The Last Reason

I shall give, and in it is involved the page 4 crucial point of the whole controversy. The introduction of Bible teaching will give taxpayers a better return for their money, and will increase the efficiency of the present system.

Secular teaching by itself is in sufficient for the equipment of man even for the present life, and those young men and women who proceed from such schools are, as a rule, not nearly so well fitted for the duties of private, social and political life as are those who are well versed in the scriptures, and are regulated in their transactions with their fellow men by those vital principles of truth taught therein. "The entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple." " A good understanding have all they who feat the Lord." Look at Joseph in Egypt, at Daniel in Babylon, and a thousand other illustrations of the fact that those who enjoy the favor of the Lord have also, as a rule, the favor of man, at all events, even when their interests clash, his respect and confidence. But I must hurry on and emphasise, with all the scathing indignation I can express, the anomalous and cruel fact that for nearly twenty years this secularism has held possession of our schools, because, forsooth! the Bible might offend the tender and ignorant consciences of a miserable minority of Atheists, Freethinkers, jews, Mussulmen, and Agnostics or know nothings; while the sentiments. Wishes and consciences of the great majority of our Christian colonists have been ignored, violated and trampled upon daily. It reminds me of that peculiar and off times morbid love that a mother has for an idiot child or maybe an errant and wild scapegrace of a son, which lavishes all its care and attention on the silliest and least worthy, while the others have only the crumbs of affection left them. The scapegrace of godless secularism is petted and nourished, while religion, the fountain and handmaid of every virtue, is ignored and starved, and put outside of our schools as [unclear: some] inherently wrong, Before the [unclear: cen] tury close in darkness and [unclear: troj] let us put away from us this [unclear: st] of infatuated silliness and [unclear: mis] toleration ! Do we want good [unclear: fre] from education ? Do we [unclear: ind] Let me give you then the [unclear: opini] one or two authorities on the [unclear: res] of secular teaching, for which [unclear: wa] taxpayers, and so liberally [unclear: pa] A writer in a pamphlet on the education system of Victoria says, [unclear: rega] the teachers and taught, " They [unclear: ha]been brought up under a [unclear: sys] which puts reading before religion writing before righteousness, [unclear: gr] mar before goodness, and verbs [unclear: be] virtue.' Bishop Bromley, of [unclear: ho] recently made the strong [unclear: sta] in the Victorian Review, which dicates a low moral tone in [unclear: pupi] teachers alike. He said :[unclear: th] State school-teachers are making [unclear: the] pupils as much the children of [unclear: the] as themselves." Bishop [unclear: Moor] now of Manchester, said in [unclear: ref] to the Victorian system that " continued in force his [unclear: br] ministers would soon find their [unclear: ow] pation gone. They would no [unclear: to] be pastors of Christian [unclear: chur] would have to become [unclear: missiona] the white heathen around then From America come such [unclear: words] these, "The system of secular [unclear: educa] tion in the public schools [unclear: fai] train young people for the duties [unclear: of] business of life. It rather [unclear: mu] them bumptious and [unclear: imperml] The public school is one of [unclear: the] agencies of social vice, "where [unclear: te] influences are as rife as fungi [unclear: in] swamp." " When religion is[unclear: dri] out of the heart of man, [unclear: supers] rushes in to fill the vacuum, [unclear: cl] paring Massachusetts and her sister New England States[unclear: when] secular education prevails, and [unclear: gina] and her five sister States [unclear: whih] parents educate their own [unclear: chi] denominational schools, we [unclear: fin] the former produces in the [unclear: ra] the population four times [unclear: as th] criminals as the latter, twenty times as many paupers, for [unclear: time] page 5 many suicides, and twice as many luna tice." Secular education by itself, apart from the life giving principles of true religion is of Satan. He would have a cynical and malignant joy could this his masterpiece of destructive enmity to God and man, be established generally in the world.