Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 46

The New Zealand Parliament Mistake: Namely, The Education Act of 1877!

page break

The New Zealand Parliament Mistake: Namely, The Education Act of 1877!

By this Act the Creator of All is virtually shut out of the School-room. HIS name is not permitted to be mentioned,—the whole catalogue of heathen gods may be!

The most interesting of all interesting histories, the history of God's own ancient people, by order of this our N.Z. Parliament, must not be listened to by the children,—is forbidden; and it is further declared that this being a sacred history, there is no guarantee that the school teachers as a body are fit to have it trusted into their hands. (?) This paltry excuse is in truth nothing short of a libel.

Again, while the teaching of some kind of morality in the schools cannot by any possibility be avoided, yet this wisdom?) of our Parliament decides (by a bare majority, thanks!) that the youth of this land shall not even listen in the common schools to the bare reading of the book upon which the morality of the whole civilized world hangs; but they shall take the chance of receiving their flimsy morals, second-hand and diluted, in place of at the fountain itself.

Once more,—the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and any of the words which came from His lips, may be heard anywhere else, but shall not be mentioned inside the doorways of our schools, except by an infringement of the education laws of the 19th century!

Truly mad legislation all this, legislation which must bring its national blight and curse upon the land. Can any Education Act page break with such a blank as this prove a blessing?—Never! Its tendency will be but to produce clever rogues, schemers or villains. It will bear its deadly fruit, it has already done so in some states of America, and is now working the same end in Australia. Bitter, bitter fruit, in an increase of more clever and genteeler crime! That is indeed a hateful system of education in a professed Christian country, which cannot admit even the ten commandments—upon which the British constitution itself is based—into its common schools! Shame upon such statesmen. Will any wise Government persist in shutting out from the minds of her public youth the very name of the Creator? and also the bare words of the divine Book,* which is the light of the whole world, and without which secular instruction is but darkness! If such continues in N.Z. it will cause many to blush and to tremble for this new colony—to be truly ashamed of the land of our adoption, and pre-eminently so of its Parliament of 1877!

Patriot.

page break

The New Zealand Parliament Mistake: Namely The Education Act of 1877!

No. 2.

By this Act the Creator of ALL is virtually shut out of the School-room. His name is not permitted to be mentioned,—the whole catalogue of the heathen gods may be! (Viae No. I.)

That truly great and noble man, who was the instrument of shedding light in the minds and hearts of millions in Europe in the 16th century—Luther—and who also was the reformer indirectly of governments and empires, spoke the following notable and never to be forgotten words, viz:—

"I am much afraid that the universities will prove to be the great gates of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt."

Weightly words these, and fit to command the most serious attention of the governing power in every civilised country. The blind infatuation however, of a small majority of the New Zealand Parliament of 1877, has acted the exact reverse, they have deliberately withdrawn from the young of the Colony in their daily schools the light of God's revelation to man,—every child's birthright! They have deprived (robbed) the children of that which is their only safeguard for becoming trustworthy citizens of a new colony. They have so voted, that our Public Schools by having the Book of Books excluded, are in truth nothing else than heathen educational establishments, or indeed worse, for some of the heathen nations have not acted thus blindly! What a lasting curse upon the country, and on the memory of the godless legislators, will follow in the fruits yet to be reaped! Who, who in our N.Z. Parliament will awake to the dreadful consequences that the present condition of blight in our Public Schools must end in. The common foundation of all desirable moral and social life is forcibly removed from hearing! What remains? What? Who will say!

Let the whole Colony of New Zealand remember well the Word of God which says:—Them (Nations?) that Honour Me, I Will Honour, but they that Despise Me Shall be Lightly Esteemed!

Patriot.

* Note.—In a school where it so happened a majority of children belonged to Roman Catholic parents, let the Douay version be read, the other scholars absenting themselves, as vice versa. In any and every case the public reading could be undertaken (if preferred) by an elder class in place of the teacher. The reading (only) of the Bible in schools is a national question, a question purely between the Government and the people, and which the clergy of any church in their public capacity have nothing whatever necessarily to do. Let these take their position as private citizens on this matter, as we truly believe the very large majority are perfectly willing to do. The divine Book is national property, therefore unsectarian; and whether the authorised or the more corrupt version is used in any particular school, may be safely left with majorities.