READING THE BIBLE "OUT" OF SCHOOLS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10625, 21 March 1896, Page 3

READING THE BIBLE "OUT" OF SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sih, —The question of reading the Bible in the day schools of New Zealand has been a long contest, which is still unsettled ; the reason is that the Bible is' not read and studied by its advocates of the Christian Protestant churches out of school, the non-church goers profess to be socially liberal, moral, and religious to the extent of sending their children to the Sunday school, at the labour and expense of the churchgoers, and of course the seculars and agnostics are consistent in their logic by resisting the entrance of the Bible into the day school regardless of whether it would be to the benefit of the individual, eociety, or the nation in respect to Divine or parental authority. Nations as nations are judged and extinguished according to misrule, ss becoming camberers of the earth. However, my quarrel at present is neither with the non-church goer nor the agnostic, but the great majority of churchgoers and their teachers, the former who scarcely ever read their Bibles, except in church hours, from November to October, the latter who read and interpret, mystify and keep a solemn silence on the claims of the church as the Kingdom of God among all nations. This is where the real weakness come? in, or the question of Bible-reading in schools would have been settled and established with the most beneficial results years ago in every national day school in New Zealand.

i There is some truth in the charge in yonr j leader of the 28th iost. as to clerical agitation I as opposed to the welfare of the nation, seeing i they appropriate to the Christian church and I designate it as God's kingdom (a contradiction in I terms), which consists of individual members of all nations in which is the disintegrating principle of a kingdom and all national patriotism, the very opposite of which is taught in the reading of the Bible. That God has a kingdom upon earth as a nation is plainly taught in the Scriptures, in which His church is secure from all the national hostile powers of freedom and religion, and will never be supplanted by another people. These "latter days " in which we live,: are f ally desoribed. By the trouble of reading the Bible the near expiry of the last nations! power of hostility to justice and good government is accurately described and demonstrated, tha fall of Turkey involving the whole of I Europe and their dependencies in war. Of what value trould the assumed kingdom of the church be in the defence of New Zealand seeing its members are in every nation. The churches hold the Empire as secondary in importance to the church—the Bible teaches the reverse. Therefore the Bible requires to be read more out ofscliool than it is at present, and the church members and teachers should bear in mind the reproof of Christ to His disciples when upon earth—" Oh fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken."—l am, &c, Dunedin, March 20. Anglo-Israelite.