THE BIBLE.

Southland Times, Issue 22013, 12 May 1933, Page 3

THE BIBLE.

To the Editor.

Sir,—l read with delight your long and splendid leader in Saturday’s paper on the Authorised Version of the Bible, Before rushing into print with my sentiments I have waited a week or so to see first what others might have to say, but not a word has been forthcoming. I have therefore decided to give you a congratulatory solo to make up for the conspicuous absence of praise from the local clergy. . Can it be that they are modernists to a man, and regard the Bible as existing for the express purpose of being torn to shreds in our every pulpit? I hope not, but a little praise from them would not have been amiss. What a pity that our children are in danger of growing up in ignorance of the Bible nowadays.

unless they happen to have religious parents! I do not think it possible fully to appreciate Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, or any great English writer—ancient or modem—without a good working knowledge of the 1611 version of the Scriptures. One or two great writers like Bunyan were actually men of one Book, but those writers who have had the widest culture (often unorthodox in their views) have usually been the most copious in their praise of the Bible. Ruskin went through it at his mother’s knee, page by page, and was grateful for it afterwards. Matthew Arnold (notice this ye sensitive modernists who shudder so at Old Testament morality!) said the Old Testament was the WORLD’S GREAT MORAL CLASSIC, and he strongly defended its reading in the schools in England. Arnold was an agnostic and also Senior Inspector of schools for London. Professor Seeley, also an agnostic and an educationalist, was equally warm in advocating its reading in the schools. It would be easy to multiply instances of this kind, but also tedious. Why, then, can we not have Bible reading in our schools for five minutes every day—five minutes from the world’s greatest moral and literary classic on five days a week, with no clergy to cause confusion with their particular interpretation of the passage read? It would save all our present wrangling about religious instruction in schools, and would familiarize all our children with England’s greatest book. You end up by speaking of the secular press being anxious to promote the highest type of life. .Why call it “secular?” The spirit of the Bible is that all things and all work are sacred, that the division of things into secular and sacred is not in accordance with the Divine will. Therefore the press of New Zealand is not “secular” at all, and articles like yours are very far from being out of place in it. It is in accordance with this principle, too, that in the British Empire Church and State are always one. If any one doubts this, let him read the VUlth Book of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Policy. That is why we do not make concordats between Church and State, though every Continental and South American State has found them necessary—all because of a supposed division into things sacred and things secular, and a supposed antagonism between the two. —I am, etc., CHURCHMAN.