LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
"THE BIBLE WITHOUT NOTE OR COMMENT."
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—The argument of your correspondent "0." in favour of read- ing the Bible in schools "without note or comment" is really an argu- ment against giving religious instruction in schools at all. The vast majority of men and women, and all children with the very rarest exceptions, though perfectly capable of learning from the living teacher, are totally incapable of learning from books. The book is only an instrument in the hands of the teacher, and says to the pupil whatever the teacher chooses to make it say. To the pupils therefore the reading of the Bible, if the teacher is to be forbidden to comment on it, will in any direct way be simply useless.
But it will in another way be injurious. It will quiet people's consciences with the notion that some religious instruction is given, when there is really none ; it will be a compromise—to many, perhaps, an acceptable compromise—whereby the appearance of religious teaching will be retained and its reality abandoned. It will, moreover, tend to foster a notion that exists here in Ireland, and I think it likely in England also, and which every one who wishes well to true religious education ought to discountenance, —the feeling, I mean, that the reading the Bible in public is a religious service, acceptable in itself to God ; just as the Scotch are said to feel about preaching.—I am, Sir, &c.,
JOSEPH JOHN MURPHY.
Old Forge, Dunmurry, County Antrim, December 19, 1870.
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