BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 11938, 27 March 1914, Page 2

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT BY LEAGUE.

A special effort has been made to persuade the Bible in State Schools League to abandon the platform to which the churches have agreed, and to adopt tho Nelson system instead. The fact that the Churches, after simple experience of the Nelson system had passed it by in favour of another proposal, should have been sufficient to intelligent people r,o show that it is somewhat late in the day to talk about the Nelson system :vs a permanent solution of the problem. If the same people who are now talking so loudly about it had shown a disposition in the past to make it general over New Zealand, it might have happened that the churches would not have looked for the undoubtedly better system produced by the League. Much has been heard in Wellington urging the Nelson system sind indeed one newspaper has consistently kept it before, the public. Notwithstanding all this. Wellington itself affords the • latest proof of the inadequacy and unworkableness of the Nelson system. The Ministers' Association of Wellington South humbly and respectfully solicited in March the gracious permission of the Newtown State School Committee for one miserable half hour ;i week from i; to J).:iO' a.m. to give Bible lessons, which of course under the Nelson system would be regarded as undenominational. Yet the School Committee quite, turned down this very modest application, and lest the mere refusal might not be, sufficient to crush the boldness of a Ministers' Association which desired, si privilege of addressing t\v\ children allowed to wandering lecturers, the chairman of the School Committee rushed into print and wrote of "the attitude of the Ministers' Association in their sudden desire to invade the schools (luring the hours set apa/t for secular instruction." He continued: "1 really question if they are in earnest, and also whether they are not really looking for a refusal," and he proceeded with the question whether, "if permission was granted them for Bible instruction during school hours, they would carry on the work for any longth of time without expecting some remuneration from the State for their services.''

The refusal was quite enough to show that the Nelsom system is unworkable, but to that is added the insult by the chairman of the School Committee offered, to the motives of the ministers, and the reality of their request. He was replied to by the Chairman of tho Ministers' Association (who happens to bo a Congregationalist not in favour of the League's platform, and who, as a- Congregationalist, in any case would not be likely to be a party to anything to make for State aid;. The Ministers' chairman showed by his

letter that so far from intending to help the League,.the Ministers "believed that by demonstrating the feasilrlity of the scheme .in one school otlwr schools would be led to adopt it,-i..'., the Nelson system. The demonstration has been not as the -Ministers' Association in all sincerity hoped, but. entirely (.'lie which shows that the Xelsoii system is no National solution of the problem of reaching every child in the Dominion. The churches which jiass-'d it by for tin' League's platform have to thank the Newtown School Committee and its chairman particularly, for ivnothor testimony that the matter is one to lie settled, by tho whole people of New Zealand, and not by a committee temporarily in a little brief authority.