THE following protest has been drawn up by the Free Presbyterian Synod Committee on the subject:— “The Committee appointed by the Synod desire in the most emphatic manner to protest against the lack of provision for Bible teaching in the new Act. They consider it altogether inadequate that instruction in religious knowledge should be left as it is in the Act, and maintain that the least that could have been expected was that Bible teaching should be made mandatory in all the national schools. They feel that this was but a matter of bare justice, in view of the privilege granted to the denominational, voluntary, transferred schools. In regard to the latter, they wish to protest against the gross injustice of asking Education Authorities (consisting largely of Protestant members), within whose bounds those schools are, to see to it that teaching in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or the Scottish Episcopal Church, be given in these schools. They feel that privileged positions have been given to these Churches, while the wishes of true Protestants have been unaccountably ignored.
“The Committee desire to utter their protest against the policy that has too long been in vogue of employing the money of Protestant ratepayers for the maintenance of the ruinous doctrines of the Church of Rome. They express the hope that in any amendment made in the near future in the Act that provision will be made for the mandatory teaching of the Bible, and that those clauses of the Act, giving a privileged position to the transferred, voluntary, denominational schools, shall be deleted.”
N. C.