BIBLE IN STATE SCHOOLS LEAGUE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16602, 14 July 1914, Page 4

BIBLE IN STATE SCHOOLS LEAGUE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —It was, of course, to be expected that we should find the opposition to this echeme in a rage and fury because a Bill to allow a referendum on the subject has been present- t ed to Parliament. But you are giving us the same old worn-out theories and bogeys which wo have had ad nauseam for more than a year, but which have been disproved and discredited every day in some of the States of Australia. One headmaster has given us miles in your columns of long-winded discursive arguments, which may be summed up as casuistry worthy of a Papal legate of the Reformation days but hardly the sort of thing to be expected of a good Presbyterian. He began with pleading the cause of the Roman Catholic. Poor, helpless thing, ho needed a Presbyterian to battle for him—though it is enough to make John Knox turn in his gravel From that he went on to abuse his opponents, calling them bigots, cowards, lazy, etc., and after that it was easy to go on to say the signatures to the League’s cards were being obtained under falsa pretences. Another headmaster has been heard iu the train abusing the measure, and all its advocates, with many forcible expletives with a big D in front of them, but the sort of language not exactly acceptable in polite f society- In Wellington the National * Schools Defence League said the clergy who are favouring the Bible in school? preach lies from their pulpits and pick the pockets of their simple congregations. If this is the effect the many years of continuance in the secular atmosphere of our schools has on •'the . headmasters, what must wo expect tin \ effect on the children is going to boP— I am, etc.,-EYE-WITNESS. Opawa, July 5.