The Evening Star. THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1874

Evening Star, Issue 3401, 15 January 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star. THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 1874

The Anglican Episcopal Church is about to connect a day-school with All Saints’ Church, at which it is purposed to give a liberal education, combined with instruction in religious truth as held by the English Church. We do not know that we should have, any right to comment upon this fact, as we are not aware that the Government will be asked to contribute towards its support, were it not assumed to be a necessity because of the non-theological character of the education given in our public schools. Considered in that light, therefore, this school is a protest against a system which we hold to be the only equitable one on which national education can be based. As a private speculation there can be no objection to it ", as a Church institution there can be nothing said against it. . If there a better education can be given than isprovided for in the public schools, we have no doubt that it will be supported ; and, once established, it will contain within its constitution elements of continuity that will distinguish it from a school founded oh what the ‘Westminster Beview’ terms “the commercial principle.” Some may consider the plan a somewhat expensive one of conveying religious instruction by a Church ; and may think that a mode might have been hit upon by which children might have had it given to them in addition to the secular training in the public schools. The clergy of the Anglican Church, however, do not think so: they see difficulties which wo may be excused saying seem the merest, trifles to most of the laity; and since they will have this hobby of their own, like other sectarian hobbies, although it may prove expensive, it may perhaps‘lead to something less expensive. In support of this school, the Anglican Bishop poached'' cm Sunday • at All Saints’

Church. His Lordship was earnest, and strove hard to make out a case against our public school system; but we cannot compliment him on his success. ITis arguments were based upon the necessity for religious instruction : a fact that nobody denies.: But he went out of his way to shew that because the Bible ■wa spread without comment being allowed by the teacher, therefore children did not receive religious instruction.: We quite agree with him that such a sham is quite insufficient; but when his Lordship charges such a minimum of instruction upon the transcendentalists and philosophers of the day, he altogether misstates the case. It is not the philosophers and transcendentalists who are the obstructionists, it is sectarians— Church of England, Church of Rome, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, et id genus omne. The philosophers and transcendentalists are mere fictions of his Lordship’s brain. Supposing there are such rari aves in New Zealand, they are few and far between, and would not find their theories influence the building up of our social institutions in any great degree. We are an essentially practical people; quite as well posted up in the necessity for mental and moral training as his Lordship; and accustomed to deal with the affairs of life in a very practical way. So the matter really stands thus: Children requh*e to be taught many things, in order to fit them to fulfil their social duties; and they also need instruction in that Revelation which tells them of a- future state, and the arrangements made by which their characters can be fitted for happiness in Eternity. About literary and scientific teaching there is no difference of opinion, excepting as to degree. Everybody acimits that the more a man knows of those things the better it is for him, and sine? most of .them are capable of proof, or if of a traditional character it matters little whether 1 they are true or untrue, people do' hot quarrel about them. But yhen religion is introduced, up starts every sect in opposition to every other. Perhaps on those fundamental principles; considered necessary to be held as matters of faith, there is very litt)e difference; amongst the Protestant Churches. If. a person unbiassed by foregone training were to go the round of them, he would! scarcely hear a sermon in 'a :twelvemonth that might not be preached indifferently in any one of them ; and if he visited the 1 Roman Catholic Church, he would hear the. same doctrine with a little additional matter which he is asked to believe. Or if, desirous of ascertaining how children are taught in the Sunday schools, he visited them, and had opportunity of listening to what was said in each class, he might think the matter might be very much improved by a little judicious training of the teachers, but he would hear very little difference between one school and another. Yet, with these facts easily ascertainable, with scarcely any difference in doctrine, there is not one of those sects that would not object, to another havingthe privilege of giving exclusive religious instruction to chib dren in the day school. As they cannot agree therefore, the only alternative is to admit none of them. This exclusion is the grievance; but they have brought it upon themselves. ’ The Anglican Bishop, in his sermon on Sunday, seemed to imagine that this exclusion of theology from the day school was equivalent to no religious instruction. He need be under no apprehension otr that score. If the Churches have hitherto been asleep as to children, their parents have not. Very little do those advancing in life owe to the direct teaching of Churches when they were children; and very much have many of them to thank parents for, who, before the value of Sunday Schools was known,, were yet mindful that their children should not grow up without religious knowledge. Does his Lordship imagine that the parents of these days, most of whom have been taught, and many pf them teachers in Sunday Schools, are content to wait, for their children being instructed in religion until sectarian difference# have so. far disappeared, as to allow the clergy of one or two denominations to proclaim their dogmas in the day school I While they are striving for supremacy, children are growing up, and those who can compare the present generation with the people of two-thirds of a century back, can attest that so far from having deteriorated, as Bishop Neville seems to imagine, they are more intelligent, move moral, and more religious than their forefathers. No doubt there is great room for improvement, and we are glad to see the clergy rousing themselves to their duties. Our fear is that, in their newborn zeal, they will be something like Cromwell’s iconoclasts, more leady to pull down our present school system than to strengthen its usefulness, by adding to it the only instruction they are called upon to give at suitable times and places. Those places and times are not in day schools, nor during day school hours.