BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1912, Page 3

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

ADDRESS BY CANON GARLAND THE "AUSTRALIAN SYSTEMS.

The first of a Beries of. addresses on the "Bible-in-schoolsV question was given by Canon Garland at the Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian-street, last evening. Adjutant Gunn introduced the speaker briefly, saying what a pleasure it was for him to be able to welcome the Canon to their midst. Canon Garland, who was loudly applauded when he lose to speak, said that the Salvation Army and he were -old friends. He was quite sure that before such an audience he had not to make a plea for the Bible. There were some people who clouded the issue, and he likened them to the cuttlefish^ which, when attacked, squirts out clouds of ink. "Sometimes," he added, "it is newspaper ink, but it is done in other, ways as well." The proposal to be put by^ him before his New Zealand meetings was simple. The Education Department should prepare certain selected Scripture lessons and the children should be set these to learn. The teacher* would only have to see that the child had the fight conception of the lesson set; he would not have to instil any theology. His duty ended in seeing that the young minds grasped what was put before them. "There' is a clause in the framing of the Australian systems which," said the Canon, "is more important than having the minister or the Bible in ■ the schools, and that is the conscience clause- There are some people who say that it is a bad thing, at any rate not a good thing, for young children to be taught the Bible. We may not agree with such people and we have no right to force our views on such parents, but we must say that there is no reason why there parents should force their theory on all others." He went on to say that the parent, and the parent alone, should have the right to say whether or not his children should undergo a course of ' tuition under the "Bible-in-schools" system. There were people, too, who said that it would cause religious strife and sectarian feeling, bat the experience f fn Australia was" absolutely to the contrary. Did his presence in the Salvation Army Barracks indicate that there was any such influence? In Queensland he could say that it had welded the sects together in a very marked degree. Often, by arrangement, a Salvation Army officer or a minister of another denomination would go out' to a school and take -a class of children of all religions, and never once had there been a complaint. In New. South Wales the system had been in operation since 1866^ in Tasmania since 1868, in > Western Australia since 1893, in Norfolk Island since 1904, and in Queensland since 1910.. Here wore two States in which the system had been in vogue for nearly fifty years, and was it possible that the people or the Legislature would have befen content to stand idly by and give it a free run if there had been anything wrong, any danger to the community? It was all very well for oppo-> nents to say that these two States had grown up under the practice, but he could point to Queensland and Western Australia, where it had only recently come into operation. There had not been a single complaint. The fact that their pleas could be granted in Australia without any friction was surely sufficient to show that in New it would be the same. Yet another argument was adduced by the opponents of the scheme when they said that some teachers were Atheists and agnostics, or were not fit io teach the Biblo. He would point outthat in all the Australian Spates there had been never a complaint. The proof that the parents trusted the, teachers lay in^ the fact that the children vere not withdrawn, from the schools. Several officers of the Army spoke, tbtinking the Canon for his address. The next of the series of addresses will be given at 8 o'clock this evening at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, The Terrace.