II.—EXPEDIENCY, POPULAR FEELING, AND THE 'GODLESS' QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4, 28 January 1909, Page 131

lI.— EXPEDIENCY, POPULAR FEELING, AND THE 'GODLESS' QUESTION.

It has been already pointed out that the divorce of religion from education must be defended, if at all, by an appeal to a philosophy of life and to the principles of pedagogy— that is, of the science of teaching. I cannot, of course, deal with these lines of the defence of our secular system until they are definitely before me. The only defence that I can at present recall is based upon two entirely non-pedagogical pleas — namely, upon political or social expediency and popular feeling. The argument of expediency is only of conditional value or relevancy. It might be legitimately used as an accidental reinforcement of the philosophical and pedagogical argument — assuming this to have been already established. But I am not aware that this has been done, or even seriously attempted, by our daily press. With much surface conflict as to quality and quantity, there is nevertheless a general agreement among the Christian Churches that religion is an essential, or at least an important factor, in any system of education properly so called. Their differences are not alone perfectly adjustable, but in Canada, Germany, and many other countries they have actually been adjusted in various ways that • constitute workable and, on the whole, satisfactory solutions of the problem. The union of the churches is in the air. And its gratifying success along some -lines gives grounds for the hope of such a union of the friends of religious education that Christ may once more be brought back to His rightful place here in the school life of the little ones whom He wishes to come unto Him. Now for a few remarks on another non-pedagogical plea — namely, that popular feeling is against religion in the school. (1) In a mere count of heads we might put the overwhelming feeling of Christendom — which is in possession both historically and geographically — against the localised feeling in favor of an adventitious and experimental secular .system. (2) In its last resort the plea of popular feeling rather suggests the argument of the Big Stick. (3) The question here is essentially a question of pedagogy — that is, of the science of teaching. "And I have yet to learn that popular feeling, even in this progressive Dominion, is qualified to determine such an issue, or that it

has, iii point of fact, even professed to 'decide the matter on a pedagogical basis. (4) We know, as a matter of fact, that a large T)ody of public feeling in New Zealand, as in Australia, desires some measure of religion in the working time of the public schools; that it has agitated for a generation to have this effected by legislation; that, having failed in this, it has set itself, with some success, to smuggle in religion somehow; and that religious exercises have all along been part of the daily routine of some at least of our high schools. One more thought in this connection. (5) No doutrc it is one -of the functions of the secular press to reflect to some extent popular feeling. But, ideally at least, it s the duty of tlie press to reflect in its political and social creed only the public opinion that is (or is honestly and on stated grounds believed by the responsible heads of journalism to be) sound, and to guide unsound or wrong-headed thought and feeling along what it holds to be the better paths. All this is, I should say, the conscious ideal of at least the lest and most responsible of our Dominion newspapers. In political and politico-social questions tney resolutely decline to accept the doctrine of ' accomplished facts.' "Adverse feeling and adverse votes serve only to nerve them to more virile efforts to educate public opinion in a sense favorable to their views. In the still more vital and sacred matter of the school training of our future I citizens, why should they abdicate their customary role as living teachers and guides, and become, instead, the mere echoes or gramophone records of an uninstructed local feeling ? The defender of our secular system (on, of course, philosophical and pedagogical lines) will bear in mind that the union of religion with education is a world-possession; that the secular idea is comparatively new, localised, experimental; tliat it had its origin in the anti-Christian philosophy of the eighteenth century; that it has been the ideal of tlie European revolutions which accepted that philosophy; and that, without material alteration, the New Zealand system would suit a secularist or agnostic, republic. Of course, neither men nor systems are necessarily known by the company they keep. Nevertheless, the apparent entente between modern anti-Christian philosophy and our system of public instruction has, for Christians, a suspicious look, and needs explanation. Nor are we reassured when -\ve see the atheism that has infected a secular and professedly ' neutral ' system in France ; nor yet when we recall the statement made by Attorney-General Stephen when introducing into Victoria a secular system practically identical with that of New Zealand : that one of its objects was to lead the rising generation by sure though gradual steps to ' worship in common at the- shrine of one neutral-tinted deity sanctioned by the State department.' I do not assume or suggest" that conscious hostility to Christianity motived the secular feature of our education system. Indeed, one of the hopeful phases of its advocacy by our great daily papers is their objection to the statement of the New Zealand Tablet that the system is ' Godless,' in the sense that it ' has no God, and no moral law whose sanction is of God' (e.g., Otago Daily Times, January 6, 1909). 1. The queen in Alice claimed the right to give to words any meaning that she might choose. One Australian Government, acting upon the same supposed right, decreed that the term ' secular ' should mean (locally and for legal purposes), not ' secular,' but its very opposite — namely, ' spiritual ' or ' religious.' We in New Zealand have not yet reached this point of verbal topsy-turveydom. So we take the word ' secular,' as used in this connection, in its ordinary and current meaning — namely, as ' pertaining to the present world,' to ' things not spiritual or sacred,' to 'tilings connected with the present life only, and ' disassociated from religion and religious teaching,' to ' things not spiritual or holy,' to ' things relating to-tem-poral as distinguished from eternal interests.' (I quote from vol. VI., part 1., of the Encyclopaedic Dictionary, and from p. 1301 of Webster's International Dictionary.) But God and a ' moral law whose sanction is God ' are not things 'secular,' and therefore '"disassociated from religion' and things spiritual. On the contrary, they are of the very elements of religion and of the spiritual. 2. Oxir secular system either has a God, or it has not. If it has not, cadit quaestio — there is an end of the matter. If it has a God, who and what is he? What is his nature? What are his attributes? Is he a God with - a big Gor a, god with a little g? Is he the God of the Christian or of the Unitarian ? Is he the god (with a small g) of the positivist, the pantheist, or the agnostic? Is he a modernised Baal or Vishmi^jmuaaaere dingy Mumbojumbo? Is he a Something-in-general and Nothing-in-particular, or a poetic figment, or a mental abstraction? Writing as a Christian man for Christian people in a Christian land, I am entitled to hold that God is God only in the radically true conception of God — that is, in effect, the Personal God of Revelation. He is in possession. The

