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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

National Life

National Life

upon the apex of a pyramid, its foundation the negation of God, and its head a hideous monster of innumerable laws, the oil-spring of minds steeped in arid secularism and gross materialism. Just one word on the value of the Bible in schools as a book of literature that cannot be surpassed in the world of letters. Professor Huxley (in words I have forgotten) gives emphatic testimony that it is impossible for a man to consider himself as educated without an intimate knowledge of its histories, its poetry, its grand epic stories, and the national anthems of the psalms. Professor Moulton in his new book has these words, "The Bible has page 6 lyrics which Pindar cannot surpass, rhetorics as forcible as Demosthenes, and contemplative prose not inferior to Plato's." "What a book!" exclaimed the brilliant and sceptical Heine, after a day spent in the unwonted task of reading it. "Vast and wide as the world, rooted in the abyss of creation, and towering up beyond the blue vaults of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, life and death, the whole drama of humanity are all in this book! Its light is like the body of the heavens in its clearness; its vastness like the bosom of the sea; its variety like the scenes of nature,"' Goethe says, " Let the world profess as it likes, let all the branches of human research develop to the very utmost, nothing will take the place of the Bible, that foundation of all culture and of all education." How, then, I ask, can young people brought up in ignorance of such a book become interested in general literature, when it is saturated through and through with allusions and reference to its contents ? A taste for reading is one great preservative from vice and idleness, and we take no steps to encourage stimulate it. I am done when give expression to sentiments [unclear: fore] spoken in Oamaru. We are in new land, and are building up a [unclear: ew] nation. Do we desire to build greatness, and make New Zealand power for good in the world ?[unclear: the] let us recognise that while [unclear: grete] finds its nourishment in [unclear: material] wealth; its inspiration is in magnificence of thought; its foundation and stability lie in [unclear: obediefl] God's law of righteousness. [unclear: let] then teach, let us educate, but [unclear: let] first and above all give our [unclear: childr] the knowledge of the only [unclear: livi] true God our Saviour. If generally throughout the world [unclear: ha] their actions directed by the [unclear: wis] from above," and if their lives [unclear: ay] pervaded by the love of God man, when our sons should be plants grown up in their youth our daughters were as corner polished after the similitude palace," we might begin to look [unclear: of] for the advent of that millennial when, in the words of Burns,

"Man to man the world o'er

Shall brothers be for a that"