BIBLE' =IN= SCHOOLS LEAGUE

New Zealand Tablet, 16 July 1914, Page 41

BIBLE ' =IN = SCHOOLS LEAGUE

METHODS OF OPPOSITION TO LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. By the Right Rev. H. W. Cleary, D.D., Bishop of Auckland. PART I. — THE GREAT FAILURE. (Concluded from last week.) , IV.POLITICAL AGITATION Vs. HOME TRAINING. 21. If, among the League denominations, there is a ‘ slump ’ in practical reverence for the Revealed Word of God, or in religious faith and practice: they should first look within themselves for the cause—and for the remedy. For close on forty years, they have had gold galore for spasms of political agitation. But, like John Gilpin’s wife, they are ‘ of frugal mind ’ when it is a question of the direct training of their workers’ children in religious schools. Nay, a serious charge of neglect of home-training is laid at the door of League agitators. Thus, at a meeting of the Dunedin Presbytery on July 4, 1905, the Rev. James Chisholm, an able and learned Presbyterian minister, made this phase of League agitation the subject of pointed reference, lie did not disparage the effort ‘ to introduce Bible lessons into public schools.’ Catholics favor this, on fair conditions.) , But he said:—‘The most effective way of meeting the necessity that exists for the religious training of children lies in the direction of using all available means which the Church can command to quicken the sense of parental responsibility, and revive family piety, and make the home what it was meant to be, and what all Scripture and all history proves it capable of becoming even the seat of Christian discipline and nursery of noble youth.’ 22. ‘ I feel strongly,’ said the Rev. Mr. Chisholm, in the same discourse, ‘ that the agitation that has been carried on for so many years has diverted the attention of our people from the much more important matter of Christian training in the home. . . It seems to me that the real weakness of our whole Church life — the weakness that is undoubtedly growing amongst us —is just a defective family life and. training; and, all the agitation that has existed, in this or other matter seems merely to have diverted the attention of our people from that. 1 think that if HALF THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY THAT HAS BEEN SPENT IN TRYING TO INTRODUCE BIBLE LESSONS IN SCHOOLS, HAD BEEN SPENT IN ENDEAVORING TO REVIVE FAMILY PIETY, OUR CHURCH WOULD HAVE BEEN VASTLY THE BETTER BY NOWA SCOTLAND’S WAY. 23. In his discourse, on the occasion mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the Rev. James Chisholm takes exception to the statement that ‘ the Bible in schools had done more than anything else to nurture Scottish character.’ ‘ My reading of Scottish history,’ said he, ‘ does not lead me to come to that conclusion. I read the lives of those who have made the deepest mark on the world’s historythose of them who have been born and brought up in Scotland —and I find that the germs of all that was good in them all that afterwards grew and developed to the benefit of God’s kingdom — were deposited in the home. Read the lives of such men as Robert Moffatt, David Livingstone, James G. Paton, Robert Chalmers, and you will find that all of these men gratefully ascribe any usefulness they accomplished in life to their home training. Anything that is diverting the attention of our people from this most necessary work of the home, must be to some extent injurious. I know very well that if Bible lessons were introduced into our public schools, they would,

perhaps, supplement the teaching and the training of the home. But it seems to me that the strong tendency of parents now is to roll over the burden of their responsibility on others. . . / feel that the real way out of the.difficulty is to direct the attention of parents and guardians to their great personal responsibility in this matter. 1 am not in opposition to this agitation, but I am certain that this is not the right way of getting at the necessity that exists.’ 24. Is such neglect of home training the way to increase personal and domestic piety, and to stem the white heathenism ’ and ‘atheism’ to which League clergy and parents have (they now say) been assiduously subjecting their children, in the public schools, for the past thirty-seven years? V.—SOME EXAMPLES. ■ Inspiring Examples. 1. The League, and the two chief League denominations, are officially committed to the principle of denominational schools. This will be seen more in detail in another part of this publication. But, here again, the League’s ‘frugal mind is well displayed. The League, in effect, demands the establishment and endowment of its own peculiar brand of inter-de-nominational dcnominationalism— of a four-creed comprise—at the cost of all denominations. It ‘ won’t be happy till it gets it ’ ; and, to attain its object, League leaders have declared their readiness to ‘ wreck ’ the ‘ national ’ system. Their wordsand those of an official League publication— will be quoted in another part. 2. At a meeting of the Dunedin Presbytery on October 7, 1913, the Rev. A. Whyte (Port Chalmers) pleaded strongly for the extension of ‘ high-class ’ Presbyterian denominational schools. The" following is taken from the report of his discourse in the Outlook (the Presbyterian organ) of October 14, 1913: —‘He said there was one supreme danger of the Protestant Church, and that was, that it should lose the spirit of sacrifice. In the Roman Catholic Church, the sacrifice was tremendous. Men, women, and estates were magnificently offered for the work of Christ and the Church. . . .He refused to entertain the thought that the Church, of John Calvin and John Jvnox would be behind the Roman Catholic Church' in self-sacrifice for the religious education of its youth. They were told that the Roman 'idholies had given 000,000, and they believed that the Presbyterian Church would not be. behind them. They had, to inspire them, the magnificent example of the early settlers here, who set aside, by voluntary contribution and consent, one-eighth of the capital value of their lands, before they commenced to clear them, for religion and religious instruction. . . . lie believed that the time had come to ask the settlers to do, with their larger means, what their fathers had done with their narrow fortunes.’ 3. Catholics than a sixth of the population—• have flung themselves into Christian education in Christ’s good way : If is the way of intense and vivifying —working out in sustained personal, effort, in the ready coin of sacrifice, in thousands of precious human lives devoted ( without earthly fee. or reward) to the religious education of the loved, little ones for whom the dear Saviour of us all gave blood, and. life. 4. That is God’s appointed way—the way of faith, of sacrifice, of love for the souls of children. For nearly forty years New Zealand Catholics have trod it with bleeding feet, but happy hearts. They would gladly aid League denominations to alter the secular system, on the lines of equal treatment of consciences leaving it secular for those desiring if so, and religious, on fair conditions, for the rest. But Catholics must ever oppose the League’s proposed sectarian ascendancy and violation of rights of religion and conscience which God gave, and which no League or Government can

