THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 79, 24 July 1914, Page 6

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

EVIDENCE BEFORE THE HOUSE.

[PitR Press Association.] Wellington) July 24. The Education Committee of the House of Representatives met this morning to hear evidence upon the question of Bible reading in schools as affected by the Religious Instruction in Schools' Referendum Rill and the petitions thereon presented, to Parka-' merit. ' Mr G. M. Thomson (chairman), presided. _ The first witness was Bishop Cleary, who read a lengthy typewritten document. His Lorship declared that Catholics would joyfully aid the protection of fellow citizens to secure Biblical religious instruction of children in public schools so long as equal rights of conscience were not violated. They wished to see the. education system' made truly National and suited for all: secular for those desiring it secular and religious on fair conditions for those desiring it religious, but they could not accept such an attempt as a solution of the difficulty as that now demanded by the League and embodied in the Bill. Such a solution violated the rights of conscience which God gave, and which no League, Government, or majority could in justice take away. He urged that the clergy promoting the Bible-in-Scliools had for 37 years complacently accepted a system of education which they now pronounced pagan and atheistic. He declared in the words of the Rev. J. Chisholm that if they had but put half as much money and energy into the * leagues of family prayer and Bible-reading as they put into the political agitation, their various denominations WOUld have been vastly better now. He analysed the provisions of the Bill,; which he condemned as hopelessly ambigious. Bishop Cleary described the lessons proposed to be given as an emasculated caricature of the Bible, and the alleged undenominational and unsectarian teaching as a misuse of terms and as a mental fiction. , Quoting, views expressed by the leading advocates of the Bible in Schools, he claimed that the utterances were a series of contradictory voices, some urging that the Bible 'in Schools was the main thing, others that they wanted the text book, while others clamored for a parson in schools. Nothing but confusion could arise in the mind of the electors by such a clamour of contradictions. Speaking personally, be said he would not object to the right of entry into the schools provided it was proyed.that \he rights of < conscience of parents, teachers, and pupils . were properly guarded. Over and over again, he said, he had intimated the willingness of the Catholic leaders to meet all other interested parties in conference on the subject, provided 'that the equal rights of all before the law were recognised; but when God's word came -into the schools it must come in God's good way of truth,, honor and justice, and not by the path' of bitter wrong, as traced in the measure before the House. The committee then adjourned.