THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1905 SOME NUTS TO CRACK

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 32, 10 August 1905, Page 17

THE NEW ZEALAND TABLET

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1905 SOME NUTS TO CRACK

To promote the causa of Religion and Justice by the icays of Truth and Peace. Leo. XIII, to Il'e NZ TAri7.T

§NCE in the course of his history Chesterfield got into disgrace at "Court. He was banished to Holland as Ambassador, and spent his time there gambling and watching how the political cat jumped. ' I find treating with two hundred sovereigns of different tempers and professions,' he wrote, ' is as laborious as treating with one fine woman, who is at least of two hundred minds in one day.' That is precisely one of tne troubles that makes dealing with the braided captains of the BilHe-in-schools movement a ' labor dire and hoa\y woe ' They ha\e exercised to a bewildering degree during the past few years the right of changing their minds, and have wandered through so many permutations and combinations that the public of New Zoalani, like little 80-Peep, ' don't know whereto find them ' for foui-and-twenty consecutive hours. On Thursday of last week, for instance, they profess to have been again ' committed ' to their edition of the text-book of ' religious instruction ' drawn up by a group of Protestant clergymen in Melbourne What their view was on Friday morning we cannot say. Perhaps tney themselves cannot.

' For it's all a problem, , Prob— probv- problem , A mixed and curious problem. What road they'll follow next.' *

The Anglican Bishop of Wellington has, in this matter, taken a handspring and ' turned his back upon himself.' Some time ago, with his hand upon his heart, he decl-ared to his clergy in Synoa assembled that people would never believe in the sincerity of the Protestant clergy unless they took advantage of the opportunities —which, he said, were rarely refused-o! imparting religious instruction to the children in State schools under the present Education Act. Last week, at a big meeting in Wellington, he declared himself ' heartily in sympathy ' with the efforts that are being made to relieve all the Protestant clergy of that duty, and to force it upon the unwilling shoulders of lay State officials, 4 I agree,' said he, ' that all Christians should combine to teach the plain facts upon which Christianity was founded.' Let us tease out this sentiment a bit. 'All Christians ' should ' combine » to impart this ' teaching 'in our public schools— and, of course, at the public expense. But (1) by what right do you compel Jews ■and other non-Christians into this ' combine ' by forcing them to pay tithes .for your scheme of Christian teaching ? And (2) On what principle of equity do you propose to plunder the pockets of Catholic and other Christian objectors to meet the expenses of this scheme of Protestant teaching ? Again : (3) on what principle of morals or of statecraft do you refuse to other faiths the privilege which you claim for yourselves ? And (4) why are your clergy— whose special duty it is— to be excluded from the burden of carrying on the teaching formulated by the ' combine ' ? Is this a counsel of despair— the result of a Seep conviction, gained by long ■and melancholy experience, that the ' sincerity » which you postulate is lacking in the clergy, and that their *eal for the souls of Christ's little ones will not stand the acid test? Of this, at , least, you may rest assured : that if the Protestant Churches were half as interested in the Christian upbringing of their children as the Catholic body is, there would be no religious ' probnprob-probleni ' in New Zealand tc-4ay.

(5) Which are ' the plain facts upon which Christianity was founded ' ? Who is to decide the facts and the plainness thereof ? And who is to determine the par* ticular brand of Christianity that was erected upon the ' plain facts ' aforesaid ? Bishop Wallis and his friends of the Bibje-in-schools League have made up their minds that the form of this ' Christianity ' is Protestant, and, more specifically, a sort of washed-out Unitarianism. But who gave them a monopoly of the right to decide this Question ? Have not other Protestants an eqiual right to be consulted in the matter— not to speak of Jews, Catholics, etc. ? The public of New Zealand have an impression that our constitution and laws provide equal justice and liberties to people, irrespective of. creed. But Bishop Wallis and his variegated Protestant friends propose to alter all that. They have drawn up a State religion which satisfies (for the moment) their requirements. They would make Catholic, Jewish, Protestant,'and Agnostic dissenters pay for the propaganda of that creed, or go to gaol. But they would see the heavens fall and the earth aflame from China to Peru rather than allow the before-mentioned Catholics, Jews, and the rest of the objectors so much as a farthingpiece out of the State-creed tax for the teaching of the forms of religion that would meet the said dissenters' conscientious requirements. The good men have dropped out of their proper stratification in history. They belong by right to the Slate creed 'days of Queen Anne and not to the nineteenth century or to New Zealand.

Again : (6) People who believe in the God-Man .Saviour of the world regard, and have always regarded, the Incarnation and the Virgin-Birth as the grand cen-

tral one of ' the plain facts upon which Christianity was founded.' But Bishop Wallis joins with, Dri Gtbb and j|i® f*? 11 / 1 ?-!;^ ML-tef^S, Sapred Truths out of the *" Bible ' that* the children are to use, and firing them over the school fence. They coolly ask the sanction of a State Department for presenting to the ' young idea ' of New Zealand, not the Christ of the Sacred Writin^Sj/3H|u't an Ebionite Christ, born (so far as the textbook fells), in the ordinary human way, of a human father and mother ! Here indeed is a drastic treatment of ' the plain facts upon which Christianity was founded.' In Bowdlerising the Word of God in this shocking way they have (as the Presbyterian Professor Rentaul "rbinfed out) perpetrated ' a wanton and a deadly wrong' to the boria fides of the (Gospel) story and to the central faith of the Protestant Churches themselves. 1 This slash-hook editing of the Bible is an outrage upon Christian sentiment and upon the integrity of the Scripture Narrative, and (as the same Protestant divine remarked) ' a direct Wow to all that is most sacred and most reverently oherishea in the faith and the religion of all Oatholics.' It turns out that some of the Victorian clergy who drew the blue pencil throiugh this part of the Sacred Word do not believe in this ' plain fact upon which Christianity was founded.' Why did our Biblc-in-schools leaders follow so scandalous an example ? Why did they, too, perpetrate this wanton wrong ? For what positive reasons did they reject the most fundamental of ' the plain facts upon which Christianity was founded ' ? We have asked these questions before. And now, for the seco-nd time, we pause for a reply.