SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 111, 1 July 1911, Page 8

SUNDAY COLUMN.

BIBLE TEACHING IN STATE SCHOOLS. An up-to-date Review and Appeal by the Yen. Archdeacon \Villis, Cambridge. Article 11. THE NECESSITY FOR THE SCHOOL FUNCTION. In the first article of this series I Icalt with the importance of Bible Knowledge: I have now to show the necessity for the schopl function. The late Anglican Primate of New Zealand, Bishop Cowie, who was Bishop of Auckland for thirty years, saw the necessity very clearly. He wrote to his people the day before lie died: •‘lt is a primary duty of all Christian parents to touch their children the leading facts of Holy Scripture, especially those of the New Testament; but the indifference of many parents is such that without the help of the day schools we cannot expect much teaching to bo given.” • It seems only too probable that in more chan half the homes in the Dominion there is no Bible teaching worthy of the name. The • Short-comings of Sunday Schools.—Neither do Sunday Schools meet the .want. Even if it can be shown that a goodly number of the children of the Dominion attend Sunlay Schools, how little can Sunday Schools do! At best they afford mt an hour’s teaching weekly; but owing to want of trained teachers or the work, owing to irregular and late attendance of both teachers and scholars, owing to poor systems of teaching and want cf systems, it is i wonder that anything is done, lucre is hardly opportunity to teach even the bare historical facts, to say nothing of the application and edification which should follow. The only assured way to provide that all children shall have an opportunity of being taught the Bible is by having the Bible taught in the only places in which the State compels all children to assemble daily. The Schools and the Church,—lt is a common saying that “to teach religion is the duty of the church.” It is a true saying, but withal a misleading one, because it contains at best only half a truth. The foundations of religion should bo laid in the home and in the school. The knowledge of the Bible, as far at least as its literature and history are concerned, snonld be learned in the school day by day as part of the regular teaching. The late Rev. Dr. Norman McLeod early saw the part which the schools might be expected to take in laying these foundations without the fear of giving offence to any. When the Education Act for Scotland was under discussion this well-known Scottish minister wrote as- follows: “There is a great talk about education; but why not religious instruction, if religious education is too glorious a thing, to aspire, after? Surely the facts ot the Biole, what it records and says (whatever value individuals may attach to them) should be given to our children. Give me the alleged facts, I shall then have the skeletons which I can through the Spirit quicken into a great army.” Roman Catholic Authorities.—“A Christian people,” wrote Cardinal Manning, “can be perpetuated only by Christian education—schools without Christianity will roar a' people without Christianity. A pedple reared without Christianity will soon become anti-Christian.” At the R. C. Conference on Education, held in Sydney this year, the leading resolution adoptpd" (as given in the newspaper telegrams) was this: “That intellectual education must not be separated from moral and religious instruction/’

The great agnostic scientist, Professor Huxley, boro the following remarkable testimony to the importance of having the Bible taught in the schools; “I have always been strongly in favour of secular education ill the sense of education without theology ; but I must confess I have been no less anxiously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling which is the essential basis of conduct is to be kept up in the utterly chaotic state of opinion in these matters without the use of the Bible.” This view is set out still more clearly by an undoubted authority, the late Mr Matthew Arnold, for so many years Inspector of Schools. In the preface of his, little book entitled “A Bible Reading for Schools,” this leading authority on education says: “There is a substratum of history and literature in the Bible which belongs to science and schools. There is an application of the Bible and an edification by the Bible which belongs to religion and churches . Some people say that the Bible altogether belongs to the church, not to the school. This is an error. The Billie’s application and edification belong to the church, its literary and historical substance to the school. Other people say that the Bible does- indeed belong to the school as well as to the church, but that its application and edification are inseparable from its literature and history. This is an error. They are separable, and though its application and edification are what matter to a man far most (we say so in all sincerity)—arc what he mainly lives by—yet it so happens that it is just in this application and edification that religious differences arise.” One of the greatest of Imperialists, Mr Cecil Rhodes, who also proved himself one of the most cosmopolitan friends of education the world has seen, in an address at Buluwayo in 1901, spoke as follows: “In England a board school is not bound to have any religion. 1 think it is a mistake, just as I think it is a mistake in Australia that they 7 have excluded history 7 and religion from their schools. There is no doubt but that it is during the period of youth that you get those impressions which afterwards dominate your whole life. I am quite clear that a child brought up with religious thoughts makes a better human being. lam quite sure that to couple tiic ordinary school teaching with some thoughts of religion is batter than dismissing religion from within the walls of the schools.” For obvious reasons I have taker as my authorities men of very diverse views, both orthodox and unorthodox, and I could of course multiply the number infinitely 7 did space permit. Surely 7 the importance of the school function ought, to be beyond dispute; ■yot the State ignored the school function as far as Bible teaching is concerned when she passed the present education law and gave the Bible nc place in it. She did much more, foi she practically 7 annihilated the mach inerv hitherto existing . for bib!.teaching and did nothing to suppbits place. In my next article .! shall deal with the uselessness of the facilities afforded at present by the education law for encouraging voluntary Bible teaching by 7 the churches.'