No Books Sacred Says "G.B.S."

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 31, 1 August 1923, Page 11

No Books Sacred Says "G. 8.5."

'- j&Xii&lOtiS TEACHING AND TH*- ' .\CBILD BUND. " -.''•; It we- want to preserve iteligien, said Mr. Bernard Shaw at the Third Conference; of Modern Religious Thinkers, held at Ca-xton Hall, WestKiinster, on June 1, we must get' rid of; the idea that there were any books in the world which were sacred. No •book was sacred to the reader who understood it.

"When you', establish that, you may be on your way to establishing the other truth —that all books are sacred books."

'• iSo long as the statements and legends contained in the various "sacred" books, continued Mr. Shaw, were put forward as statements of' fact only,, so long should we risk' shocking the child-mind in the ion in which he was shocked when his father told him that the whole thing 'was "a damned parcel of lies." j

Children were taught to regard the Bible stories as literal truth. When they learned that the high dignitaries of the Church did not believe'them to be true they did not modify their opinion, but by violent reaction declared that the whole of religion was a fraud, and practically threw it-over-board.

Denouncing sectarianism, Mr. Shaw fiaid that no Prime Minister could govern the Empire solely according to the Christian scriptures, just as the 1 King could not govern according to 1 his- coronation oath.