RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7056, 26 September 1884, Page 3

RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOK. Sih,—You have often closed your columns to protracted discu3sion3 of religious teaching in schools, but I must, nevertheless, beg your leave a little, as the most important developm m °Lthe question has now been published. The Dunedin Ministers' Conference publicly j states that it must give up tryins to provide religious instruction for the State schools ; that I it cannot, by the combined efforts of itaelf and «s lay co-worcors, provide teachers- sufficing for the work ; and, finally, that public feeliwj would solve the problem by making religious teaching part of the regular schoolwork. me ministers' position seems to me very untenable and, with the purpose of doing away with "their false persuasion of knowledge, 1 put forward some questions which unite weh to produce the reductio ad impossibile. _ In the religious teaching for schools, do the ministers wish to teach dogma or ethics ? If the former, will tho ond bs gained by making roligroua teaching part of the schoolwork ? Can any bat the orthodox teach right dogma ? Are common school-teachers orthodox? it the latter, presumably with a view to good moral conduct, is there, thon, hu inseparable connection between moral conduct and religion? If so, how are Stoics, Buddhists, and_ Agnostics moral? Is there any connection, per se, between morals and religion? Are not the ethics of the ministers already taught in every part of the necular work and discipline of the schools ? What more is necessary • Hence, is not the true feeling of the pubhc_ shown in its refusal to give active cooperation to the ministers, and is not the public feeling referred to by the ministers a reflex of their own wishes, or at most, a feeling of their own creatures ?

As an opponent of the position arrogated to themselves by the niinisters, I must confess to have read with satisfaction their acknowledgment of failure but I regret that the ministers stUi consider they have a special right to form the ethics of the nation ; and I regret that, in their assumption of moral jurisdiction over the people, they would still seek to thrust upon the young such doctrine as their Master taught to none but adults.—l am, &c, -r. ~ „ Elknohos. Dunedin, September 25.