BIBLICAL EDUCATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8358, 19 February 1913, Page 11

BIBLICAL EDUCATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

To the Editor “N.Z. Tunes-” Sir, —In the controversy now proceeding on the above subject the dissensions (and strife likely to arise amongst us by the substitution of what I must call trarlandism for secularism have been much insisted upon. This is as it eaould be; but religious quarrels are not itae only evil, perhaps not the chief evil, (awaiting us if the clerical movement is (successful. Ear worse even . than, this in the eyes of the educator is the fact that the quality of the education given must necessarily be entirely changed, (impaired, and lowered. The new system will mean the substitution in the mind of the scholar of antiquated, childish, and erroneous ideas for modem ana true ideas. Education, to be beneficial, especially in. these days, must be scientific in tone, as it is approximately unifier present conditions, and whatever tends to neutralise that scientific tone in however slight a degree must be bad. Now, whatever be the excellences of the .biblical excellences, which X should be the last to deny, a scientific tone of thought is certainly not one of them. Its books were written in a ore-scientific age, and consequently its ideas are ot the most primitive, inadequate, and. as already said, erroneous order. A strikling example of this is the New Testa|ment conception of insanity, as compared (with what we know now on the subject. In gospel times a man was insane because an evil spirit had got inside ot him. he was possessed of a devil—a superstition which, according to the ejiipK®' lists, was endorsed by Jesus himself both ■in word and deed. Will you do the chud 'no harm intellectually, think you, by teaching him this absurdity as actual fact, as you must do if yon are still going to insist on the infallibility, of the (Bible? This is clerical in opposition to .scientific education, and it is not too much to say that such clerical education is perfectly consistent with the grossest barbarism and savagery in the nund or the taught. If anyone doubts this i have only to refer him to tho terrible tragedy that happened a few years ago jin Ireland (1895, AJD.), in the County of Tipperary, where a wretched husband, having convinced himself and his neighbours that his wife waa possessed by levU fairies, first tortured her in various ■ways, and, finally, roasted her to death over the kitchen fire, being subsequently sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for his crime. See Michael McCarthy’s “hive Yeans in Ireland, Ch. "XIV. There have been National schools Sn Ireland for more than fifty.years past, .put, being entirely under the influence of the clerical order there, the education ; givcn in them is utterly unscientific, and (consequently of no worth at all for (training the mind. Yet it is this clerical education that so many are now seeking to introduce into our own primary schools here in New Zealand! Can (the force of Unreason go any further? Even in matters of theology Modernism is far superior to Biblioalism. compare, for instance, the anthropomorphic .ideas of God held by .Old Testament /.worthies with those furnished ns by modern astronomy. In the one case the .Deity is so exhausted by his efforts in •Stocking our little planet during six days that he Is obliged to rest on tne (seventh to recover himself! How, we may ask—and our scientifically-trained ■children will ask—how were the myriad suns and systems of our universe sustaining themselves whilst Jehovah was fihus recovering from his exhaustion? A God who needs to rest is no God at all. In (the same way. how incomparably inferior !to modern philosophical ideas is the 'conception of Deity found in the Book ot Exodus, where we are told Moses gazed on the bodily form of God. though not upon his face. The Old Testament God. therefore, is simply a magnified man, and it is this idolatrous and therefore degrading idea of God we are now asked to put before a child of the twentieth century to whom the thought of a Brent self-existent Principle at tho baas of all phenomena is not unknown. What a retrograde step we are thus called upon to take! What low vulgar ideas .we shall be required to substitute for scientific truth I Nor is the Ethic of tho Bible superior to its theology, a fact indeed which need excite no wonder, considering the barbarous times in which the books were composed. “Blessed is he that, taketh and dasheth thy little ones against. the stones," says tho psalmist in his primitive savagery, but what a crime for us to represent that primitive savagery to the ohud of to-day as none other than the inspired word of God, yet this is the crime of which Canon Garland will make us guilty if he can. Plainly the struggle we are waging on behalf of our present secular system of education is a struggle between civilisation and barbarism, the barbarism that always dogs the steps of the priest. We say that intellectual development must retrograde terribly under such a system which strives to revive the ideas of the Dark Ages in theeo days of Light. Indeed, to the clergy generally I feat these ideas of the Dark Ages are more congenial and come more naturally than does the philosophy of Modernism, and that because so few of them have ever received any training in science. As far as physical science is concerned their mifida are almost in the same stage of blank ignorance as were those of the Bible writers, and hence they see nothing to find fault with in that volume. But to reduce tho minds of our children to this condition means undoubtedly ruin ;o the Anglo-Saxon race in that struggle for existence in which all nations have now to engage; and, therefore, I say as my last word in this controversy, in which I have been engaged for the last thirty-five years; Don’t introduce a lower order of ideas into your educational system than that which now so fortunately prevails, don’t neutralise your scientific teaching by qualifying it with that traditional philosophy which has come down to ns from the ignorant past. —I am, etc., JOHN GAMMELL. Seatoun Heights, February XBth, 1913.