BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wairarapa Age, 15 June 1931, Page 5

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

SUPPORT FOR THIS YEAR’S BILL. REFERENCES IN YESTERDAY’S SERMONS. In churches throughout the Dominion yesterday, pulpit references were made to the Bill to be submitted to Parliament during the coming session to provide for religious instruction in the State schools. Observations in some of the local churches are reported below. THE REV. E. O. BLAMIRES. In the Masterton; Methodist Church, the Rev. E. O. Blamires said, in part: “A secular system of education is a splendid system in the view of atheists, agnostics and secularists, but is most unsatisfactory from the standpoint of religion. Those with no religious concern can be depended on to maintain the present system if they can, but it is viewed by the churches as the menace of the future citizenship of New Zealand, despite the splendid’ Christian influence of many of the teachers. New Zealand is one of the few portions of the British Empire with a secular system, and it has tried the experiment now for fifty-three years. It is a period long enough to determine whether the policy is sound and satisfactory. If it were, the people would have settled down to it by this time. The most striking thing after half a century’s experiment of it is that the country is more dissatisfied with it than over before. Not a church approves it, and whenever a vote of parents is taken to determine whether Bible instruction shall be imparted, about 80 per cent on an average, vote in favour of the Bible. One reason for restiveness under the secular system is the concern tor the character of the citizenship of the future. The character aim is the chief one in education, and where church, school and home co-operate all is well. Where the school is out of touch with religion, and home influence is inferior, the school is ineffective, and the church gets no chance. Probation officers have remarked that few children who are Sunday School trained get into the courts, and 95 per eent. of those appearing in the Children’s Courts are from the non-ehurchgoing class. Of these there are 80,000 of school age in New Zealand to-day. The home training of a great number of these is deficient, they are never in Sunday School, and the only hope the State has of preventive and cultural action is through the day schools. This is of national importance. While we have no State church, New Zealand has a national religion, and it is the right of every child to receive in school a general grounding in the principles of the national religion. The most important task of any school is the training in ideals; honesty is* of more value than arithmetic; industry of more importance that geography; reverence than history and Godliness than agriculture. It is a religious bias that education

needs. Education is not so much a matter of information as of character formation. Only a blind eye could fail to see the significance of the demand on the part of the churches of New Zealand for the restoration of the Biblo to its proper place in the daily education of the children. Probably in days long past, the intolerance of denominationalism had given some excuse for a secular system, but those days are happily over, and where intolerance is chiefly found to-day is in those who, satisfied with the secular system themselves, wedded to it by custom, refuse to see from others’ standpoint the essential nature of religious education in the national schools. While those who seek to introduce religion use no coercion, and desire participation only for those, teachers and pupils, who approve, the intolerant sectarian agnostics and secularists would coerce those who conscientiously disapprove of their system into continuing it, and Expect them to pay rates for the very system which is to those who pay, in thousands and thousands of cases, deficient in the chief element.” THE REV. E. J. RICH. In the course of his sermon in St. Matthew’s Church yesterday morning, the Vicar, the Rev. E. J. Rich, made reference to the Bill promoted by the Bible in Schools League, to provide for religious instruction in schools. Mr. Rich traced the history of the efforts made in this direction in the past, and showed that the new proposal had the backing of all the churches in the Dominion. A true educational system aimed at preparing children to live full lives, with all their capacities and gifts engaged. The child’s spiritual training should be linked with its mental and physical training, so that the right proportion should always be assured. A noble life depended upon character for its vitalising force, but teachers were sorely handicapped in their efforts to train character, by the absence of the Bible from the schools. The children should not be robbed of their natural heritage. The Bible was the foundation of all great English literature, and on that, account alone should be included, but that was but a small matter in comparison with the lessons to be learned from its teaching—lessons needed by all. In the proposed Bill, full provision was made for freedom of conscience, and he hoped that all who had the interests of the children at heart would do their utmost to ensure tho passage of the Bill.