SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 294, 28 May 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

SERIOUS THOUGHTS.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE BIBLE FOR THE SCHOOL. "I have always been stongly in favour of secular educ\tion, in the sense of education without theology, but I must confess 1 have been no loss seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling, which is the esential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion ou those matter*, without the ure of the Bible. The pagan moralists lack life and colour, and cvvn the noble Stoic, Marcus Antoninus, is too high and refined for an ordinary child. Take the Bible as a whole; make the severest deductions which fair criticism can dictate for short-comings and positive errors; eliminate, as a sensible lay reader would do if left to himself, all that is not dtsir able for children to occupy themselves with ; and there Btill remains in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. And then coosidci the great L.istorical fact that for three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history ; that it has become the national epic of Britain . . written in the noblest and purest English . . By the study of what other book could children bn so much humanised and made to feel that each figure in that vast histoiical procession tills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities and earns the blessings or the curses of all time, according to its efforts to do good and lute evil, even as they also are earning their payment for their work." (F) WHY. \Y hy do we wait till ears are deaf .'Before we speak our kindly word, And only utter loving praise When a whisper can be heard ? Why do we wait till hands arc laid Close-folded, pulseless, ere we place Within them roses sweet and rare, And lilies in their flawless grace ? Why do we wait till oyes are scaled Tb light and love in death's deep tranceDear wistful eyes—before wc heud Above them with impassioned glance ? Why do we wait till hearts are still To tell them all the love in ours, And give them such late meed of praise, And lay above them fragnant flowers ? How oft we, careless wait till life's Sweet opportunities are past, And break our " alabaster box Of ointment" as the very last! 0, let us heed the living friend Who walks with us life's common ways, Watching our eyes from look of love, And hungering for a word of praise ! —British Weekly (F).