Bible teaching in State Scbools.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume II, Issue 5, 1 November 1911, Page 82

Bible teaching m State Scbools.

(By the Yen. Archdeacon Willis.)

ARTICLE 11. THE NECESSITY FOR THE SCHOOL FUNCTION. lii tlie first chapter I dealt with the importance of Bible knowledge. I have now to show the necessity for the School Function. The late Anglican Primate of New Zealand, Bishop Cowie, who was Bishop of Auckland for 30 years, saw this necessity very clearly. He wrote to his people the day before he died: "It is a ■oriniary duty of all Christian parents to teach their children the leading facts of holy Scripture, especialty those of the New Testament; but THE INDIFFERENCE OF MANY PARENTS is such that without the help of the day schools we cannot expect much teaching to be given." It vseems only too probable that m more than half the homes m the Dominion there is no Bible teaching worthy of the name. THE SHORTCOMINGS OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS. Neither do Sunday Schools meet the want. Even if it can be shown that a goodly number of children of the Dominion attend Sunday Schools, how little can Sunday Schools do ! At best they afford but an hour's teachingweekly, given for the most part by untrained teachers to scholars who attend irregularly. There is hardly opportunity to teach even the bare historical facts, to say nothing of the application and edification which should follow. The only assured way to provide that all children shall have an opportunity of being taught the Bible is by having the Bible taught m the only places m which the State compels all children to assemble daily. THE SCHOOLS AND THIS CHURCH. It is a common saying that "to teach religion is the duty of the Church." It is a true saying, yet withal, a misleading one, because it contains at best only half a truth. The foundations of religion should be laid m the home and m the school. The know-

ledge of the Bible, as far at least as its literature and history are concerned, should be learned m the school day by day as part of the regular teaching. The late Rev. Dr Norman MacLeod early saw the part which the schools might be expected to take m laying these foundations without the fear of giving offence to any. When the Education Act for Scotland was under discussion THAT WELL-KNOWN SCOTTISH MINISTER wrote as follows : "There is a great talk about education, but why not religious instruction, if religious education is too glorious a thing to aspire after? Surely the facts of the Bible, what it records and says (whatever value individuals may attach to them) should be given to our children. Give me the alleged facts, I shall then have the skeletons which I can, through the Spirit, quicken into a great army-." ROMAN CATHOLIC AUTHORITIES. "A Christian people," wrote Cardinal Manning, "can be perpetuated only by Christian education. Schools without Christianity will rear a. people without Christianity. A people reared without Christianity will soon become anti-Christian." At the Roman Catholic Conference on Education, held m Sydney this year, the leading resolution adopted (as given m the newspaper telegram) was this : "That intellectual education must not be separated from moral and religious instruction." THE GREAT AGNOSTIC SECULARIST, Professor Huxley, bore the following testimony to the importance of having the Bible taught m the schools: "I have always been strongly m favour of secular education m the sense of education without theology; but I must confess that I have been no less anxiously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling which is the essential basis of conduct is to be kept up m the utterly chaotic state of opinion m these matters without the use of the Bible." This view is set out still more clearly by an undoubted authority, the late Mr Matthew Arnold, for so many years Inspector of Schools. In the preface to his little book, en-

titled "A Bible Reading for Schools," THIS LEADING AUTHORITY ON EDUCATION says: "There .is a substratum of history and literature m the Bible which belongs to science and schools. There is an application of the Bible and an edification by the Bible which belongs to religion and churches. Some people say that the Bible altogether belongs to the Church, and not to the school. This is an error. The Bible's application and edification belongs to the Church, its literary and historical substance to the school. Other people say that the Bible does indeed belong to the school as well as to the Church, but that its application and edification are , inseparable from its literature and history. This is an error. They are separable, and though its application and edification are what matter to a man far most (we say so m all sincerity), are what he mainly lives by, yet it so happens that it is just m this application and edification that religious differences arise." ONE OF THE GREATEST OF IMPERIALISTS, Mr Cecil Rhodes, who has proved himself one of the most cosmopolitan friends of education the world has seen, m an address at Bulawayo m 1901, spoke as follows : — "In England a Board School is not bound 'to ■have any religion. I think it is a mistake, just as I think it is a mistake m Australia that they have excluded history and religion from their schools. I am quite clear that a child brought up with religious thoughts makes a better human being. lam quite sure that to couple the ordinary school teaching with some thoughts of religion is better than dismissing religion from within the walls of the schools." For obvious reasons I have taken as my authorities men of very diverse views, BOTH ORTHODOX AND UNORTHODOX, and I could, of course, multiply the number infinitely did space permit. Surely the importance of the school function ought to be beyond dispute; yet the State ignored the school function as far

as Bible-teaching is concerned when she passed the present education law and gave the Bible no place m it. She did much more, for she practically annihilated the machinery hitherto existing for Bible-teaching, and did nothing to supply its place. In the next chapter I shall deal with the uselessness of the facilities afforded at present by the Education law for encouraging voluntary Bibleteaching by the Churches.