MORAL TRAINING AND THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL

Otago Witness, Issue 2565, 13 May 1903, Page 55

MOR A L TR AI NING AN D THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL

By J. MacGbegor, M.A.

" Truth the goal ; reason ths guide." " Does Mr MacGregor think that a myth cannot contain a Divine revelation?" -asks Rev. Mr Curzon-Siggers ; and, when my critic is prepared to admit that the stories of the Creation, the Fall, the Tower of Babel, the Theophany from Sinai, etc., are myths it will bo time enough to discuss the question. For the present I do not feel called upon to express any opinion. My objection is, not to our children readingmyths and legends, but to their having to read them in such circumstances that they 1 must regard them as records of historical fact, and as constituting, and not merely as containing, a Divine revelation. Nothing I write is designed to impair any man's belief in the Bible as a record of Divine revelation ; but, if anything I write should have that tendency, the fact shall not deter me from stating what I believe to be the truth, when I am trying to prevent what I regard as a revolutionary and pernicious change in the settled policy of my country on the most important of all subjects — that of education. I believe, with Herbert Spencer, that " th© profoundest of all infidelities is th» fear that the truth may bo bad." Having established the position that the scheme necessarily involvc-s the teaching of religion by the State ; I was proceeding to discuss some of the earlier Scriptural narratives with the view of showing that, apart from the question of their inspiration, they are quite unsuited for use in the instruction of chilroii, either in religion or in morality, by reason not only of their inherent nature, but also of the fact that it is impossible to handle them as anything else than nart of the Word of God. As this mode of proceeding; involves the use of 6ome of the results of Modern Criticism, it is well that I should here state, in opposition to those who disparage the methods and minimise the results of such criticism, the general conclusion arrived at by an admittedly high authority— Dr George Adam Smith, one of the professors appointed by the United Free Church of Scotland to the important position of training students for tho ministry. " Modem j Criticism has won its war against the Tra- i drtional Theories. . . Its main conclusions rest upon literary and historical facts furnished by the Old Testament itself, and are supported by the evidences of archaeology and geography so far as they go; that, in short, they are as solid as the results can be of a science at work upon bo remote a period of history." Such conclusions are, of course, not inconsistent with the Old Testament containing the record of a Divine revelation, and Dr Smith is convinced that it does contain such a record. He admit*, however, that the earlier chapters of Genesis, including the accounts of the Creation and the Fall of Man, cannot be recarded as historical, and points out that in Babylonian literature there are traditions of the origin of Man, of Paradise, and of the Flood, which bear, even in their details, a remarkable resemblanoe to the account of the same subjects iv Genesis. Now, I suppose we may take it for certain that the new Scripture Text Book will confu.ia the account of Paradise and the Fall. It is impossible to entertain the idea j of its being omitted, and yet it is equally impossible to believe that the compilers regard it as liistorical, or, in fact, as anything else than a myth. It would bo pqua/liy impossible for the teachers in reading the narrative with their pupils to handle it differently, whatever their convictions may be. What is the reason? Simply the sacred and even awful importance of tho narrative, and of the theological dogmas based upon it : the knowledge- that ifc forms the logical foundation of what many regard as a divine plan of salvation, which must ptand or fall as a whole. Such facts are sufficient to show the hollowness of the pretence that the scheme I am trying to expose has for its real object anything else than the teaching of dogmafcio Christianity by the State. "If the story of the Fall of Man and of the Flood had been first given to the modern world by some learned excavator of cuneiform records, we should certainly have considered it extremely interesting, and in many ways suggestive of the attitude of

early age 9 towards the mystery of life. As fables they might even have been recognised an useful as combining ontertainmont with instruction in the teaching of children.But no one would have dreamed of making them a formal basis of moral lessons." The confused and lazy dependence of religious parents on " Scriptural education" which leada them to regard as a mere matter of course the reading by their children of this narrative with the tremendous dogma built upon it demands, as Dr James Martineau says with regard to the indiscriminate reading of the Bible, great plainness of speech, and needs to Be denounced as r demoralising and corrupting superstition. I submit, therefore, that the mere inclusion of this narrative in the Text Book would be sufficient to condemn the scheme a,? a fraud upon the community. If the narrative is fitted to convey any moral or spiritual truths, they are of suoli a nature that it would be impossible for children to comprehend them, even with the assistance of the best teachers. Then, we know that it is based upon a theory of the history of the race which science has' proved to be incorrect. Man has not fallen, but hza ascended from the rudest beginnings, to the present height of civilisation ; and herein is the highest hope for humanity—-'' that man has risen little by little fronY. being no higher than the brute, and may 1 ' continue to rise until he shall be little lower; than the angel. The next etory we come to is that contained in the_ beginning of the sdxbh chapter — a story which it is just as impossible for the compilers to include as it would be for them to omit — that of the Fall. It is one of those grotesque legends of the kind wef expect from the hand of the Jehovist, and yet it is apparently referred to as historical in 2nd Peter ii, 4. If the compilers should include it they may as well supply the full details from the Book of Enoch"; for, although ranked as apocryphal, it is probably as trustworthy as 2nd Peter, which Dr Edwin A. Abbott dsecribes as an ignoble forgery. The compilers will have more difficulty, in dealing with t.V .story of the Deluge. Any intelligent -VI might ask questions which no intelligent teacher would dare to answer according to h ; s real belief. Tho probabilities are that every one of the compilers regards it as a Babylonian myth, and yet their scheme is such that they cannot give any indication to the pupils that it is anything else than divinely- revealed truth. Our poor children must be left to reconcile it with scienc-3 the best way they can, and to believe that the divinely-ratified curee of Noah inflicted upon an important brancli of the human race the appalling calamity, of slavery — that the- capricious Jehovah who thus annulled the divine bleasing is the selfsame Heavenly Father whom they are taught to adore ! Let us hope that the compilers may see their way to take bo muchL liberty with the text as lo Eeparats tho Elohistic from the Jehovistic parts, and reject the latter, and so save our children; from the risk of mistaking for divine revelation the story of Noah's drunken maledic*tion. Passing on, we come next to the story* of tho Tower of Babel, probably the mostl .grotesque of (hose legends by which the . Jehovist so seriously compromises reveltu tion. Not even Mr Curzon-Siggers with has extra (sixth) sense can discover in it so much as a scintilla of truth, whether historical, scientific, moral, or spiritual. Iti would be difficult to suggest any excuse for including it, and there are very strong! reasons for excluding it. If it is desirable that our children should have some knowledge of it, let it be acquired in eueh. a way that they shall bo in no danger of mistaking it for anything more than a mere myth or legend. In studying the soience of philology they will find that fch<S evolutionary theory of language is universally accepted, and that the Babel attempfl to account for the diversity of languages has been allowed too long to stand in the way of ecience ; that the variety of languages is the result of glow development, just like the variety of races; and that speech wa* not, any more than writing, revelled to Adam. " And yet modern piety still canonises this ancient myth, which, but for its accidental insertion in a book accepted as infallible, would have been long ago elapsed among the fantastic creations of mythology." Surely a sufficient reason for excluding the legend is found in the degrading view of Ac DcMty which depicts Him as roused to jealousy by man's ambition, and depriving the human race of the _STeat focial boon of unity of speech, by a miraculous confusion of tongues.