The Bruce Herald. "Nemo me impune lacesset." TOKOMAIRIRO, JANUARY 21, 1881.

Bruce Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 1276, 21 January 1881, Page 2

The Bruce Herald. "Nemo me impune lacesset." TOKOMAIRIRO, JANUARY 21, 1881.

The moat eminent intellects of the nineteenth century have been favorably influenced by the habitual persusal of the New Testament. English Governments have been guilty of the most detestable actions in connection with their relation to other nations, biit we must not mix up the English Government with the English people. Repeatedly it has been amply proved that both the Government and the Parliament of England have been opposed to the ambition of the English nation, and the history of England, as a rule, smothers the desires of the people, and gives undue prominence to the selfish aims of monarchs and aristocrats. The lawabiding character of the English people has been largely inspired by the New Testament, and the consequence of this obedience to the laws is that all nations look to England — not to the Government, but to the nation — for a security lo life and projoerty which they seek in vain in countries whose people do not enjoy a free and open Bible. Leaving its moral and religious influence, for a moment, out of the question, we perceive that the impression conveyed by the study of its language, leads to the adoption of a severely simple and chaste style of composition. John Bright is an ardent biblical student, and the influence of the gospel shines thrpugh his magnificent Anglo-Saxon speech. Gladstone almost knows the New Testament " by heart," and he is the foremost orator of the age. The translators of the Bible were all profound linguists in the classics, and yet they have produced, in the Bible, a splendid collection of words which, are purely Anglo-Saxon. Civilisation owes quite as much to the Bible as it does to science. Many of our civil and religious liberties were suggested by the Bible. The Old Testament clearly exhibits the evils of slavery, either physical or mental, and Man, in every phase of vice and virtue is there pourtrayecl. Even in this non-biblical age, our unconscious quotation from Scripture are varied aucl numerous. A bad woman is called a " Jezebel •" a penitent one' who has led a bad life is named a Magdalene. A known sporting writer assumes the title of Nimeod. A traitor is called a Judas, and Daniel O'Connel on a memorable occasion, said that, in all probability, Disraeli, now the Earl of Beaconsfield, was a descendant of the unpenitent thief. Go where we will — always excepting a New Zealand Government School — we find the influence of the Bible in the daily talk of even the worst classes of mankind, who pay an unwilling homage to the Book and its Author in their very curses ! Magna Charta, the invention of printing, the design of the mariners' compass, were all more or less stimulated by that thirst for knowledge which finds its source and impetus in the famous command, " Search the Scriptures." It is completely false to say that the Bible inculcates a system of blind and ignorant faith. No such doctrine exists in the Bible, which advocates full freedom of investigation, limited only by the worship of the Supreme Creater. For all mankind, atheists excepted, the Bible is a key to liberty both moral and spiritual. Forgiveness of injuries, which gives quite as much peace to the pardon dispenser as it docs to the offender, is the leading doctrine of the page Divine ; and this doctrine, when carried out, includes the very essence of civilisation, and its opposite, the "wild justice of revenge," is barbarous and destructive, morally aud materially. A pupil in New Zealand may be a prodigy in merely intellectual acquirements, but there' is little to prevent him or her from being a perfect monster of immorality. There is no tuition from an eminently authoritative source in reference to the conduct of life in the Government schools in New Zealand, and a spirit of charity and toleration does not characterise our boys and girls. There is much bad example in the present day, and our youths are daily eye and ear-witnesses of it ; and the slang and blasphemies used by them show too clearly that bad example is producing the fruit which grows on

the tree of knowledge of evil, and the New Zealand paid rulers of our sons and daughters dare not, without violating the law of the land, quote one page of the Divine decrees against the evil practices of the criminal classes. The child who does not go to school cannot, as things are at present, receive any Divine influence— or very little — from the boy or girl who attends a Government class daily ; and the inspector, as well as the teacher, leaves God behind when the school is entered. The gentle words of Jesus may be heard in the Sunday School, and maybe in some paraphrase briefly alluded to in a Royal Reader ; but the school child breathes no Christian atmosphere, and practically, there is little mental or moral distinction between an unconverted heathen school, where the doctrine of pantheism or idolatry is taught, and the schools at present constitute the on*y 'means of culture for the majority of the inhabitants of New Zealand. There, is no law which prevents a teacher reading to his pupils the fables of ESOP, a voluptuous narrative on the subject of Bacchus and Venus, a record of the Mormon practices of Harry the Eighth, Madame dv Barry, and the "Merry Monarch." He may gloat over the Massacre of Glencoe. He may explain the anatomy of the human frame, the construction of a plant, the properties of a rainbow ; but of God who is above all, who knows all, who provides for, and who protects all, he dare not speak or teach ! Out of school, our sixth standard pupils may read the filthy pages of Ouida or Boccaccio, but in the scbool he or she finds no warning -voice which even indirectly refers to the evil trash which the works in question con* tain ; and yet the teacher may be a Christian manor woman, deeply anxious to plant the seeds of virtue ; but owing to some paltry financial juggling, the guardians of our schools are debarred from giving vent to their best and most exalted aspirations. The abolition of the Bible from our schools has led to a species of amiable literary smuggling ; and this contraband benevolence is the best evidence that the action of the Legislature is antagonistic to the desires of the colonists. The smuggling we allude to consists in the importation into our school books of various paraphrases of scripture, which bear the same relation to the genuine article that condensed milk bears to the produce of the cow. Evidently, our lawmakers think that God has no business in the school : and in imagination we see inscribed on every Government school wall, the lamentable letters, " God is net wanted here !" A few years ago the usual supplement to "wanted" advertisements was, "No Irish need apply !" We anticipate that. the day will come, if our schools continue in their present godless condition, when " teachers' wanteds " will exhibit the warning addendum, " No Christian need apply." Ingersol is not very far wrong when he says that the modern cross is a telegraph pole; and the modern so-called Christian— if our House of Representatives may be accepted as a guide for a definition— seems to be a person whose whole soul is concentrated in making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, in adding coin to coin, and acre to acre ; and the modem tower of Babel is a Colonial pile, whose foundation is lust and avarice, and whose superstructure is empty ambition and outward show. Godless civilisation is the most treacher*. eus kind of self-deception, and if Divine light does not lead our youth, it will fail to reveal itself to our old age. Our sons and daughter?, practically, are orphans, for they lack the creed and pure example of the Father and His Son, whose actions are alone worthy of imitation. On the lowest ground, looked at merely as a beautiful fiction, Holy Writ has no rival. The purity, simplicity, truthfulness, and chastity of its language, constitutes literary food without any equal. Freed from the cumbrous Latinity of the Elizabethan authors, the thoughts of the Bible correspond to its language ; and, consequently, it has been read with inestimable advantage by illiterate peasants, and by the monarchs of the literary world. We boldly assert that the moral tone of the New Zealand Government schools is not what it should be, aDd thatthat tonehas not improved since the word of God wag included in the Government index cxpurgatoriotis.