Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1917. RELIGION AND POLITICS

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 66, 15 September 1917, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1917. RELIGION AND POLITICS

Speaking in the House of Representatives on Thursday, Mr. Massey said that he bad heard that day more sectarian bitterness than he had heard before in all the twenty-three years of his Parliamentary life. This is a surprising and deplorable phenomenon in the fourth year of a war which 'has done more to unite all parts of the Empire and all its parties, classes, and creeds than twenty years of peace. From political and industrial strife this country has enjoyed a most happy immunity throughout the period of the war. We are not entitled to claim any particular credit on this account, for the KaKer's challenge to civilisation produced' a similar result not only, as we have said, throughout the Empire, but also among its Allies. In Germany itself, though he had been the aggressor, the unifying effect was at least as striking as anywhere else. Even the Social Democrats, to whom the Kaiser had previously denied the right [ =to the name of. German, rallied round him almost to a man. With this example before us on the one side, and that -of the rally to the common cause of the Nationalists-and the Ulstermen, who,had tbeen standing with arms, in their hands to fight one another and embroil the whole Empire, New Zealand has no ground for boasting in the composition ■of the relatively trivial differences which the war enabled her to effect. But the small scale of these differences and the ease with which they hay« hitherto been 'kept in abeyance gives us all the more reason for being ashamed of the cause which has now been allowed to mar the national rarity, and to threaten it with possibility of a still more serious blow than that already administered.

Even in a ceiuntry which is nor-

own, religion,is the only cause which 1 could have produced this lamentable result. New Zealand has enjoyed an immense advantage over Great Britain in this respect, because, founded after the battle of religious liberty, and toleration had after generations of bitter controversy and persecution been won in the Old Land, this community kept itself free from the entanglement of secular policy with religions issues by excluding religion from the province of the State. Lacking an established Church, and lacking even any system of refigioti3 teach!ing in its pnbEc schools, this country has seemed to many good people to lack ■two of the things essential to the making of good citisens. But these critics have overlooked the magnitude of the i evils from which this policy of detachment has kept us free. By an ungrudging toleration of all religions, and preference to hone, the State has guaranteed perfect freedom and equality to all, and without suppressing or desiring to suppress religious differences it has been remarkably successful in preventing their complication and inflammation by the intrusion of a political element. Bacon considered that theology and science were both excellent things, but that they made a bad mixture, and the remark surely applies with equal fprce to religion and politics. The justification of the State's attitude to religion is not that, like- GalEo, it cares for none of these things, but that it thinks that these things are too sacred to be a fit football for the politicians.

Thursday's debate in the House should convince some of the critics to whom we have referred of tihe wisdom of maintaining, as sharp a division as possible between religion and politics. How is it that the line has been crossed on the present occasion? The demands of the Roman Catholics for educational grants from the State and for the exemption of religious teachers from compulsory service were the beginning of the trouble. Both demands necessarily provoked answers from those who ob j ected to them, and the answers have been forthcoming in liberal measure. The importance of the principles at stake justified plain speaking, and even hard bitting, and bo long as these retorts were confined to the matters really in issue, their severity required no apology. But the controversy has been recently embittered by fie introduction of all sorts of irrelevant matter, and of matter of such a kind that it is difficult to see what objects it can serve beyond those of giving pain to the other side and injuring the cause of those who bring it forward.

These latest manifestations of the danger of letting loose the waters of religious strife in the field of politics raise questions rather of the individual ftthies of controversy than of high politics and State rights. They contravene the fundamental axioms of good manners and sound logic, Writing nearly a century ago in the "Essay on the Formation and Publication of Opinions," which played much the'same part in its day as was played about a generation later by MilUs famous essay) Samuel Bailey said :

"True liberality consists in not imputing to others any moral turpitude because their opinions differ from your own. It does not consist in ostensibly yielding to the opinions of others, in refraining from a rigorous examination of their soundness, or from detecting and .exposing the . fallacies which they involve, but in regarding those who hold them as free from consequent culpability, and abstaining from casting upon them that moral odium with which men' have been ready in all ages to overwhelm' such as deviated in the least from the miserable compound of truth and error which they hug-ged to their own bosoms."

If the irrelevant phases of the present controversy are to be continued, e a careful ' attention to these elementary principles would redeem it from most of its offensiveness. "Reprehend who will in God's name," said a seventeenth century writer, "that is, with sweetness and without reproach." The answer of his critics was a virulent persecution which nearly cost him his life. Nobody's life is endangered in the present controversy, but we are surely entitled to expect from\ the Christianity of the twentieth century some wider departure than this from the methods of three hundred years ago.