Sectarlanism in History

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 27, 6 July 1905, Page 18

Sectarlanism in History

History is one of the founts or sources erf theology. It is day by day ' wrested ' by ' the uivleartfed and the unstable,' as even the Sacred Scripttries ate, to a sense which it does not bear. The history of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century is a case in point. Brewer, Child, Pocock, Blunt, Green, and other noted Protestant historians have broken into smithereens many of the gaudy legends tthat long hung like iridescent baubles • about * popular ' stories of the period. Some of the broken bits of these fables appear in Warner's ' Brief Survey, 1 referred to above. Most of those ' popular ' histories of the sixteenth century revolt are as '< sectarian ' in their way as the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Westminster Confession of Faith. Two years ago a Catholic teacher was prevented imparting tn-st-<uction in profane history— even from a toxt-ibook approved by the Education Board of Scotland— at the Dumfries Academy, which is a public school, supported by public taxation, and claims to be ' undenominational ' and ' unsectarian.' History is, of course, not necessarily sectarian. But Warner has made his droll manual offensively and aggressively so. This is what has merited for it the support of the Orango faction in Auckland. Commendation ffom such a iquarter is the severest form of condemnation.