THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11734, 12 September 1902, Page 2

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

To the Editor* Sir, —There is something ludicrous; in the manner in which, "Fight Fair" ipops his head out of the kettle and lectures me for being in the pot. Before .this - gentleman begins preaching on the subject of anonymity he Would do well to publish Ms name. "F.F." says it is "shame" that prompts! a writer to adopt a norn de phune. As he says so, to himself no doubt the rule applies^, though I cannot say that it applies; me. But what real objection, I ask, is there to writing under an assumed name? The question that sibould concern us ie not who is the arguer? but what is the argu.ment? As everyone knows, religious controversies are a*pit to become personal and bitter, and when once they become so abuse generally usurps the place of reason. Now, I wish the present discussion to be as free from personalities as poslsible, and it is towardis this end chiefly, that I write anonymously. Should a divine come forward to. plead his cause, I do not a-f.ilc him to publish his_name. He can sign himself "Clergyman/ and at the end of the controversy he can divulge his identity and I shall divulge mine.- I sincerely "liqpe that in the interests of truth some clergyman will come and speak for his side. On some points) our views are directly opposite, arid! clearly we gannot both be right. Then let us reason together in a friendly and liberal spirit and try to^discover that which all men wish discovered—the simple truth. —I am, etc., " PRO VERITATI'. Wnaganui, September 8, 1902.

To the Editor. Sir, —I am now in my 79thi year, and I must sety during all my existence I never in New Zealand or in England and Wales came across so much qnen blasphemy and contempt of. God's Word and our Lord Jesus Christ as appeared in the daily papers of Wanganiii last week. It is quite certain that tjhie editors of tihe papers have not "increased in the estimation of the inhabitants of this town and neighbourhood for their part in it. Although, sir, you have not. stated your views on the subject, nor objecte3/ to the letters written you are for all that accountable to God for allowing such' blasiphemous letters as those of "Pro Veri,tate" to appear in the columns of. your paper. Before proceeding any further, please allow me to bring to your notice and that of others a case against the "Freethinker" in Dondon «\ 1883-- What is the legal .crime of blasphemy? Mr. Justice North, in summing up on the recent "Freethinker" case,. defined the local ; meaning of blasphemy as being "Any contemptuous reproach or profane scoffing against the Christian religion of the Holy Scriptures, and any act exposing the Holy Scriptures and the Christian religion fk> ridicule, contempt, or derision." In all this is it evident the contemptuous! or profane intent, as evidenced in the act described, constitutes* the offence. The editor, proprietor, and the publisher of the "Freethinker" were each, found guilty by the jury on this direction, and were sentenced to terms -of imprisonment. I would now, refer to "P.V.'s" great andi noble thinkers. He says a few of them are Charles Darwin, T. H.~ Huxley, andl Herbert Spencer. He says;, "Evolution ia ore of the grandest and most fai'-reach-ing truths (?) man has ever enrolled. The description in Gen. 1 is utterly irrecon- ' cilabie with evolution." No doubt it is. 27th verse, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them, and God blessed thenu," etc. Any child who can read can understand this. This miracle he performed on the sixtih cDay. Only, one day, mind you. For with Gcd one day us as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Time is no object to Him, so that He could as easily have created all things in six minutes as in six d&ys. The evolutionist says, "Away back in the ages there were four or five germs or seminal spores from which all the living creatures have been evolved. Go away back and there you will find a vegetable stuff tliat might be called a mufclhrotom. This mushroom, by innate force, develops a tadpole; the tadpole, by innate force, , develops a polyw&g; the polywag develops a fish; the fish, by natural force, de- I velops into a quadruped; the quadruped develops into a baboon; the baboon develops into a man." He does not say how an ass or an Agnostic were developed. This is science. The anan who can believe such rot can believe anything, excepting God's Word. Talnnage asks who made the germis? Herbert Spencer (one of "P.V.'s" oreat and noble thinkers) answers it was made by the unknowable mystery. But here comes another great and noble Freethinker —Huxley, with a pail of protoplasm to explain the thing. This protoplasm, he says, is primal lifegiving quality with which the race away back in the ages was started. With this protoplasm he proposes to explain everything. Dear Mr. Huxley, who made the protoplasm? "The fool hath said in, his heart there is no God." Huxley said at the first re-iinff of Darwin's book he was convinced <" the fact that Teleology (by Avhich he means Christianity) had received its death-blow at the hand cf Darwin. The Bible says. "The Word of the Lord endureth forever." Professor Sir William Turper, President of the Britisih Association, in referring to the Darwinian theory, said, "We know not as regards, time Avhen the fiat went forth, 'Let there be life and there was life.'" (I_ ask fromi whom?) All we can say is that it msust have been in the far distant past, at a period so remote from the present that the mind fails to grasp the duration of the interval. Prior ta its genesis, our earth consisted of barren rock and desolate ocean. When matter became endowed ' with life—(ihow?)—with the capacity of self-maintenance, and of resisting external disintegrating forces, the face of nature began to undergo a momentous change. Living organisms multiplied, the land became covered with vegetation, and multitudinous varieties of plants, from the humble fungus and moss to the stately palm and the oak. (Where did the acortns come from?) Animail forms appeared in, the first instance simple in structure, to be followed by others more complex, until the mammalian type was produced. (What or who produced it?) At last man came into existence. How, I think that is enough of this noble-minded scientist's ridiculous nonsense. This is what Agnostics call truth. This would be fine stuff to cram children with, instead_o£_the Bible. H'otv beautiful Moserf description of the Creation, after reacting such wilful perversion of the truth. I could .fill your paper with the sajkigß of these extraordinary men of science. The.Bible is true, and will go on marching in spite of all Agnostics, Freethinkers, and Evolutionists. Some of your correspondents az*e great admirers of Tom Paine and his "Age of Reason." One of them a short time ago, in a letter to the "Chronicle," called it "the immortal 'Age. of Reason.' " Let us see what Tom Paine thinks of him-

