Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 27 March 1913, Page 21

Current Topics

A Pleasant Story ■ Under this heading an exchange records an incident which has interested and impressed even the secular papers in New Yorkas' well it might. 'The Saints Are Still With Us' (it says) is the reireshing caption of an editorial paragraph in which the New York veiling World, in a recent issue, thanks heaven, 'the world cannot yet do its work wholly without faith and sentiment.' On November 16 the editor wrote: 'To-day the people of a little town in Sicily are proudly enshrining in their tiny church an 800-dollar statue of St. Josephall because a Brooklyn contractor put through a tough job of sewer-building in our neighboring borough without mishap.' ° It appears that in a certain section of the newly completed 3,000,000-dollar. sewer system for Richmond Hill, just outside of Brooklyn, an inverted siphon had to be built under the big ten-foot conduit wnich supplies all Brooklyn with drinking water. The Italian contractor for the building of this siphon recognised what a break in the conduit might' mean, and as he later told the borough president: ' I prayed to (invoked) St. Joseph on my knees beside a little construction shaek that I might finish this section of the sewer without accident.' And when the work had been conscientiously done without mishap of anv kind he honored the saint in the little home church'across the seas. A pleasant story,' is the World comment, of a good workman and a fine faith.' To Those About to Marry Several years ago, as we learn from our contemporary America, the increase in divorce in Kansas City became so alarming that the Circuit Judges of Jackson County -had a Proctor appointed to investigate each application and help to cheek the growing evil. Though he had no legal standing, his eitorts resulted in the reduction of divorce decrees from 1224 in 1911, to 881 in 1912. The Proctor has now compiled a statement of his observations in more than a thousand cases; and these are often valuable and always interesting. His enumeration of the causes of divorce is very comprehensive, including not only ' immorality, drunkenness, desertion, flirting, economic conditions, childless homes,' etc., but also such indirect and possibly unsuspected items -as ' suffragettes of the undesirable type' and motor cars.' jl * But the most valuable portion of the Proctor's comments is that in which he indicates how occasions tor separation may be avoided by means of a wise matrimonial choice and by taking precautions to secure a happy married life. And unlike most of those who discuss matrimonial problems he ' condescends to particulars and is entirely definite and practical. First, as to the kind of women who make good wives. Our young men, who, like Froggy in the nursery rhyme, would wooing go,' would do well to paste in their hats the following summary of the qualities to be sought for in their prospective partners. Those women makes good wives who love home life and children; aie heathy; understand domestic duties and relations have a high standard of morals and live up to it; think of something besides clothes and dress and show; are neat, refined, and modest; are educated and can speak correctly; are religious; have had experience with children and housekeeping; appreciate cleanliness ; are over 21 years old; know the value of money.' In regard o desirable husbands, the following & recommended to the earnest attention of our maidens who are matrimonially inclined. Those men make c o od husbands who are making good at something f can provide comfortably for more than two at the time of marriage have at least respect for - the religious belief of others are healthy; have ambition and a fair prospect of an ml» business; are , educated and moral gentlemen. We do not see why the religious qualification

should be required only in the case of the wives. With this addition, the foregoing list of requirements for the desirable husband may be taken as fairly complete. Modernism in the Sunday School If the statements of a responsible writer in the Presbyterian Outlook are to be accepted, Modernism, in its crudest form, is being openly taught in Protestant Sunday schools in this country. The handbooks in use in many schools are a series known as the ' Graded Lessons'; and according to a letter written to our contemporary of a recent date by the Kev. A. A. Murray, Presbyterian minister of St. Andrew's, Auckland, they are in many respects utterly pagan.' He gives the following extract from one of the series: It is easy to see that the age that produced the Gospels would not be anxious for scientific accounts of the deeds of Jesus, but that it would expect of Him exactly the acts that are attributed to Him. It is possible, therefore, that some events, like the restoration of the centurion's servant, were simply coincidences; that others like the apparent walking of Jesus on the water, were natural deeds which the darkness and confusion caused to be misunderstood; that others, like the turning of water into wine, were really parables that came in course of time changed into miracles. As nearly all the miracles not of healing had their prototypes in the Old Testament, many of them at least were" attributed to Jesus because men expected such deeds from their Messiah, and finally became convinced that He must have performed them.' This is Paine, Voltaire, and Ingersoll, in very thin disguise; and this teaching, according to Mr. Murray, is being disseminated in Sunday schools.'

