THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 119, 15 November 1902, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir — It would puzzle anybody to say how or why this question has been resurrected from the dead at this particular time. Our schools have been conducted in peace and quietness under the present Liav now for a quarter of a century, and 'surely no one would designedly wish to disturb that blissful 'harmony. But as the subject, somehow or other, and for no reason in particular, has again beendragged into prominence, Mr. A. R. Atkinson has been obliged to refer to it, '• and as his remarks have attracted attention and present the question in a somewhat new aspect, I hope you will allow me a little space to say a word or two, which also I think will not be without novelty— ifor I propose to go a long way off, and to a generation past and gone, for some light on the closing year 1902. Some time about the period of the great Irish famine, the Commissioner of Education in Ireland compiled four little volumes of Scripture lessons for the Irish national schools. The lessons, to the Protestant mind, were admirable. Roman Catholics, however, would not have them at any pri«e. The books, consequently, never came into general use : had they been' continued there would have been uproar. Now, these Scriptural selections were taken entirely from "non-controversial" readings from the Bible, and I have before me at this moment "Lesson I." It is ay account of the Creation. Everybody knows that in all literature there is no more stalely, impressive, and majestic narrative than is to be found in the first chapter of Genesis. One, of the very first quastio'ns whioh, an intelligent child would put to the schoolmaster at the end of the lesson would be, naturally, "When did these marvellous events take place?" The Commissioners anticipated the scholar, and they headed the lesson "The Cieation : B.C. 4004." [Let nobody forget that these Scripture lessous are the very books which Bishop Julius and others have urged on the New Zealand public as just the thing required.) So ' that, at the very start, and no doubt in all ,good faith, the theological mind introduced a palpable error. What was the scholar to think when perhaps on the- same day, or in the same week, he learned that six thousand years ago an advanced state of civilisation existed, the iesivlt of prior thousands of years of human progress? To teach that the world was created 4000 years ago is bad science ; and as truth is the foundation of all religion, it is bad religion also.^

But this is but one instance of the difficulties of Scriptural selection. I could continue with one hundred instances, but I know you cannot allow me. There is another aspect of this question which seems to be completely overlooked. Some seven ? children, at all events; out of <every twenty or thirty are Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics object to the lay mind explaining or even reading the Bible. We have no right whatever to introduce this element of disturbance and bitterness into our national schools in opposition to that Catholic feeling. We iiear a great deal of the difference that exists between the children of this time and those of say, twenty years ago. And certainly there is a vast difference. There is less veneration and respect for parents now than there was a quarter of a century, ago — a shameful non-observ-ance of the fifth commandment. This is i not due to the absence of . Bible-reading in schools, for it is, perhaps, most obvious hi older countries than ours, where there is, and always has been, such. Biblereading and teaching. And maybe you will allow me at some future time to indicate the cSuse, as it appears to jae, of this great and deplorable retrogression. —I am, etc., H. R. RAE. Wellington, 25th October, 1902.