But while educational peace is thus secured by this concordat
in New South Wales, a very different state of affairs prevails in Victoria. There the definition of " secular " has been left to the discretion of successive Ministers of Education, with the result that a wholesale expurgation of school-books was carried out. Everything relating to Christianity was deleted, and so far did this eviscerating process go that Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" was mutilated, the "Wreck of the ' Hesperus " was shorn of the stanza describing how the maiden "thought of Christ who stilled the waves On the Sea of Galilee"; and the "Christian mother" of the poet became the "frantic mother" of the secular pedant. Years after the Victorian Parliament directed the restoration of the expurgated passages, "but this has not yet been done." Apart from the literary barbarism involved, could anything be more calculated to defeat its ends and provoke re- prisals than this secularist obscurantism ? In the days of Sing Bomba the luggage of travellers was searched at Naples for heretical books, which were ordered to be con- fiscated. The Custom House officers adopted the simple plan of seizing any book in which they found the name of God or Christ. If our religious extremists join with the secularists to banish religion from our schools, we shall, we suppose, see similar instructions issued by the Education Department in regard to school readers.
Previous page
