Clerical Limitations.

Though approved by the Bible-in-Schools Conference held in Wellington in 1903 as "suitable for use in the schools of the colony," and as such urged upon the Government and the country, the text-book is not the work of that Conference or of any of its members or constituents. The book is practically that recommended for Victoria by the Royal Commission which was appointed in 1900 to suggest a scheme of religious instruction for the State schools of that colony. The exclusively clerical personnel of the Victorian Commission raised a very strong presumption of its unfitness for the delicate duty with which it was entrusted. Ministers of religion can, of course, be found who are able to realise and tolerate points of view which they do not share, and to make allowance accordingly for the essential distinction between the State school and the Sunday-school, but if there were any such upon the Victorian Commission they failed to make their influence felt upon its decision, and if there were any such among those who in New Zealand undertook the revision of the Victorian manual, they also must have been overborne by their colleagues. There are 408 lessons in the Victorian selection; all but six of these are included in the text-book proposed for this colony, and not a single new one has been added, unless the repetition in the Senior Course of the Ten Commandments, which the Victorian Commissioners had included in the Junior only, can he properly so termed. Two of the omissions only are of an important character. The most difficult of the New Testament miracles are those of the cursing of the fig-tree and the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, which stand in a class apart as involving the destruction of innocent life. The Victorian Commissioners included the former while rejecting the latter, but the New Zealand editors have given their only indication of an accommodating spirit by omitting the former also. In both cases, however, the difficulties of children, rather than those of parents or teachers, may reasonably be regarded as the determining element.