THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

White Ribbon, Volume 16, Issue 189, 16 March 1911, Page 1

THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

A Plea for the Recognition of its Value in English Education. ( Contributed.) THE celebration of the Tercentenary of the issue of the Authorised Version of the Bible, which falls in this year of grace, nineteen hundred and eleven, is a universal topic at present. From the cheap evening newspaper of the United Kingdom to the highpriced magazine of the United States, to-day no issue in the world of letters hut contains some reference to this topic. In one issue we read that the authorities of the British Museum in London are organising an exhibition, illustrative of the history and development of the British Bible ; in another, that in all Protestant Churches in Great Britain, the theme for the Sunday discourse on March 26th will be, “The debt owed by Englishspeaking peoples to the Bible." But these celebrations w T ill in no degree be sectional. Schools,

colleges, and civic bodies will take part in this movement, with wHiich King George, and, it is hoped, President Taft,and all Colonial Governors and statesmen, will be associated. In the Commonwealth of Australia, we learn, from other sources, similar preparations are afoot, and every State in that great continent w ill pay tribute to the English Bible, contemporaneously w ith the Mother Country. But it is in Canada, and the United States of America, that most extensive preparations are in progress.

There, each section of the community will vie with each in demonstrating its particular indebtedness to the English Bible. Governors of States and Municipalities, law ryers and judges, all heads of schools, colleges and universities, will concern themselves with such phases of the movement as these : The relation of the English Bible to the foundation and development of free institutions. The relation of the English Bible to the laws of the land.

The influence of the English Bible on the English language, on Englis i literature, on English manners and customs —on the social life, and, generally, the value of the English Bible as a force in the education and culture of the people ; while the Churches and the man * and various religious bodies will show forth a people’s indebtedness on the spiritual side. It needs no great prophet, then, to predict *hat ere thic yesr grace, nineteen hundred and eleven, has passed aw r ay, there will hardly he one man, one woman, one little child even, in all these great continents and islands, hut will have heard something of the story of the English Bible; learnt something, it may he, of its influence on human life. It is fitting here to ask what part New Zealand will take in these celebrations? Shall w r e, in this Dominion, consider the celebration of this event unworthy our attention, as heretofore, we considered the Book, which is

the raison d'etre of these w'orld-wide celebrations, unworthya place in our State system of education ?

No! a thousand times no! Let us confess our folly ; turn from it ; and be wise in time. And first, let us join our great contemporaries in a consideration of the value of the English Bible as a force in the education of all young people. Let us put far from us, now\ and for all time, that erroneous conception, that the only value of the Bible to the school is the value put upon it by

teachers of religious and strictly denominational dogma. This, my friends, is a sad error, all the sadder that it is the error chiefly of the religious in our community. Is it not sad to see atheist and

agnostic, alike, agree that this Book is valuable were it simply and solely V for Its ethical teachings? “The \ tipest system of ethics ever projmulgated in this world,” is here if we accept the statement of the infidel philosophers of old. And Yyet, the (Jhristian i ducationalist, so blinded is he by his fears, his pusillanimous, his unfounded, fears, will see no value in it whatever, to a system of State education. This is a sad error, an error which will cost us much. What would you think of a surgeon who cast asid* his finest surgical instrument when operating on the youth of the State ? What do you, my friends of the W.C.T.U., think of the educationists in this Dominion who have cast aside their finest instrument for the ethical training of the youth in the State Schools? It is a matter which nearly concerns you —you who wage such waifare upon the Demons of Drink and Impurity, demons which gain a foothold most readily wherever ethical training is most defective. What you do think of it will depend greatly upon your point of view in regard to the schools of the State. Do you see in these schools merely workshops, where young people are instructed in socalled knowledge, which will he to them more or less useful or useless in after-life? Or have you joined the ranks of the Modernists? Do you look on schools as establishments for training and developing all the faculties with which youthful minds and bodies are endowed ? If you are of the latter persuasion, you are the less likely to overlook the psychological facts, that the faculties of mind develop in obedience to law - that all the faculties of mind, as well as the sensations and passions, are more or less under the dominion of the power of the will, and that for the adequate development of will /Hour —to the end that all the faculties of mind, the sensations, and the passions, may he in fit subjection, properly kept in the dominion of the power of the

will —ethical training alone will suffice.

Do you recognise that the measure of one’s education, in a word, is the measure of one’s power of selfcontrol self-control in its deepest, its widest sense? Then let us ask the question, where did our martyrs, our heroes of old, learn self-control ? Where shall the youth of the State most readily acquire this ethical training in self-control ? Shall we leave it to chance —a haphazard home training a Sunday School training, mayhap ?

Let us he wise in time. Let us celebrate this great Tercentenary by having the value of the Bible recognised by every educationist and school authority in our Dominion. —E.C.Y.