Some Curious Arguments a In essaying last week to answer, in the Otago Daily Times, one or two of the questions submitted by Mr. J. A. Scott to the Bible in State Schools League, Mr. A. Morris Barnett, advanced some remarkable arguments. What they were will be gathered from Mr. Scott's reply, which has been forwarded to the Otago Daily Times. * Mr. Scott wrote as follows: ' Sir,League apologists seem to have a weakness for dealing in ancient history. Canon Garland, instead of meeting present-day difficulties connected with his scheme, descants everywhere and at large upon King Alfred and Mr. A. M. Barnett, instead of giving a plain answer to my plain questions, harks back to.the emancipation of the Jews. What earthly connection there is between the latter event and the Bible-in-State Schools League's proposals in New Zealand may be known to Mr. Barnett but it will not be apparent to any other of your readers. Your correspondent apparently argues thus: Because England ' emancipated' the Jews— gave them the elementary rights of freedom and of citizenship which were their due —therefore the New Zealand Government has the right to force a Jewish teacher, whose salary is paid, in part by Jewish and other non-Christian tax-payers, to give lessons on "The Crucifixion,". " The Resurrection," etc., in violation of religious beliefs which are to him most sacred. If this is League logic, preserve us from it. The conclusion should, of course, be quite the other way about. If England has 'emancipated' the Jews she has thereby given them rights, and full status as members of the Empire, and. she is bound in strict honor and morality to scrupulously respect those rights. As a matter of fact, the question of emancipation has nothing to do with the matter. The rights of conscience of any man, be he bond or free, emancipated or linemancipated, are a matter between the individual and his Creator, and no State anri no ni-int.;^f; n « 1,„„ *-U„ right to interfere with them. * ' Mr. Barnett tells us that his grandparents on his mother's side were Jews, and he may be presumed, therefore, to have some knowledge of Jewish tenets. Like the majority of people, the Jews have received

their faith from their ancestors, and according to that historic faith the teaching of the New Testament (as embodied in many of the lessons of the Queensland Manual) that Jesus of Nazareth is God, is blasphemy against the God of Israel. Yet the Bible in State Schools League, led largely by Christian ministers, is out to compel the. Jewish teacher to teach what is to him simple blasphemy, and is prepared to add injury to insult by compelling the Jewish tax-payer to pay for such teaching. It is a curious illustration of the state of mental (and moral) topsy-turveydom into which some members of the League have got themselves that Mr. Barnett should think it quite fair to do this thing and "most unfair" for a tax-payer to ask a plain question about the matter. To compel Jewish, Unitarian, Rationalist, and other dissident teachers to teach, and Jewish, Unitarian, and Rationalist taxpayers to pay for, a form of religious teaching to which they are conscientiously opposed, is religious persecution, pure and simple. And the Christian churches which are fathering this proposal are not likely thereby to increase their influence amongst honest and straightgoing citizens. * ' Mr. Barnett asks me to answer this question: "Because England has given liberty to the Jews, must England refrain from teaching its Christian truths to its own children?" Certainly not; but England must teach its Christian truths'in such a way as not to violate the sacred rights of conscience of any section in the community. That this can be done in many ways is amply demonstrated by the systems in operation in Canada, Germany, Belgium, and many other countries. I am as strongly in favor of religious education for the young as Mr. Barnett is, but I hold that those who desire such instruction have no right to compel other people, who conscientiously object to such teaching, to' pay for it. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. ' Mr. Barnett makes an extraordinary reply to the obvious and indisputable fact that the £IOO,OOO, which is the approximate cost to the State of carrying out the proposed provisions for religious instruction, is a direct subsidy to the particular form of instruction devised. Mr. Barnett holds that because the total cost of the education system remains unchanged there is no subsidy and "we are where we were.". According to this original method of argument, if the whole school day were devoted to teaching the Catholic catechism, and the total cost of the system remained what it was, we would be where we were and there would be no subsidy in the case! If the £IOO,OOO is diverted from the teaching of, say, geography and arithmetic, on which all the tax-payers are agreed, and is devoted to the teaching of a form of religion oh which only three or four denominations are agreed and to which all the others object, it is clearly a direct subsidy to the form of religious instruction devised by these churches. If Mr. Barnett cannot see this I am afraid he is hopeless. Mr. Barnett has been a staunch and almost life-long advocate of the principle of religious education, and with most of what he has written in the past I have been in hearty agreement. One can only regret that his zeal for a good cause should, for the time being at least, have blinded him to the viciousness and unredeemed injustice of the methods now proposed.— am, Bt'C j <March 20.' <j. A . ScoTT