The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1871.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 809, 6 May 1871, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1871.

In New Zealand, as in other countries, difficulties in connection with the education question are commencing. There are those who, on the one hand, advocate religious teaching, and a large party, on the other hand, who would restrict our educational system to secular teaching alone. So high an authority as Sir James M'Culloch, the Chief Secretary of Victoria, is a convert to this opinion. The State, he thinks, is compelled to ignore religious instruction altogether, for the very simple reason that the several religious denominations cannot, and will not, agree on the exact kind of religious instruction to be imported, and, after the various trials that have been made in Victoria of the denominational and semi-denominational systems, he has come to the conclusion that the State should only grant money for secular education alone, every facility being afforded to the various denominations for providing such religious teaching, as they may deem necessary. Professor Huxley, writing on the same subject, says : " Both parties seem to be not only hopelessly wrong, but in such a position that, if either succeeded completely, it would discover before many years were over that it had made a great mistake, and done serious evil to the cause of education. For, leaving aside the more far-seeing minority on each side, what the ' religious' party is crying for is mere theology, under the name of religion ;

while the ' secularists ' have unwisely aud wrongfully admitted the assumption of their opponents, and demand the abolition of all' religious' teaching, when they only want to be free of theology. Burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches !" The same writer continues :—" My belief is that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did, or ever will come to much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical idea. Undoubtedly, your gutter child may be converted by mere intellectual drill into the subtlest of all the beasts of the field ; but we know what has become of the original of that description, and there is no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully, without being aided by the rates. And if I were compelled to choose for one of my own children, between a school in whichreal religious instruction is and one without it, I should prefer the former, even though the child might have to take a good deal of theology with it. Nine-tenths of a dose of bark is mere rotten wood ; but one swallows it for the sake of the particles of quinine, the beneficent effect of which may be weakened, but is not destroyed by the wooden dilution, unless in a few instances of exceptionally tender stomachs. Hence, when the great mass of the people declare that - they want to have their children in the elementary schools taught the Bible, and when it is pluiu from the terms of the Act, the debates in and out of Parliament, and especially the emphatic declarations of the Vice-President of the Council, that it was intended that such Bible reading should be permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting it could be shown, I do not see what reason there is for opposing that wish. Certainly I, individually, could with no shadow of consistency oppose the teaching of the children of other people to do which my own children are taught to do. And, if the reading of the Bible were not, as I think it is, consonant with political reason and justice, and with a desire to get in the spirit of the education measure, I am disposed to think that it might still be well to read that book in the elementary schools."