BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wairarapa Age, 4 March 1927, Page 4

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

DOMINION ORGANISER’S

ADDRESS.

Last- night, in St. Matthew's Parish Hall, Mr. E. Philpot-Crowther, Dominion Organising Secretary of the Bible in State Schools League, delivered an address on the Bible in Schools question. The speaker was introduced by the chairman, Mr. A. Williams, and opened by urging his hearers to make this year, which was the jubilee of the passing of the original Education Act, the occasion of the passing of another Education Aet which would provide for religions instruction in State schools.

The lecturer attributed the endurance and strength of character of our early pioneers to the thorough grounding they had in Bible teaching. He quoted authorities in support of a contention that the morale of the youth of the Dominion was deteriorating for lack of similar instruction. After dealing with other aspects of his subject, Mr. Philpot-Crowther quoted, with others, the following passages from an address by Archbishop Redwood at Oamaru on February 6:— “To take God out of the life of the

child, was not only a crime in a Christian nation, but a gross and well-nigh irremediable pedagogical error. The great duty of education, considered purely from the standpoint of natural and normal development of th(k human faculties, was to put God in the schoolroom, to enthrone Him in the heart and mind of childhood and youth. “There was uo educational substitute for the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not steal” would not restrain the thief or the highwayman if he had only to fear the human law or prison. It has some chance of doing so when considered as the command of a Supreme Being who had the right to command obedience and the power to punish disloyalty with the full and awful consequences of His just wrath. “God, and His Law”—any education omitting to put these two in its programme was but a scrap of paper which in the moment of blind passion would be torn to shreds. There was no substitute for God and His Law."

The views thus expressed by Archbishop Redwood, Mr. Philpot-Crowther declared, coincided absolutely with those of the Bible in Schools 1 League. Hr went on to express an opinion that Catholic opposition the Bible m Schools movement was a matter of pounds, shillings and pence. In concluding his address, the lecturer appealed to his hearers to support the Bible in Schools League by getting people to sign slips and by facilitating the plebiscite that was being taken. t A vote of thanks proposed by Mr. Masters and seconded by the Rev. W. Bullock was carried by acclamation.