Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 10 April 1913, Page 34

Notes

To Correspondents During the past week or two we have had forwarded to us sundry articles, newspaper cuttings, etc., for insertion or comment. While thanking our correspondents for their courtesy, we have to intimate that just for the present Bible-in-Schools controversy makes the dominant demand on our time and space. There is urgent need for discussion and refutation at the outset of the movement, so that public opinion may be moulded in a right direction from the very first. In a little while matters will become more nearly normal, and correspondents' communications will receive their customary attention. For the Young People We direct the attention of heads of families—with a view to their bringing the matter under the notice of the younger members of their households—to the ' Tricks and Illusions' column to be found this week in the page devoted to domestic reading and ' Family Fun.' These tricks are specially contributed to the N.Z. Tablet by an expert, and are simple, interesting, easy, and at the same time effective. They will supply pleasant recreation for the lengthening winter evenings, and should still further increase the value and attractiveness of the Tablet as a family paper. The Press and the Bible in Schools In addition to publishing the excellent letter by Father Jlunt—which we reproduce elsewhere

Alexandra Herald, now owned and edited by Mr. J. J. Ramsay, lias devoted an effective editorial to the ■Bible-in-schools sermon delivered by the Rev. Mr. "Blue, Presbyterian minister, in which many good points are made. Referring -to the Catholic position, the Herald says : ' The Catholic asks to be put in the same position hero that he occupies in England. And if religion is to be made a function of State and Catholics, in addition to building,.-, equipping, and maintaining their own schools, arc to pay their quota towards maintaining a Protestantised State school, then it would be sheer injustice to deny them grants. , . What Mr. Blue asks is as much assistance as what the Catholic asks, especially as Mr. Blue would penalise or else make a hypocrite of a schoolmaster not of the right faith, by making it impossible for him to conscientiously teach at all by reason of his inability to give Protestant religious lessons in a school he, equally with Mr. Blue, was forced to maintain. In short, Bible-in-schools, like Catholic grants, means, if we are to be fair, dehominationalism, and if anyone doubts it let him study the working of undenominational religion in schools in Scotland. There the very Protestant churches themselves are pitted against each other. Tickets are given out in church, on the •occasion of a school board election, with the names of candidates who will fight to control the schools in the interests of their particular church. Teachers are appointed for religious reasons, and openly dismissed if their religion does not suit the ministers who sit on the boards and, make them, hot beds of religious persecution. Here we are. asked to believe that there would be no such religious tyranny, but to believe such flapdoodle as that, we have either to be ignorant of, or to discount the lessons- of- history.' * Our contemporary thus exposes the League evasion in connection with the majority rule' contention: ' We select another of our rev. friend's arguments, his reply to the objection that majorities have no right to rule on questions of conscience. His reply to that is a palpable evasion, perhaps unconscious, but none the less an evasion. He replies by saying, "Has a minority the right to rule on any question ? And he rules out minority rule, and like Micawber when he signed the promissory note and thanked God that debt was paid, he imagines he has settled the matter. But his methods are Micawber-like in that he has never met his engagement at all, for nobody has asserted that a minority has a right to rule. The question is not the right of a minority to rule a majority, but the right of a majority to rule a minority on every question, and it is not a corollary of the denial of the one that the other is established. The real question is: Has any secular majority, or minority either if Mr. Blue likes, the right to interfere with the religion of the other, or in other words whether there are not some subjects so sacred that the touch of the secular hand is profanity. Mr. Blue, however, in effect argues that wherever a minority comes in conflict with a majority the majority can ride rough-shod over its most sacred privilege, the right to its own faith and religion and conscience. Reduced to accurate statement our friend's position means that a secularist majority would have the right to over-ride the religious convictions of the minority, put an atheistic text book into the schools of the State, compel Mr. Blue if he was still a teacher to teach it, but permit Mr. Blue to send his children out in the rain during the time he was teaching something he did not believe to other people's children. In other words Mr. Blue as a parent would be allowed to have a conscience, and Mr. Blue as a teacher permitted no conscience at all. Does Mr. Blue when he sees his argument logically set out and himself put in the other fellow's place, still seriously say majorities should rule in. religion, Is there no God to set a limit to tyranny? Are there no Eternal verities that no majority dare violate?' . * Regarding the methods of the League generally, our contemporary, remarks.: ' The whole action of the

League and -its methods -of campaign prove that it is afraid of two things:: Free discussion in the churches and a decision by a majority. The scheme is a cunningly devised plot to outwit the will of the majority-. If it were not so, and if there was any desire on the part of the people to sectarianise our schools, the people's representatives, in Parliament assembled, could pass an Act. to effect the desire any time. But the M.P. who dared to try it on would get a rough time both from the House and the country. Knowing that there are always a lot of shufflers the Garland party are trying to get through a Bill which will enable them to get a catch vote as they did in Queensland, and put a text book. in schools, not on the vote of a majority; but on the vote of a very decided minority . organised and carted to the poll by means of church money. -In Queensland three years ago 26 per cent, of the possible voters by means of the Shuffle Referendum put the Bible in schools, and now we have a league of Christian ministers proclaiming the falsehood that it was carried by an overwhelming majority, and also that it works without friction when it is well known that the whole State is in a turmoil of unrest over Catholic claims, the justice of which under such conditions they cannot deny. And how do our ministers get the opinion of their congregations? By refusing to allow discussion. They call hole and corner meetings of "friends of the movement," and refuse to allow/i a minister present who is opposed to the. scheme the chance to say so. In their churches as a minority .of one in a whole congregation they speak for people they do not even consult, and nobody is permitted to .say a word unless in its favor.'