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New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 178, 20 November 1942, Page 3

Sir,-In reply to D. I. Maclean, the aspiration of reforming our educational system in a religious direction is not one that has suddenly sprung up at a time when much of the opposition may be stilled by the necessities of military service, but has existed in the minds of many people since the present system was inaugurated. Nor has the present time been chosen by the Churches to push their aims any more than secular movements for the political and social betterment of New Zealand. They are averse to using. a time of crisis when people are stimulated to some concern on such issues. « _ Secondly, your correspondent says that the creeds and doctrines (of the churches, that is), are rejected as false by many of the world’s leading scientists and thinkers, This is, of course, quite true. But neither must it be forgotten that no inconsiderable proportion of the leading scientists and thinkers accepts these creeds and doctrines as true. One need but mention, among thinkers, Arnold J. Toynbee (doyen of modern British historians), R. H. Tawney, A. D. Lindsay, John Macmurray, Jacques Maritain and Paul Tillich. This does not exhaust the list, neither does it mention formal theologians: and there is a formidable enough list of creative theologians, I have heard, too, that Aldous Huxley is now a member of the Roman Catholic Church; Middleton Murry is a priest in» the Anglican Church. And in the realm of science there are A. S. Eddington and Robert A. Millikan. I might add that A. N. Whitehead, perhaps the most con‘siderable of modern philosophers, and -C. G, Jung, the greatest living psychologist, are far from antagonistic to religion. And Lewis Mumford has written about sin without mentioning God.

I.W.

R.

( Wellington).

a Sir,-Your correspondent, D. I. Maclean, suggests that those of us who desire a more Christian ordering of the whole of life are traitorous in our attack upon what he calls our "priceless heritage"secular education. We should be traitorous indeed if we failed to go on, war or no war, battling for the full development of our young people, in body, mind and spirit. As we are learning afresh through this war, spirit in man counts for far more than does either body or mind. This war is going to be

won by people who have the spirit which makes man prefer to die rather than to live enslaved. Details of a truly free regime they may lack mind enough to think out. Physically, they may be too weak to achieve their political and economic freedom. But they can be strong enough in spirit to throw away their lives in the, cause of Freedom, and to die in the hope that others after them will do likewise, until present tyrannies are overthrown. Mere body and mind training is not education. Our secular system ignores that constituent of human nature which counts for most in man, the spirit of man.

C.C.

C.

(Cambridge).