THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11736, 13 September 1902, Page 2

THE BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

To the Editor. Sir, —"Pro Veritate" pops his head out d the bax in which he hides and shoute "You're another," because I did not sign my name. He fails to note that I did not enter into the merits of the controversy, but stated that it was not a fair way to fight to ask a man to make himself known whilst his opponent shoots at him from behind a fence. It is the action of a "moonlighter." "P.V." has made the concession that ih© will make known his name at the endl of the controversy if one of the clergymen write and sign himself "Clergyman." D* this fair to the few Protestant, clergymen in the town? He says that religious controversies _ are mostly very bitter. That is true, as witness "P.V. 1 a" first, letter, which was as bitter as any letter could possibly be. Physician heal thyself.— I am, etc., FIGHT FAIR. To the Editor. Sir, —Your correspondent "Christian" mistakes emotion for logic, and treats us to what we may hear at any time, at the street corner, from the latest recruit to the Salvation Army. His remarks re people going to those connected with churches is rather too funny when we remember how many frauds have been perpetrated by those who made a cloak of religion. "Common Seuise" is again to the fore with a new armoury, but the weapons he turns out are poorly tempered and will not stand the oitetaught of facts. He contends "that our leading statesmen., scientists, poets, arti&ts, etc., believe in the Bible and in durst." Of many of these people who are looked upon as Christian' we might say wdth one of the "Fathers," "Of their faith we have no belief," for so accommodating has the church become in these days, especially where the clergymen a(re somewhat advanced in thought, that', to use the words of Protfeasor Huxley, we find "tiheology, acting • under the generous impulse of a, sudden conversion, has given up everything to science, and, indeed, on one point-, has surrendered micwe than can reasonably be asked." This was evoked by three sermons delivered in Manchester Cathedral in 1887 by three eminent Bishops of the Anglican Church, and called forth the denunciation of other Bishopsi who asserted it was "an" effort, to get v.pa nonmiraoulous invertebrate Christianity," and they further contended that "Christianity is essentially miraculous and falls to the ground if miracles never happened." Now let me asik "CS." how many of those he mentions believe in miracles? Or to answer both "CS." and your correspondent in this morning's1 issue, "Dis,ceraer of Facts," who contends in the fir&t place that "well recognised (?) fact that science undemonsitrated is ever changing, accepting or rejecting theories," and then goes on to ask "Where the Bible teaching conflicts with science." To release "D.0.F." from the awkward position of having, by his implication, bound tightly the sacred book to the vacillating heels of science, let me ask him a question or 5)o. Can he find mo any truly scientific man who believes in any of the fallowing : 1. Demoniac possession. 2. The origin of death. 3. Prayer and natural law,, as set fort-E in the Bible? The first is clearly and emphatically taught in the Epistle of Paul and in the Gospel. Thousands, we may say millions of poor helpless human beings have been puu to cruel 'torture as a result of the Biblical teaching on this point. Jesus Christ, who is declared to be "the very Eltemai God," is represented as casting out these devils, yet who, with any pretension to intelligence in these times, believes in such an absurdity? The very omen who earn their bread "by expounding this Bible, at least those who make any pretension to intelligence, look upon this belief as a remnant of the days of ignorance and superstition. As to the second, it is taught by Paul and upheld by many of the churches that "by man came death" and "in Adam all die." What intelligent child now-a-days but knows the absurdity of this. The churchmen themselves, who accept, "lengthy periods" instead of "days" of creation, thereby admit that millions of years before man came upon this earth the myriad forms whose bones we now find buried deep beaieath the strata upon which insin has had his being, lived, fought, .and died, as all things dto to-dlay. The remark would never have been made by anyone possessed by a grain of observation unless blinded by fanaticism. As to the third, re the question of prayer and natural law, is inhere anything more absurd than this superstition? Certainly the practice is still followed by the churches, but where is the man with the least pretension to a knowledge of natural laws that believes ■it to be of any avail? A survival of the days of ignorance and barbarism when mankind beheld the agency of a spirit in every leaf that stirred, in the roar of the thunder, the flash of the lightning. Take the famines in India, or the floods m

China, or a great drought in Australia, these are as far beyond the reach of man and his efforts as it wouldl be to pull the sun from his place and arrange him between the earth and the moon. Take, "for instance, the terrible disaster at Martinique, there -the TKxor people were assembled in their oatchec&al to pray for deliverance and to return thanksgiving-for what they thought was the cessation; of energy on the part of the volcano. In the very midst of their {gravers they were enwrapped by the foul fumes and destructive mat*er from the volcano, and perished, like flies, by the thousands, in a cage. What is the position of those who contend that this was anything but the effect of natural laws? If they assign a "protecting hand" which suffers not the sparrow's fall," etc., then must they adjmit that all their conception of love and kindness, of fatherly protection, and the rest, are as so much vapouring, and an influence that brought such a thing to happen on this earth wouldi be justly entitled devilish in the extreme, and th« words of a survivor, who declared tSbiat he caught a glimpse of hell, -would be Bomewha* apr propriate. As to the impurity in many parts of the Bible, I again affirm that it is iso, "D.0.F." nlotwiths*andng-. Allow me to ask "D.0.F." where the chastity and dignity appear in the story of Lot. This storj .points iramoiial, and I may further1 state ■" that were I to give "D.0.F." smother fcaJl-dbzen of a like kind by chapter and verse our worthy editor "would doubtless "score" them out as unfit for reference, and yet of this book, which is not fit to put unreservedly into the hands of the young, we are asked1 to believe came the suppression of slavery and all other great .reforms. It is absolutely false. The clergy; fought on the side of the master^, -and were it not that "D.0.F." knows about, as much of the history o£ this great - reform as of many .other matters alluded to, he would never have madle such an assertion. There are many other points that might be touched upon, but I have aiKready trespassed largely on your space, and thanking you for the privilege,—! am, etc.,