THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1913, Page 10

THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL

QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE MORALITY AND THE BIBLE " | DISCUSSED BY BISHOP SPROTT. "I hold it to be a principle of selfevident validity that it is essential to the stability and development of any people's national character, that the morality accepted by that community j should be systematically taught to each fresh generation of "children." In these words the Right Rev. Bishop Sprott, D.D., commenced an address, delivered ai the opening of the Wellington j Diocesan Synod yesterday, concerning some aspects of the Bible-in-schools question. In a brief space only the heads of his argument may be dealt with. If morality were to be taught in the public schools, he urged, it must be not merely the average virtue practised hy the community, but the accepted moral ideal. They assumed that the Christian ideal was the recognised standard of • excellence in conduct and character. If, in this assumption, they erred they should at once be made to understand their error, and their agitation would collapse. Doubtless the Bible contained much excellent moral teaching; but morality, and even religion, were not dependent \ upon the Bible ; but the Christian mqrality differed in important respects] from all other types, and, a,s was assumed, was the type accepted by the people of New Zealand. It could not be effectively taught from the Btble. Why should they have recourse to second-i'ate sources when first-rate could be had. Io might be objected to the use of the Old Testament that it contained much dubious morality. Inasmuch as tho whole moral and religious proceps of which the Old Testament was the record culminated in Christ, the spirit of Christ became the criterion by which they distinguished what in the Old Testament was of merely local and temporary value from what was universal and imperishable. They did not propose to place the whole Bible in the public schools, but a book of selected passages ; and he presumed that the criterion of the Spirit and teaching of Christ would control tho selection of all passages from the Old Testament which were chosen for their moral, as distinct from their historical, value. j "In the course of this controversy the fact that approved treatises on ethics, such as those used in our Universities, for the most part ignore the Bible, has been brought forward as evidence that morality is entirely independent of the Bible. For who should know better than tiie eminent writers of these treatises? We may admit the fact, and we may add the kindred fact that the same treatises for the most part ignore God. I, however, interpret the fact somewhat differently. I find in it the explanation of the singular futility ■ which for the most part characterises approved treatises on ethics in their handling of the two greatest practical problems of morality, viz. : Is morality binding? Is morality possible? These are not merely academic questions. They largely _ enter 'into that process of selfBophistication which almost all men undergo before they yield to temptation — at least, to great temptation. Am I reaHy bound to be moral? the tempted man asks. 'Then must the Jew be merciful.' 'On what compulsion must I? — tell me that.' . . I do not find much moral dynamics in the answers given by non-Biblical ethical treatises to this question." To the believer in God there could be no more solid basis of moral obligation than that the creature was bound to conform himself in character and conduct to the will of the Creator. MAJORITY AND CONSCIENCE. It was said that this scheme, however admirable, must in its working do violence to the consciences of various sections of the people. How far in matters of public policy was the community bound, to yield to the exigencies of individual conscience? There plainly must be some limit to the concessions which the community might reasonably make, else it might, find its public policy shaped by its most eccentric members. The question was best approached by briefly considering th«- nature of conscience. Conscience was to be distinguished ffom other factors functioning to prompt or inhibit actions as referring explicitly or implicitly; to a larger good than that of the individual. la this position it was not a case of the brute /force of the majority (assuming the majority to be in favour of introducing the Bible to schools) against the consciences of the minority; bub the consciences of the majority against the consciences of the minority. Wae it not reasonable that, in a. question of the common, good — for if this were a genuine conflict of conscience the question at issue must concern the public good — the majority of consciences should prevail? It wa6 only as representing the larger volume" of conscience that the majority was entitled to rule. The common good required that, as the minority often had been right in the past,, there 'should be no attempt to suppress or silence the minority conscience, but that it should be allowed free scope to convert the majority to it* view of the common good, if it could. 1 As- there was a conscience clause for parents; the conscientious grievance lay in. the fact that it would be part of the duty of teacher?, paid from the common fund, to read selected portions of the Bible with those children whose paronts so desired. The objecting parents disapproved of the teachers doing this work. That was not a very serious grievance, and one they all suffered in turn. He could see no possibility of escape from the risk of it save by the adoption of the ext.rcmest laissez faire system of Government, am! the contraction of associated life and action within the narrowest limits, to thfi great impoverishment of life. NEUTRALITY NOT POSSIBLE. This was not a case in which neu- 1 trality could be secured by letting the matter drop. They were debating, not i the truth of religion, but the importance of religion as an element in national education. To agree to say nothing more about it/ was to decide that it was not an important element. But apart from this, the secular system was no solution of the problem. " Since the days of Plato education has been understood to include the ethical as well as the technical. The secular system makes a desert and calls it peaoj It narrows the ideal of education ;iad reduces the ethical to a minimum. Yet it is just the ethical element in education that gives character and power, and makes itself felt in every department of work. If vre fail in this, all specific activities of mind will be weakened by the weakening of their foundation in 'the man as man." TEACHERS' OBJECTIONS. "If any considerable number of teachers imagine that under our scheme their consciences will be violated, I can only conclude that they do not understand what it is they will be required to do. . . What the teacher will be asked to do is to supervise the reading by the children of certain selected passages, merely seeing that the children know, aad remember what they,

have read. I know it is said that the value of such an exercise must be small. Those, however, who advocate it belipve that the Bible is calculated, like nay other book, to make its own impression upon xhe mind. But we are not now concerned with the valne of the exercise ; only with its bearing upon the conscience of the teacher. What the teacher is required to do amounts just to this — to read the Bible with the children. To assert that this will violate the teacher's conscience is to assert that a number of our teachers think it a wicked thing even to read the Bible. I find it difficult to believe that this can be true of any appreciable number of our teachers. I have met in my time people who have formed various estimates of the Bible's value : but I have not met anyone whose estimate of the Bible was so peculiar that his conscience forbade him even to read it. The teachers who are alleged to have this conscientious objection are supposed to b» / I agnostic in religion, or at least unbelievers' in the miraculous." Matthew Arnold, who accepted the dubious dictum "Miracles do not happen." and Huxley, the inventor of the term agnostic, were strong advocates of the introduction of the Bible to schools. Evidently they did net imagine they were doing violence to the consciences of teachers who were agnostic. "The fact is," concluded the Bishop, "I take leave to doubt the existence of any appreciable J number of teachers whose consciences would not permit them to read the Bible. I seem to observe that the plea is made rather for the teachers than by them, and I, count it just a trifle ridicu-