self. "At the village of Greenwich, where Mr. Grellet resided* lived Tom Paine. Mr. Grefett, hearing he was ill and in "a very destitute condition, went to see him, and found him in a wretched state, forsaken by his infidel friends, the skin of his body was in some places worn off, which increasedl his suffering©. A nurse was provided for 'him ,and some needful comforts supplied. One day he asked the nurse if she had read .the 'Age of Reason.' She said she had, but it made her so miserable she burnt it. "I wish all had done as you did,' he replied', 'for if the devil has ever had any agency., in any work, he has had it in my writingl that book." He declared his regret that he ever published his AtheisticaJ book, and avowed on Ins deathbed his intention to publish another to refute it, and in fav,our of Divine revelation. Newport, when tossing on his ~dying bed, said, turning t-a the fire in the chamber where he met his fate, "Oh that I could lay on, that fire and bum for a hundred thousand years, if it could purchase for me the favour of God." And when dying he uttered a groan, "Oh the pangs, the insufferable pangs of hell and damnation. O eternity, eh eternity, who can paraphrase -the words for ever and ever?" "Seek the Lord Avhile He may be found." He is willing to save the vilest. "God is love. *-- "God so loved the world that He gave His onHy begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." I would recommend that the schools be opened by the teachers reading the Lord's Prayer; that the Bible should be read without note or comment—lessons from .the Old Testament m the morning, and "from the New in the afternoon; that the children should learn by heart the Ten Commandments, and repeat them to the master at least once a week; that sheets of the Commandments be hung up in a conspicuous part, of ne schoolroom; that no schoolmaster sho"M be retained if he objects to perform tms reasonable duty. " If he disbelieves the Bible and that Christ was the Son of God he is not a fit person to have the charge of the children's education, and should be discharged. Thanking you in advance.— am, ec, CHARLES DAVY. To the Editor. Sir, —I do not intend to give you any of my own views on the above subject, but having heard from his own lips the opinion of a distinguished visitor to our colony, I am anxious that your readers should have the benefit of hisi views. The visitor to whom I refer is the Rev R. A. Torrey, D.D., Director of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, U.S.A., a man who has been instrumental in leading thousands in Australia into a personal saving acceptance of the "truth as it is in Jessus." I may i also add that his eight days' mission in Wellington was, from the siame standpoint, most successful. On Tuesday and the three following days of last week Dr Torrey spoke to the business men of Wellington between the hour-3 of 1 and 2, on thf subject, "Why I believe the Bible to be the Word of God." On Friday, before beginning his lecture, he prefaced it with words to he following effect: —"The Bible ; is, even taking it apart from its inspiration. the true master piece of English literature : it is, moreover, the most perfect model of style which we have in our language. Ail { the best of, our poets have drunk deep of its wells, and yet in spite of this, you shut it out from those very places where literature and style are taught, and where education is given. We, can read Homer, the heathen poet in oiijr schools, and never be suspected of teaching heathenism ; w r hy then, on our seeking to introduce the Bible, shouid there be such an outcry at what is termed 'the attempt to introduce denominntioualism?' This Book is the high-water mark of English literature, and it is a shame and a disgrace that the masses should be deprived of the daily teaching of this Book, en account of the opinions of ten (or even less) per cent, of the total population. When I add to the above that Dr. Torrey was in his younger days an Agnostic, and latterly, after entering the Christian Ministry, a member of the school known as the "higher critics," we can readily see that such a testimony from such a source is a most worthy testimony to the true value of the Grand Old Book. Thanking you for inserting the above, —I am, etc., WM. JOHN YORK.

