit to the propoosal, but it is just likely that the Biblereading m Schools Bill, if put to a referendum, would receive extremely short shrift. • • • In a colony, the people of which have so many shades of religious belief, such a measure could but stir up strife By all means inculcate a knowledge of the Scriptures in the Sunday schools, attended by children whose parents believe in their teachings, but pause before you say that, notwithstanding the opinions of parents, their children shall be estranged from them by being forced into lessons that may be objectionable to them.