THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1905. SHIFTING COUNSELS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 35, 31 August 1905, Page 17

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1905. SHIFTING COUNSELS

§HE Bible-in-schools Executive's counsels are, like Mulooh's world, * full of change, change -^nothing but change/ The leaders of the movement are roving uneasily about— each on his separate beat— in pursuit of a definite project, like the disconsolate Caleb in Search of a Wife, or like the lackadaisical maiden that gathered shells upon the shore and threw them one by one away» Thus far all the schemes evolved have one by one been cast aside. Not one has succeeded in gaining the assent of tho party who are bent on turning our public schools, somehow, into sectarian institutions. The pearl of great price— a precise and definite scheme for this radical alteration in the Education Act— has not yet been found* And its discovery seems as far off as ever. The Bible-ijn-sch)o>ols party arfe racking their puzzled brains with permutations and combinations of ' simple Biblereading,' 4 Bible-lessons,' ' Bible-teaching,' ' religious instruction '-^definite and indefinite, ' theological instruction,' ' the bases of all religion,' ' ethical explanations,' ' geographical and grammatical explanations,' ' the Bible, as literature only,' the ' mutilated text-book,' ' the unmutilated Word of God,' and so on and on. The storm of Baibel voices whirls and eddies around a discredited and sectarian version of the Scriptures. This— or fragments of it, edited with a Unitarian bill-hook— 4fc is proposed , in some vague and undecided way, to introduce into our public schools, at the public expense, and on distinctively sectarian lines.

The talking Walrus itt Lewis Carroll's poem ' wept like anything to see such quantities of sand ' upon the lone seashore. And at last Monday's annual meeting of thd Council of the Churches in Dunedin there were oratorical tears a-plenty over the eawiy shiftiness and uncertainty of the, 'Wellington Conference's proposals. But from the beginning of the movement 'twas ever thus. 'We have never hud much information,' said one of the reverend councillors ; 'we are all at sea on the subject, and discussion is useless.' He moved a communication with the headquarters of thfj Bibde-in-schools Conference, ' to get a definite statement as to its programme.' The motion lapsed when it was learned that * such a statement had "been asked for several times, but never received.' There the matter rests. And there— judging by past experience and present prospects —it is likely to rest till the toes of the Bible-in-schools Conference are turned towards the roots of the daisies. For— like the Duke in ' Twelfth Night '—their minds are

as shifting as the iridescent tints on the face of an* opal ? or like the 'Earl of Bath In the old political squib of 1742, they wobble from soheme to scheme, unable to tooltt" fast to any, and constant only,' in their* weathercock inconsistency. 1 Each party thought t'have won him ; " But he himself did so divide-, Shuffled and cut from side to side, That now both parties shun him/ But tthe shifting Earl of : Bath knew his mind for at least on hour on end. Therein he differed from the Executive of our Bible-in-scnoote Conference. What is it precisely that they want ? tliey cannot say. No man can say. Only, Whatever it Us, they— judging fty their clamor— want it very badly. Ho6ge at a country fair would not buy his humble live stock in a poke. But the BiMe-in-schools leaders serenely urge the advanced democracy of New Zealawd to commit itself on .Wind trust to acceptance of a seetaraafsiog «&fc&e -vabose specific form (if form it has) fs heatily taaskfedfaflowing cloak and domino noir and has never -been* SettT'Ot man.

We have given the most obvious and charitable explanation of the curious reticence of tfoe captains of the sectarianising movement. There is an alternative theory which might readily «nter as a suspicion into the minds, of those who are acquainted with the squalid story of fleliberate and predetermined proselytism of Catholic children that marked the imposition of irhii was, on the face of it, a much less objectionable scheme upon the national schools of Ireland. The alternative explanation to which wo refer was recently out* lined by the Rev. J. T. Hinton (Baptist), an able critic of the Bibjle-in-schools puzzle, in 'the course of a recent letter in the ' Otago Diaily Times*.' The B*ble« in~schools loaders' ' lack of preciseness is, 1 said he, ' either helpless or wilful. If it be ttie former, and tie party does not really know what it desires, It reveals the cnaos over which darkness and ignorance brood. Jf it be tho latter, and the party knows but will not speak out frankly what it precisely desires, then there is surely ground for grave suspicion as to ulterior purposes. The party needs most vigilant watching and challenge.' And so say all of us.

