Bible-in-Schools

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 11, 14 March 1907, Page 9

Bible-in-Schools

On the subject of ' Bible-teaching in schools ', our esteemed local contemporary the ' Outlook ' (the Presby-terian-Metho(Sist-Ccngiegationalist organ) says :— IWe are titAf all body, neither ere we all mftnd. There is a greater and loftier part in^the wonderful trinity of our being, which must be cultivated and developed, if a nation is to be an all-round perfect nation. Can a purely secular education ever evolve a people truly gentle and courteous in bearing and con- - siderate of the feelings of others— >& people who are fully alive to the responsibility of life, and who are of sterling integrity in character and conduct ? And when calamity befalls an individual or a nation, what is to sustain in that day ? Athletics cannot do it ; mental attainments cannot do .it. Only one thing can do it, and that Lord Byron called " the exalted hope of the Christian." Then again, how is a nation to grow old gracefully ? It can only be done by the possession cf that same " exalted hope," which shines in the face, which comes out in the speech, .and which surrounds its possessor with an atmosphere of " other-world tinesE- " These things make the aged " the salt of the earth."" •' A generation ago, only the Catholic clergy or a Catholic newspaper could have writteff thus plainly on 'Our Great National System. The body of the "nonCatholic clergy .either accepted the 'purely secular education \ or raised against it nothing better than a flabby, half-hearted, and spineless opposition. True, athletics cannot sustain a nation in the day of trial, nor' surround either its youth or its old age with ' an at-" mosphere of " other-worldliness ".' But neither will f the Bible-in-schools prescription — homoeopathic doses of diluted Unitarianism, cir the shapeless, nebulous, . undefinable Thing called undogmatic religion." This figmentof a riotous imagination is dismissed in the following terms by the voluminous agnostic author, Mr. Leslie Stephen :—: — "To be a Christian, in any real sense, you must start from) a dogma of, the most tremendous kind ; and

an undogmatic creed is as senseless as a statue with r out shape or a picture without color-. -Unsectarian means unchristian '. Such means of ' feeding ' the starved" souls of little men and maid® at school are suggestive of the methods of the b/aby-farmer ; they are reminiscent of the '* charity '. of Douglas Jerrold's philanthropists, who in a time of dire famine ordered for the skeletonised victims of want —a suptply of toothpicks. There is, however, this important difference : the philanthropists had at least the grace to furnish the toothpicks at their own sole expense;; • the Biibtfe-in-sehools folk, when on charity bent, are of more frugal mind— they clamor to have their own pecu- ; liar brand, manufactured aY their own -private toothpickery for their own private use, purchased by State funds , and distributed in their private interest at the expense of the general taxpayer. Why do not the Bible-in-schools people follow the example of Catholics and give their principles (such as they are) concrete shape ? One Bible-in-schools school, built, equipped, and imainbained by Bibde-in-schiuols advocates, wtould speak more eloquently than all the torrents of words, words, words with which they have been hosing lino public for the past twenty years.