TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11254, 5 July 1922, Page 6

TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES

ASSOCIATING RELIGION WITH THE NATIONAL LIFE. BISHOP SPROTT NOT SANGUINE. “I sympathise to the foil,” remarked Bishop Sprott in his address to the Anglican Synod yesterday, “with the reluctance of the Synod to abandon the effort to secure religious teaching in the State schools. It is this reluctance, of course, which explains the seeming inconstancy in the Synod’s educational policy. The Synod’s policy has been constant throughout—via., to associate religion with the national life through the national education. Where the Synod has varied has been in the methods successively adopted to obtain this end, and as one after another has been tried and failed, I confess that my experience of the two previous campaigns, extending over fourteen years, does not lead me to be over-sanguine regarding this new effort.” “I find it difficult,” he continued, “to imagine religious teaching in schools hulking large, or haring any decisive effect, in the next general election, or the next after that. We all know that for some years to come quite other issues will seem to our people to bo paramount. I know it is being asserted now that there is a more widespread desire for religious teaching in the State schools than has existed in past years. If this growing desire is due to a fresh conviction of the truth of Christianity and the recognition of its claim to rule all departments of human life, then indeed there is great hope. Bnt I cannot help wondering whether this growing desire, again supposing it to be a fact, is not, in part at least, simply due to a feeling that some sort of religious teaching might prove a useful check to the anarchic tendencies which aTe so prevalent in the world today. If this at nil be so. then I cannot count the growing desire for religious teaching in schools of much value.” CHRISTIANITY AND ANARCHY. “It is true,” he continued, “that the spirit of Christianity and the anarchic spirit are wide as the poles asunder. Christianity, as I understand it, hac no belief in anarchy as a means of establishing tho Kingdom of God in the world or any better order of hnman society. From the Christian point of view anarchy is evil and only evil and Satan cannot cast out Satan. If any good has ever seemed to issue from anarchy; that has not been because of any innate tendency in anarchy to produce good, but because the issue has been* overruled by a most merciful providence, and the good could have been secured more easily by other means. All this is most true. But Christianity_,ia not a form of magic; it is _ effective only where it is eincerely believed and received, and any attempt to exploit it ns a political expedient, in the spirit of the magistrate of the decadent Roman Empire, to whom, as Gibbon says, all religions were equally useful—useful, that ie, to keep people quiet—is predoomed to failure. The Almighty can. not be elected, whether by States or Churches, to the ’vacant office of Mas tor of Police.’ I am, however, ears that many people have a high and disinterested desire for religious teaching in the national schools. The question is whether there are enough such. We must hope tliere are.” A resolution of the General Synod urged. Dr. Sprott stated, the clergy to make all possible use of existing facilities for giving religious instruction in the schools, and, if possible, to organise and equip parochial bands of teachers to assist them in the work. ITe was still somewhat sceptical as to tho reality of such facilities over wide areas of New Zealand. But if such facilities did exist, no doubt the clergy would give due consideration to the is commendation of the General Synod.

“Someond has pointed out," _ wild Canon Wilford in the Christchurch Cathedral on Sunday, while pleading for funds for the newly-formed Church of England Active Service League, “that the little word alms’ is a conception of a Greek word of ten letters, meaning ’pity,’ sax syllables having been shortened into one. A word thus contracted must be one wihioh was continually upon the lil>s of our ancestors. At any rate, in those days almsgiving must have been a characteristic maHi of the Christian. It is thus same ‘pitv’ for the poor for which the Church of England Active Service League is looking to-day.” A HUTT STOREKEEPER. A prominent storekeeper in the Hutt Valley has suggested to the Fluenozl Pty. that “Q-tol” should be pushed as a dentifrice. He and all his family invariably use Q-tol for that purposo, and they find it far more refreshing aud Invigorating to the gums than any toothXiaete.