The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1913. BIBLE LEAGUERS AND DENOMINATIONALISM

New Zealand Tablet, 9 October 1913, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1913. BIBLE LEAGUERS AND DENOMINATIONALISM

NE of the devices adopted by the advocates and representatives of the Bible in State Schools League for beguiling the unwary elector into voting for the League programme is to pose as the real and only friend of the * national ’ system, and as the party which has expressly and definitely rejected denominationalism in education. Again and again have League leaders stressed this point as one of their strongest claims to public support. ‘lt ought to be emphasised,' said the Rev. J. Mackenzie, a Presbyterian minister of Christchurch and the first secretary of the League, in an interview given to the Christchurch Press, ‘ that the advocates of this (the League) system stand solidly for the maintenance of our national system of education.’ And Canon Garland, in his address before the Presbyterian Assembly last November, expatiated at length on this professed position of the League as the friend and champion of a non-denominational national system. ‘There were those of us,’ he said, ‘who in days past believed honestly that the only system of education was denominational schools, supported by the State; and those of us who believed that have distinctly and definitely abandoned that policy. . . . We will stand by and support the national system. We are prepared to stand by it; we do not condemn it and seek to shatter it; we are only asking that one thing, the keystone, should be added, that it may stand firm forever.’ And he impeaches as the enemies of the national system'all who attempt, by building schools of their own, to withdraw children from attendance at the State institutions. * I would ask the question,’ he

said, in the course of an attack on the Catholic attitude, ‘ who has been building schools' to compete with the national system .’ .' . and using every means, to diminish the attendance at the State schools, and withdrawing the children from the State" schools—a withdrawal which, if sufficiently successful, would have wrecked that national system V • ‘ * And now we are in a position to retort these questions upon the very body which he then addressed, and which associated itself with the attitude he there professed. For the Presbyterian body has entered upon a determined and vigorous policy of building schools of its own, on the express and avowed principle of pure denominationalism. They call them colleges; and the institutions we refer to will, presumably, be mostly concerned with secondary subjects. , But the State secondary colleges are a part, and an essential part, of the national system; and the policy of withdrawing children from the State secondary institutions will, according to Canon Garland’s argument, if sufficiently successful,-wreck that national system.’ Already one such Presbyterian collegefor ladiesis in course of construction at Havelock North, and will be opened next February. The whole available accommodation has been booked in advance; and the attractions provided for alluring Presbyterian children' to withdraw from attendance at the State institutions —according to an enthusiastic writer in the Outlook — ‘ 80 apple trees, 20 peaches, 100 lemons, 100 oranges, 100 flowering acacias, 600 scarlet flowering gum trees, 400 peppermint gum trees, and 200 different shrubs ’! The Executive Committe of lona College— that is the name of the institution ‘ mean it to be in the best sense a first-class school, attracting pupils from all parts of the country.’ And now a project is on foot for the establishment of a second such college at Dunedin, and the scheme was elaborated by the Rev. Alexander Whyte, of Port Chalmers, in a sermon preached by him at Knox Church on Sunday last. He urged that ‘the foundation stone of the second college should be laid now, and in Dunedin, and, if this was done, then a month from the date of the laying of the stone that college also would be full.’ * And the denominationalism of these institutions is to be no mere name or make-believethe children are to be thoroughly drilled in Presbyterianism of the old, genuine, downright, true blue, uncompromising kind. So much we clearly gather from the picture painted by Mr. Whyte of the proposed Dunedin establishment. He would have it named ‘ Langside ’this being the name of a hill in Scotland where, according to the veracious preacher, 3000 men under the Regent Moray routed 6000 men'under Queen Mary, and thus secured ‘ the deliverance of the nation from Popery.’ Langside is not mentioned in Creasy’s standard volume on The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World; but it clearly ought to have been, for, but for Langside, there would have been no British Empire, no Otago, ‘ no nuthin’:’ . Hear the reverend orator: ‘ Langside was the Waterloo of the Scottish Church. . . . Had the Regent fled Mary would have regained the crown and crushed Knox and the Scottish Reformation. There would have been no Free Church of Scotland, no Otago Settlement, and no Knox Church. But Mary would also have secured the English crown and crushed Elizabeth and the English Reformation. There would have been no British Empire, and no Dominion of New Zealand.’ Presumably there would also have been no N.Z. Tablet and no editor therof, so by all means let us be grateful to Regent Moray and Langside. And the preacher leaves us in no manner of doubt as to the type of character which it is hoped to turn out at' the place with the soul-stirring and epoch-making name. Here is the idyllic picture which he painted for his hearers: ‘By and by, one of them (the girls) would be appointed to a small town in the North Island. The first week a friend would visit her, saying, “You are a Presbyterian. The Presbyterian Church is very small here. All the best people go past it.” And she would answer /‘Shall such a one as I flee? I will go

to my own church, though it be no bigger than a buggy shed. Later on, some Roman Catholic gentleman would ask another of them in marriage. He would say, “There, is only one church. ' We must not be be married by Mr. Davies or in Kjiox Church. We must be married in the Roman Catholic Church and by the priest.” And she would look him fair hi. the face and answer, “I will rather die a maid. I was bred, sir, at Langside.” And he, knowing of course all about Langside and the Regent Moray, would feel ruefully Tor his hat, and flee the field. * i In spite of the hard fate which awaits the ‘ Roman Catholic gentleman ’ who dares to make advances to a Langside maid, and in spite of the fact that it is in flat violation of the Bible League’s declaration of loyalty to the national system and of its professed repudiation of denominationalism, we •welcome this inauguration on the part of the Presbyterian body of a frankly denominational educational policy. It is at least a partial affirmation of the principle for which Catholics have in the past contended, still contend, and always will contend—-that for Christians the true ideal in education is schools permeated through and through with a religious atmosphere. This movement of Presbyterians towards denominationalism is a sign of the times; and it will not end with the building of a couple of secondary colleges for girls. As the Lady Principal of the Havelock North institution remarks in a letter published in the Outlook : ‘ I feel that the founding of lona is a beginning whose importance we cannot over-estimate, and that Mr. Campbell and Mr. Mason Chambers were doing “wiselier than they knew” when they gave their gifts.’