take away. Catholics also have to mourn for strayed sheepfor sons that leave them for the husks of swine. But their Church s bright star of hope shines on the brows of tho loved little ones that cluster in school round her knees—as other little ones did with her Lord —and rest in her circling arms of blessing, and nestle close to her great mother-heart. So, with those lair flowers of faith and love and hope gathered around her in this Dominion, she is racked ■with no failing faith in God’s unfailing Word, smitten with no dying devotion, crippled with no array of empty Sunday benches. There is growing vigor in her limbs, high courage in her heart, within her soul a glorious hope. She looks into the future with fearless and unwavering eye. From her strong heart goes up no cry of failure, no appeal to Caesar to relieve her of part of her divinelyimposed burden, lest she faint by the way. 5. Cannot the League read so plain an omen I Can it learn no lesson that comes from. ‘Rome’? An official League leaflet speaks about ‘ admiring the Roman Catholic devotion in* supporting their own schools. If their example is deserving of admiration, is it not still more worthy of imitation —of something better than an outbreak of clerical political agitation to force the Government to become the inventor, patentee, and teacher of a new State Religion ? O A WARNING EXAMPLE: NEW SOUTH WALES. 6. For over forty years, the New South Wales Government has been giving an untrained and slipshod teaching of an ‘ emasculated ’ caricature of the Biblehacked and mutilated by sectarians for sectarian use. 7. Well, we have there- the same dire clamor of League-denomination voices as here, lamenting the widespread decay of vital religion among the people trained in the oldest League-type schools. Let a few brief samples of the available evidence* hereon, suffice for the present; (a) A New South Wales Presbyterian clergyman (Rev. David J. Albert) declares, in a letter to the Outlook (Dunedin) of October 28, 1913, that, in New South Wales, the Bible ' has been cast out of the modern home.’ (b) The Auckland Star of November 1, 1913, reports in part as follows a sermon by Canon Bathurst, in the Anglican Cathedral, Bathurst, New South Wales. ‘ lie (Canon Bathurst) added that, alter making the fullest possible allowance, the fact remained that the bulk of their people, who could with perfect ease, or a little self-sacrifice, get to church, simply did not do so. They had. no time for religion. The census showed that an average of only two-thirds of a person in every Anglican household ended church. It was his deep-rooted conviction that the seat of the cancer which was to-day eating the root of all Christian zeal and effort, was to be found in the homes of the people, in their so-called Christian life.’ MORE MORAL ‘SLUMP.’ 8. A Press Association message to the New Zealand daily papers, dated Sydney, May 19, 1914, says: ‘ The annual report of the New South Wales Alliance says that New South Wales is the most drunken State, it the Commonwealth.’ The detailed figures are quoted in the over-seas message. 9. The Sydney Morning Herald, of May 6, 1914, reports a deputation to the New South Wales Minister of Public Instruction, Mr. Carmichael. The deputation was introduced by Archdeacon Irvine (Anglican). According to the Morning Herald report, he said that ‘ as citizens of New South Wales, the members of the committee saw the danger of the country becoming, to a large extent, materialistic. A headmaster of a certain school had told him that he had frequently received letters from parents telling him they did not desire that their hoy should be taught anything that would not pay; and that subjects that would do nothing more