other gods are as the fictions of -ancient mythology or as the empty abstractions and impersonalities of the new. I have searched oxir Education Act from Dan to Beersheba; I have seen there provision for secnlar instruction and for no other ; "and I have found it barren of all reference to the true God or to a ' moral law whose sanction is of God.' (Consolidated Statutes, vol. ii., pp. 245-314; especially sections 87 and 143.) 3. In- education (the processes of which are determined ultimately by a philosophy of life) one must take up some attitude towards God and His law. In a very real sense the Scripture saying is true here, that he who is not with God is against Him. A secular system of p\iblic instruction ignores Him — and worse — in its * working hours. Is ignoring a neutral attitude? Not necessarily. A, child that habitually ignores his living and present father, a courtier that so ignores his king, and a naval commander that ignores the flag of a friendly nation — all these are deemed to have assumed an attitude of hostility. Thirtythree years ago the New Zealand Government found tho flag of Christ flying upon the schools. It took that flag down. By a positive and formal legislative enactment it, in effect, banished God from the place which (on Christian principles) He holds by natural right and pedagogical "necessity — to which is superadded /4;he long prescription of ages and the common consent of Christendom. In international law the tearing down of the flag of a friendly Power,^ especially from its prescriptive place, is an act of war. Was the removal of the flag of God from our New Zealand schools a friendly act towards Him? Or was it some new and subtle profession of faith in. God and in a ' moral law whose sanction -is of God ' ? 4. It is obviously no answer to this indictment to say, however truly (a) that the secular system in. New Zealand has not eliminated God's name from the scEobl text-books (as was done in Victoria and as is done in France) ; and (b) that the school buildings may be used, outside school hours, for instruction regarding God and His holy law. (a) The erasure of God's name (as above) is, in the first place, a stupid and inartistic literary fraud. In the second place, civilised usage nowadays prefers less crude, less direct, less demonstrative, and more aesthetic forms of ostracism than throwing out undesired visitors (so to speak) upon a shovel, or slamming doors in their faces. And, in the third place, by reference to the paragraph numbered (2) above, the reader will realise that a school system may be in reality godless without the erasure of God's namo from the text-books, (b) As regards the implied permission to teach about God and His law outside the hours devoted to the system, that provision serves only to emphasise the exclusion of God from the actual working of the system. Christians might conceivably have been permitted to do as much in Notre Dame, Paris, at the close of the revolutionists' worship of the Goddess of Reason. During school hours our law has put God out of calculation, it has excluded all doctrinal references to Him, or to moral duties towards Him or in Him to the children's neighbors or themselves. It compels the earnest Christian teacher to check his best thoughts and muzzle his tongue and play a part. Bishop Neligan, of Auckland, described God as ' an extra ' in our secular system. But ' extras ' are provided for by^ the system. God is not. If He is brought into the working of the system He is brought in surreptitiously and as a stowaway; and all teaching regarding His law is as contraband as pipe-opium. And if He is smuggled in .as the God of Jew or Christian to-day He may equally well (as in France) be smuggled in as the myth-god of the Atheist to-morrow. If the system is (and legally it is) truly secular it has no Personal God and no spiritual message; if it has a God or a spiritual message it -is not secular. But who is its God, and what is its message of the other world? It has neither. The term ' godless ' is not an, agreeable one to apply to a system of -training Christian children in a Christian land. But the truth and justice of the designation make it wholesome. One can perfectly understand why a secular system of public instruction should be favored by philosophies which hold that God is unknowable or a mental figment, or that (in Buechner's words) ' the end of man is conversion into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.' But, once more, on what principles of philosophy and of pedagogy do professing Christians sustain a system which banishes religion from its prescriptive and ages-old place in the education of - Christian youth?

Despite his seventy-eight years, his Eminence the Cardinal is still a vigorous prelate (remarks the Freeman's Journal). On Christmas Day he celebrated three consecutive Masses, and at .the High Mass at 11 o'clock he preached. The task . of celebrating even two consecutive Masses would have taxed the endurance of many a robust priest.