PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOLS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2626, 23 November 1915, Page 8

PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOLS

THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT. (By Correspondent.) , Auckland, November 22. The movement-for the establishment of Presbyterian girls' and boys' colleges is having a rapid dpvcloprneut. Though it was only in 1911 that the first step was taken by the General Assembly tliero have been open this year girls' colleges at Havelock North, at Dunedin, and at Auckland, aiul in .February next) a new girls' college will be opened in Masterton, and a bovs 1 collogo in Wellington. Tho Presbytery ol' Southland also have just appointed a committee to promote a girls' college in Invercargill. Miss I. Mac Donald, M.A., the principal of the Auckland College, delivered an address to the Assembly, in which fill© dealt with the aspccts of her own. college, but asserted iicr view of the manner of imparting religious instruction. She said: "Religiou need never come in at all,.it is there all the time before all things and in all things. For us it is possible to act on the assumption that reference to Christian standards is always and everywhere, and by all wclcome. I should be enable to think that fclie last word oil religious education had been spoken by John Knox or even by the fathers of the Westminster Assembly. Some of my own ancestors signed tho National Covenant,' and there are yet dearer and more venerated _ memories which would ever make it impossible for me to throw any discredit- upon doctrinal or credal statements in their proper place. It would be unwise, however, to try to do anything but give a religious, training of the very broadest character, and that .indeed is the very characteristic of the spirit and teaching of the Presbyterian Church."

■-Miss- Mac Donald is the- daughter of the late Professor of Systematic Theology in Ormond College, Melbourne; she is a second cousin of the late Principal Rainy, of Edinburgh, of whose eloquence Miss Mac Donald's style is suggestive.

Mrs. Lawrence Thomson, M.A., of Solway House College, Mastertou, spoke at greater length. _ She paid a fervent tribute to tlie religious influence of the principals of the various Government high schools known to her throughout Dominion, mentioning some of these in detail. She showed how the Presbyterian Church was shedding a beneficent influence upon tlie religious character of the girls of theso schools, on the other hand these good women would acknowledge that the Church . schools would provide an atmosphere unfettered by tho restrictions inseparable from Government schools. The workers in these Church schools would look forward to the living, band of the Church, and so far as the Church was the living band of Christ's. She indicated at length tho character of her college, ill which her'husband, the Rev. Lawrence Thomson, recently of Carterton, would co-operate with her.

The address, which was delivered extempore, made a deep impression on the Assembly. As sho was leaving -the platform the leaders of the Assembly came forward, extending their hands to her with much emotion. Representation in their action showed the place Mrs. Thompson had already gained in the heart of the Church.