\ lian mould the boys’ characters did not matter at all ’ Is this any wonder-after nearly fifty years of persistc e ll . t “V tlI j tn iA * emasculat ing,’ and ‘ caricaturing * of the Word of God? ' fa „ There is, perhaps, hardly a moral evil in New Zealand but has been affirmed, in a more aggravated form, of New South Wales— the land of the ‘ rip-and-tear theology/ of the ‘garbled,’ ‘mutilated,’ ‘emasculated, caricatured,’ and dishonored Word of God. In one unpleasant respect. New South Wales has an unchallenged pre-eminence, an evil notoriety, throughout Australasia— the rabid intensity of the sectarian rancor which poisons so much of its social and public life. * CLERGY AND SCHOOL. 11. The New Zealand Parliamentary return of November 2, 1903, showed that only about one in eight of the League clergy took advantage of the legal facilities for imparting religious instruction in our public schools. The same complaint is made regarding the neglect of the greater ‘ right-of-entry ’ facilities in New South Wales. Fuller details, hereon, will appear in another publication of this series. For the present, let this suffice: The Departmental evidence, in this connection, is simply overwhelming. It is contained, in part, in the Report of the New South Wales Royal Commission on Education (pp. 149, 157); in a long series of Commonwealth Year Books; in the annual Education Reports; and in the declarations of Ministers of Public Instruction, such as, for instance, Mr. Perry and Mr. Carmichael. 12. The third and thirty-first annual reports of the .Anglican Synod of New South Wales declare that, unless the clergy manifest ‘ a more lively and persistent interest in this work,’ it ‘ must languish, perhaps even be finally abandoned.’ The thirty-first annual report also deplores the fact that the teachers’ ‘ general religious instruction is now, to a large extent, devoted to the teaching of history, civics, and morals.’ This widespread substitution of a non-religious for a * general religious ’ lesson is also sufficiently intimated in the Royal Commission’s Report. Thus far, the League has avoided the official and other evidences of the failure of the New South Wales system, as if they were the seven plagues of Egypt. 13. Both in New South Wales and New Zealand, there are small bodies of clergy full of zeal for religious instruction in the public schools. But in New South Wales, as in New Zealand, the body of the League clergy have been steadily impressing upon the public the idea that such instruction is not deserving of serious personal effort and sacrifice. In this, as in other respects, a measure of blame must fall upon the clergy for so much of a falling-off in personal and domestic piety as may be found to exist among their flocks. A WARNING EXAMPLE: QUEENSLAND. 14. A similar lamentation comes from Queensland. In May, 1914, the Presbyterian Assembly, in Brisbane, deplored ‘the growing tendency to neglect the ordinances of religion,’ the lack of proper support from their own people, and ‘ the spirit of paganism that is rampant, due to the temptations o£ sensuality and scepticism. This after four years of clerically-approved mutilation,’ emasculation,’ and caricaturing of the teaching of the Bible ! 15. The extracts quoted in the last paragraph are taken from the Sydney Catholic Press of May 28,' 1914. The same paper draws an illuminating contrast regarding the State about which those lamentations were made. Among Catholics there (it says) there is ‘no complaint of want of support for their clergy, their

churches, their schools, their convents, and their charities. The churches are becoming too small to contain the faithful. In Brisbane alone, where this Assembly was fulminating, no fewer than five new churches have been built, or are nearing completion, within the past twelve months, whilst his Grace the Archbishop has just completed the purchase of a magnificent site, at a cost of £ 18,500, whereon is to ‘be erected a noble cathedral, to take the place of old St. Stephen’s, which cannot now afford accommodation to worshippers.’ 16. Cannot the League read the lesson—and the causes—of this contrast? Can it not see that scepticism,’ ‘ the spirit of paganism,’ and the tendency to ‘ materialism ’ are a natural consequence of ‘ multilating,’ ‘emasculating,’ and ‘caricaturing’ the teaching of God’s Revealed Word—in order to drop out of it all matters in dispute among four rival denominations? VI.—CAESAR, THE CHURCH-BEARER. The Presbyterian Confession of Faith denies to Caesar (or the civil Government) the right of administering the Word of Godeither to adults or to children. That is good Christian doctrine. It is the Church’s divinely-appointed mission to teach the eternal truths to Caesar and to guide him home to God. It is no part of Caesar’s duty to take a lame or laggard Church upon his back and drop it at the gates of heaven. Caesar (the civil power) docs his whole duty in this matter when he affords parents and the Church proper facilities and a favorable environment for the administration of the Word of God to those whom God has placed in their chargeand when he presses those duties upon them. God did not make Caesar either priest or parson. VII.—A PROBABLE ‘REPLY.’ The League has a stereotyped reply to such awkward facts as have been adduced in this First Part. The ‘reply’ is, in substance this; ‘Wicked man! • You are attacking a body of earnest and estimable reverend folk of various ranks and faiths!’ That is, quite obviously, no reply.’ The bedrock question here is this; Are the matters alleged, true, or mainly true, in point of fact? The witnesses cited against the League are nearly all, either Leaguers (including high League officials), or League sympathisers, or members of League denominations. ' Chapter and verse have been given for the various statements credited to them. Let the League disprove their statements in matters of fact r —if it can. Then we shall see whether this melancholy story of ‘ The Great Failure ’ does, or docs not, constitute an ‘ attack’—or a justifiable ‘attack’—on the League by its own officials and members, and by others of its spiritual kith and kin. * HENRY W. CLEARY, , ‘ Bishop of Auckland. June 20, 1914.