'Injustice and Imposture'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 35, 31 August 1905, Page 1

'Injustice and Imposture '

The Southern provincial champions of the school* sectarianising party usually shin up a tree wben the Rev. P. B. Fraser (Presftyterian), of Lovell's Flat, Otago,, takes up his gun and follows up their spoor. Mr. Fraser is a man of acknowledged aibiltty and a keea and skilled ddbater. He is likewise a hard hitter, and has full many a time riddled the shifting fallacies of that noisy organifeajtion which, calling itself the Bifcle-in-schools Referendum League, resolutely sets its Malaprop head against both the Bible-in-schools and the referendum.

The paid political agitator of the League recently applied for the use of the Rev. Mr. Fraser'si ehuroh in order to expound therein ' the present objective ' of his employers. Mr. Fraser replied that he ' never gave the church for political purposes,' and that the school was available for the object set forth by the ' official organiser.' In last Monday's ' Otago Daily Times ' Mr. Fraser invited the political agent of the League to meet him on the platform 'at Milton and Kiait|ato|^atla, at Oamaru, D'uncdin, and Invercargill, <aaid, if possible, \at Christctoiroh, Wellington, and Auckland ' to discuss the organisation's scheme and ' argue it out as sich,' > I shall undertake to show, 1 says the Rev. Mr. Fraser, ' that the Leagiue's programme is* a policy of injustice and imposture— of injustice, because a sect seeks to establish and endow sectarian teaching in the national schdols, '$o the exclusion ol the rights of all minorities'; of imposture, its text-book claims an authority from the Churches it never sought or obtained, and . that, instead of being a bpna-fide selection of Soript/ure suitable for the young, it is a garbled mutilation of the Scriptures and its teaching, practically identical with Unitarianism.

Mr. Fraser suggests ' that candidates for Parliament be asked to pledge themselves never to submit any religious proposals to a refer en ctuin of the people until first| Parliament itself has agreed, in both Houses, to Such proposals as right ana" eqaiitzdble ; and thati the present modus vivendi, the present system of so-called secular education, be maintained for another term, till such happy day when our ecclesiastical leaders agree on a

better. 1 Perhaps ' the most unkindest cut of all 'is the closing sentence of his letter. He gently hints that the monetary proceeds of the proposed public discussions ' would be better expended in paying a special school-children's missionary for each of the chief centres,' and that 'as a "beginning, 1 the salaried politician of the League ' might go halves ' in this work with a namesake of his who has for many years been doing earnest and useful work, in an unostentatious way, among the Protestant State school children in Diu.edin.