THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Evening Star, Issue 19585, 17 June 1927, Page 9

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

TO TUU EDITOI

Sir—The churches at present are concentrating on an effort to influence the general public to support Mr Isitt’s Bill for the introduction of Bible reading in schools. At the present time ministers have the option of holding Bible reading in most schools outside school hours. -Why, then, should they want this item added to an already overburdened school syllabus? It seems to me that the clergy are out on the go-slow policy, and wish to throw another part of their duty on to the teachers, in the same manner that they have in the past placed it on the sisters ot.tho church. The first place for Christian instruction for children is the home, at their mother’s knee. There the first seeds of true Christianity, not religion, are sown and fostered As the child grows, advanced instruction >s catered for at the Snudav school, on tho day set apart for rendering unto God thanks for his mercies When the child leaves Sunday school, the rewards of his Christian teachings fall due, and rarely are they forsaken. Later, the attendance at church carries on for awhile, but alas! tho _ present-day young man and woman, with advanced educational gifts, soon sort out the difference between the gilt of presentday church religion and the true gold of the home-taught God’s Christianity, To-day the churches are losing their hold and attendance. No sane man wall make the statement that the pre-sent-day generation have lost their hold on God. or are not as Christianised as they were in former years. The trouble is that education has so sharpened their wits that they easily see through the veneer of the religious churches. It is the churches and tho ministers that have drifted. Cast out your religion from the churches, get back Christ’s Christianity in its place, give us back tho old parsons of Dr Stuart’s type, the true Christians, not the motor-carried, frock-coated church agents we have to-day, and there will not be any need to agitate for Bible in Schools, for it will bo in the churches, and in the people's hearts. Tho public to-day can well say to the ministers of our present-day religious bodies; “ We asked for bread and you gave us a stone.” No, sir; keep tho Bible in the homes and churches, but leave our secular schools alone.—l am, etc.,

Anti-Humbug.

June 16,