THE BIBLE—ITS PLACE IN THE SCHOOLS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7022, 10 January 1910, Page 3

THE BIBLE—ITS PLACE IN THE SCHOOLS

(To the Editor "N.Z. Times.”) Sir, Mr G. W. C. Macdonald, president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, in urging, that the Bible should be brought into our schools, is a bit behind tho times. In both England and America; the two great Anglo-Saxon countries, the Bible is already on the scrap-heap, and the world is looking for something better for the children, and very rightly so. As at present used tho Bible does not teach morality, truth, or progress. What it inculcates is division amongst us all, falsity, hypocrisy, and hide-bound dogmatism and sectarianism. We -surely do not want that in New Zealand? Far be it from me to say the children should not be taught morality, truth, and progress. But how can we possibly do that, if we start with a book which says the world was mad© in six days and finished on the seventh? Why, this little earth of ours alone is one hundred million years old, and still young and vigorous? Also, man has been upon it two hundred thousand years, and not tho six thousand as mentioned in the Bible. Mr Macdonald must have been asleep and forgotten Colenso and the Pentateuch. Or if we take the doctrine of tire fall of man, no greater insult was ever offered to God than -the claim that His chief product man is base at

heart and merits damnation. Man. under ©volution has always ascended, not fallen. AVby, then, teach tho children these lies? "The fate of France after the Revolution proves that disaster waits a nation without a belief” (I Macdonald). I know nothing of this. After tho Revolution France swept over Europe, and to-day is the wealthiest and most advanced in civilisation on the Continent. True, the nations are being arrayed against her for daring to throw down the cross, but I can assure Mr , Macdonald that the fiat has gone forth, and the cross has to go down. Nothing , now will save It from the advance of Modernism, and it is an utterly retrograde step to* bring the Bible into New Zealand schools. _ No one more firmly believes in God and tho Ten Commandments than I. No one more wants the children taught morality, truth,* and progress than I. But, Sir, I object to the sectarian clergy doing it, for they will only have the little mites, in after life, flying at each other’s throats, as they are already doing in New South Wales. This was why 'the framers of our Education Act barred the Bible from our schools, and very rightly so. But what have the teachers been doing? They have had an excellent chance ■ to inculcate morality and truth? Why haven’t they l done it? The School Readers are full of the most excellent lessons in God’s reverence. Why haven’t they taught them? Why does .Mr Macdonald cringe now to the horrid lessons of sectarian difference in the past in place of having don© his duty to the children, -under the Act, as a man placed in a free position, free from tho horrible symbols of dogmatism and creed? Is it that the syllabus is too loaded? Well, if this Mr Macdonald had his foot in the front rank of time, in place of being scores and scores of years behind, why could he not have demanded more time for moral teaching? The Education Boards could easily have granted that, I say that scores of our teachers have inculcated tho best of moral lessons, and if Mr Macdonald had rightly earned his salary lie would have done the same. Shame be upon that teacher who has not from his or her position of perfect freedom taught the children, these past thirty years) to reverence God and the fundamental lessons of morality. And I say that there are better men and women amongst our school teachers for moral teaching than there are amongst the clergy, each one of whom Is only too anxious to push his particular creed. Keep them out of the schools, say I, for our own civil peace hereafter, and let the boards open the schools daily with a simple hymn of praise to God and a simple prayer. (Surely our towns are swarming with clergy to teach the children ,f a belief” on Sundays.). Then let the teachers give a longer time to dally moral lessons—that is all the'children require; something to last them' through life; something like the set (if I may be excused for saying) I published a year or two ago, and distributed through the schools. The lessons for the Sixth and Seventh Standards ■ were designed to inculcate virtue. Sir, there is nothing- in the Bible, from cover to cover, that will teach young girls to be virtuous as well as those simple . lessons of mine. But there is much in the Bible that will teach children to be non-virtuoue. The Bible is a book for our mature years, not for our youth now. It is the greatest book we have, and ever shall have, but it is not a book for our public schools Why, even David, who wrote or collected the Psalms, pursued another man’s wife 1 Is that a lesson to set the children! And yet, if the Bible is brought in, every cnild must learn it.—l am, etC " COLEMAN PHILLIPS. Carterton. January sth.