To the Editor. ■ Sk', —Your correspondents upon tlic .above very serious question seems to me to miss the main point, for surely the point to •-be considered is—"Will the introduction of Bible teaching into our schools be of lasting benefit to the children. Although the Bible, in its present form, with its many positively indeseent narratives, is not a book to put into the hands of young people, yet, to inculcate its moral lessons, its high principals, and its far-reaching commandments into the minds of the young, cannot fail to bring forth good fruit. Bub is school the proper place to teach it? I, for one. say. No! Those in favour of the Bible in schools, are defeating their own ends by making a school task of it. The result of this would be to make every child hate and detest the very name of Bible. I speak from experience. We had a great amount of it in mv school days, while sunday was made hateful to us by reason of the many Sunday tasKS • the prayers twice a day, before the day's work commenced, j and before retiring to rest, was light and j ! proper, and no boy found fault with them; jin fact, they were conducted in such an earnest, loving manner, they could only produce good results. But the Bible reading and learning was hateful, and I fuliy believo that were it possible now to trace those who were boys then, we should find the sickener we got of the Bible then, had lasted them for life, and that not cne in a hundred had opened a Bible since, excepting, of .courcel. those who went in for getting r. living out of religion. The needful, necessary lessons to be learnt from the Bible, should be taught in love upon the mother's kii"..e, or by the father, around.the fireside of a Sunday evening Such lessons, kindly and rationally taught, would take the deepest root, never forgotten, always cherished, as long as life might last.. But make a school task of it, and you defeat the desired end. But should the Bible be introduced into our schools, who is to undertake the task'of teaching? I, for one, would not trust any minister or priest of any denomination, to keep Ins narrow views an-'l doctrines out of his teaching, they would be introduced, by some cunning trick or other. Then, surely, you are not going to ask the already over-workeJ ami under paid school teacher to take up the task; they have not a moment to themselves as it is—from, 7 o'clock in the morning to all hours at right (a most disgraceful state of things ; a crying shame ) No, sir. the only religious teaching calculated to bring forth good results, must be taught at Home. Christ left it very easy, summed up in a few words, but Church, for its own ends, has made it very difficult.l am, etc.. AN OLD SETTLED.

To the Editor. Sir, —"Ol'dj Settler,?' in Shis letter this morning, says: "The two Gospel!? which contain the story (i.e.. Matthew and Luke), are the two latest of the canonical ones, and their contents prove that they are not

of earlier date than the very end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth." Salmon says; "The concessions which the latter school of sceptical critics has been forced to make have evacuated the whole field in which critical science has a right to assert itself against tradition. We can well believe that there would be considerable differences between a document written in A.D. 60 and in 160: and, therefore, if the question wei-e between two such dates, one who judged only by internal evidence might be justified in maintaining his opinion in opposition to external evidence. But now that all sober criticism has abandoned the extravagantly late dates which at one time were assigned to the Gospels, the difference between the contending parties becomes so small, that mere criticism canI not, without affectation, pretend to be I competent to give a decision." Every tyro in Biblical criticism knows perfectly well that it is an indisputable fact that these two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, are quoted by writers of the second century, such as Clement, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian. Tatian, etc., and are clearly proved to have been in existence then. Further, evidence is forthcoming which shows that the Gospels all belong to the first century. Take the date of Luke's Gospel some years between A.D. 70 and 95 is advocated by eminent critics a® Beyschlajr, .B^ek, Book, Creduer. De Wette, Ewald, Guder, Julicher, Kostlin, Lechler, Lekebusch, Mangold, Ramsay, Renan, Reu"s, Sanday. Sckenkel, Trip, Tobler, and Weiss,. And the more trustworthy of these (e.g., Ramsay. Sanday and Weiss) are disposed to make | A.D.-80 the latest that can reasonably be assigned to the Gospel. Some advocate | A.D. 100, Baur, Davidson, HilgenfeUd, Pflciderei 1, etc. Others again assign it to 63 A.D., many of them very prominent men. This, sir, is the position of the last few years regarding -the criticism of the dates of tli9 Gospel. "Old Settler" says it was about 300 A.D. Either he has a new theory or is so old that his Biblical criticism is quite out of date. Little value is to be attached to his letter, as many of his other statement® are as unreliablie as this sentence. —I- am, etc., ■ ONLOOKER.