RELIGION THE YOUNG

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 68, 13 November 1912, Page 7

RELIGION THE YOUNG

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS SCHEME,

A CANDID OPPONENT.

The suggested introduction of a system of religions instruction in State schools was vigorously opposed by the Rev. E. A. Kinvood in the course of an address at the Grange Road (Auckland) Baptist Sunday 'School anniversary. The leaders of the present campaign in New -Zealand, he said, were asking that the State should provide for the use in public schools of the Bible, not in the form ordinarily familiar to religious worshippers, but as a revised volume containing passages of delightful literature. He had seen the books so used in the Queensland schools, and could take no exception to them for purpose of school reading. But associated with this proposal was a suggested provision which threatened grave danger to the religious wellbeing of the community—that the school doors should be thrown open for any so-called priest to enter and give instruction on religious subjects during school hours. “Authorities who have studied the system in Australia and in England,” said the speaker.

“tell us that its effect has been to destroy that spirit of harmony which should exist between the various branches of Christianity, and that one sect in particular has taken advantage of the provisions to serve its own particular ends.” Rather than run the risk of such happenings in New Zealand, Mr Kirwood said, the people should hold fast to the existing system of secular education. In an impassioned appeal to parents the speaker urged that they should bring the Bible, which was the book of all books, under the intelligent notice of their children in their own homes, and so mould character in its plastic state. The text * was, “What manner of child shall this be?” (Luke i. 66). They were not so much concerned, said the speaker, about the likeness of the little ones during childhood as about the kind of men and women they would be when the impressionable wax had turned to marble and character had been finally moulded. Then let them see to the discharge of religious obligations by having their children instructed at home, and in the Sunday schools, not allowing the State to usurp their rightful functions in this connection.— (Star.)