THE BISHOP OF MELBOURNE AND BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Evening Star, Issue 12396, 9 January 1905, Page 4

THE BISHOP OF MELBOURNE AND BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

TO THE BDITOK. f,™ T? 1 ' interestin g interview between the Bishop of Melbourne and your representative reference is made to the referendum taken in Victoria. His lordship, commenting or. the questions submitted stated that any man who said cither " Yes"'' r V A l> 0 « !>oth questions of course stultified himself m his answar. Now, I think it quite possible for an elector to have voted No" to both questions without necessarily having stultified himself; that is to say, he might not be content that the system of education should remain secular as at present, and yet not be in favor or Bible lessons being given by the teachers in school hours, and hymns and prayers fsed. Ihis latter course he might regard as the promoter of strife, sectarianism, and tho perpetuation of ecclesiastical But, could some scheme be devissd °that would inculcate the broadest religious and moral influences without the above defects, then he might favor the supersession of the absolute secular teaching This, I think, contains the germ of the final solution of the question. How can the Bible be truthfully taught in public schools by public teachers while so manv different conceptions are held as to what 110I 10 BlW ««aUy is? Just to take one instance: What is Genesis? To some religious people it is literal inspired truth; to others it is almost that, only some words have to be altered, as "periods" for "days"; other church people regard Genesis as drama, others again as poetry. What is the teacher.to tell his scholars it is? The evolution of religion tends to simplicity of doctrine. The most the State can ever do in justice and truth would be to teach the very broadest doctrine, free from any theological bias'or assumptions, to supply a foundation acceptable to men of ail shades of religions beliefs. That foundation supplied to the scholars, then each sect cdfild rear on that the superstructure of its own individual creed, by its own means—Sunday school, church, literature, and the like. <

As a contribution to such a foundation, would you have room to insert tn« following account of an interesting attempt to formulate such a universal basis of religious Wiefr— '

—The" G«ed;:of>:;(Mege ,: President, William ' Dewitt Hvde *o! Bowdoin College, TXS.A.,; class of sixty etudc-nts, most of them seniors to Write out their individual creeds. "In thete individual creeds," he-writes in the 'Outlook' (New York), "I asfced, each man to state as exactly as possible bbtiv lii 3 belief and his unbelief, and-to define, as,far as possible, the sense in whicklia held the things in which he believed and. the sense in. which ho rejected the thing* he did not believe." .President Hyde then reduced these sixty creeds to a composite creed. As he puts it:

. ",luto this composite creed I put' everything which- any student had affirmed, except what some of them had denied, aiming in this way to get .a class creed to which each individual member •would assent. I distributed copies of -this composite creed to each member of the class, and invited ' criticism • and amendment. We then spent two hours together in discussing the articles of the creed one by one, making such modifications and concessions at each point as were necessary to secure their unanimous acceptance by the class. At the.end of the second hour the creed was adopted by a unanimous vote."

Here is the creed —that of the class of 1903—thus evolved:— "I believe in one God, present in nature as law, in science as truth, in art as beauty, in history as justice, in society as sympathy, in conscience.as duty, and supremely in Christ as our highest ideal. "I believe in the Bible as the expression of God's will through man; in prayer as the devotion of man's will to God; and in the Church as the fellowship of those who try to do God's will in the world.

"I believe in worship as the highest inspiration to work; in sacrifice as the price we must pay to make right what is wrong; in salvation as growth out of selfishness into service; in eternal life as the survival of what loves and is lovable in each individual; and in judgment as the obvious fact that the condition of fie gentle, the generous, the modest, the pure, and the true is always and everywhere preferable to that of the cruel, the sensual, the mean, the proud, and the false." —l.am; etc., Bnrr January 9.