We hear less now about the ' marvellous unanimity' of the Bible-in-schools League than in the enthusiastic days when the pleasant fairy- tale of their oneness of heart and soul smote the mind of Mr. Seddon with a senso of deep ' impressiveness.' Then, as now, that ' unanimity ' was of the kind of which the bard in ' Hudibras ' once sang :— ' For discords make the sweetest- airs, And curses are a sort of prayers.' The Ainglican Primate of New Zealand (the Most Bey. Dr. Nevill) furnishes a curious instance of the hopelessly incompatible views that are hold by large classes of those who are held together by the loose and slippery withes of the Bible-in-schools League* Last week t at one of the usual thin and chilly meetings that damn the nwrnnent, the Primate laid the cold steel on the raw nerve-pulp of some of his clerical hearers by an enfant-teTrible frankness of statement of some of the reasons which have led him to dissent from ' the Wellington plan.' He, for instance, dislikes the plebiscite. Worse still, he clubbed the listening clergy with the following declaration :—: — 1 This, scheme does not seem to me to lay the duty of religious instruction upon the right shoulders. God forWid that I should siay a word agaiflst the teachers of our schools, many of whom are most estimable men within my knowledge'; but at the same time I do think that the discharge of this duty rests upon the ministers of religion. . , It seems to me lhat these are the proper persons to present the teachings of bhe Book to the children.' Ho, too, fratokly insists upon formal ■' religious instruction ' being imparted to the children— Wd that,

•too, of a kind which would present • a seasonable prospect ot finality.' It does not, we think, require a particularly sharp* guess to pierce the meaning that lies beneath the surface of this prim&tial declaration.

Dr. Nevill plies the caW-tome-tails with refreshing vigor upon the compilers of ' t>he emasculated caricature ' of the Bible which the Wellington Conference would force upon our public schools :— A I cannot but hesitate to be a party to any scheme which may seem to be making leflectdoms upon tine Almighty by rejecting parts of His teachings. A committee for the human improvement of a' divine revelation seems to me to be a rather improper thing for a clergyman to take part in. If you cut the Bible into minute fragments and say, i-n effect, that the Almighty and the All-wise was quite wroagj in putting this or that tefare the people— if you say that this or that teaching is not at all fitting fox the majority of mankind to have any knowledge of— l say that such an attitude seems to me to be a reflection on the Divine wisdom ; <anld I, for my part, cannot be a party to any such chopping up of the Bible into -bits.' And yet it looks as if, up to a certain point, the Anglican Primate is prepared to give a general support to the Bible-in-schools movement. Unless we are doing him a wrong, we confess that his attitude on the question is a riddle that we cannot read. We frankly give it up.

Here are two extracts which we commend to the consideration of all whom they concern. A writer in this week's ' Outlook ' (the Presbytorian-Mefchodist-Congrefetationalist organ) says : ' There is much talk about the Bib'te-innschools. Why does not somebody get up an agitation for the Bible in churches ? ' A recent pastoral address to the Methodist Churches of Australasia gets further back towards the root of the question* ' Let there be,' it says, ' a revival of Biblereading in the home, and let the spirit and act of worship become habitual, and be looked upon as an essential part of the daily prograimme.' Here is work for the clerical Weary Willies of the Bifc.le-in-schools League ! True, it will load their unwilling feet to the qjuiet paths of unaccustomed duty, and away from the places where the limelight glows. ' Better fifty years of Europe,' says Tennyson, ' than a cycle of Cathay.' And for Christian clergymen, better and more fruitful in real good would be a few years of devotion to their proper duties than a cycle of noisy and squalid political agitation.