EAST CHRISTCHURCH.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 132, 2 November 1874, Page 4

EAST CHRISTCHURCH.

A meeting convened by the Rev E. A. Lingard was held on Saturday evening, at St Luke’s schoolroom, to hear an explanation of his views on the subject of education. The meeting was very thinly attended, only about seven persons being present—the notice being short, and Saturday night an exceedingly inconvenient night for the majority of persons to attend. The Rev H. C. M. Watson was voted to the chair, and in the course of his remarks oxpresed his opinion that the exclusion altogether of ministers of religion from the schools would be the means of causing a great amount of dissatisfaction, and would be the means of stirring up the different religious denominations to re-open the question, but he thought by allowing ministers the first half hour of the day to import instruction to the children of their denomination, this would be saved, and it might be done without taking away one moment of the time allotted to the work of the school. By this means he thought no one would have reason to complain. He would now call on the Rev Mr Lingard to address them. The Rev E. A. Lingard, on rising, said—the meeting had been called at very short notice, because it was the only opportunity he would have of speaking to them before the election on Monday, and he regretted that it had to be held on such an inconvenient night. He had asked them to meet him that evening to make his opinions on the matter clear, and to try to disabuse the minds of the electors of certain charges which he thought had been unjustly brought against him. His name had been pretty freely used in the public prints, and when he read a letter signed “ Presbyter,” which said that he was opposed to the Ordinance, he thought that it was only right that he should lay the facts before the electors. They had perhaps seen a handbill, which urged the electors not to vote for the clergyman who had denounced the system of education now in force as a Godless one. Now there were three clergymen of the Church of England candidates for seats on the committee for Christchurch East. There was the Rev Mr Watson, who could not be said to be opposed to the Ordinance, and who had never preached on the Ordinance, besides having been a member of the same committee for twelve months and re-elected, the Rev Mr Glasson, who had come to the colony after the agitation on the Ordinance was commenced, and himself. Now, it followed therefore that he (Mr Lingard) was the minister referred to ; it could be no one else. What he wanted to point out to the electors was this, that he had never opposed the Ordinance, and that he had never said that it was a Godless system. In order to prove this he desired to carry them back to May, 1873. During this session of the Council an attempt was made to strike out the 62nd clause of the Ordinance and put one in instead which provided forhalf-an-hour’s Bible reading in the morning. A very long discussion extending over a Sunday took place, which resulted in the 62nd clause being retained. On that Sunday he (Mr Lingard) took occasion to speak to his people on the subject, aud talked to them not of the system itself but of the exclusion of the Bible from the schools. He then said that he was willing to work alongside the Ordinance but also said that the Church had duties towards her children of which she could not divest herself or get rid of. In order to prove to them what he did say he would read to them from the sermon delivered by him on the 11th May. In opening his subject he said :—“ The connection between the present character and the consequent future condition of man is what I desire this morning to establish as a topic appropriate to a time like the present, when, as most of you are aware, it is proposed by the Provincial Government in the new Education Ordinance not only to withdraw all aid from denominational schools, but also to prohibit the ministers of any denomination from visiting the district schools with the view of imparting religious teaching in those schools ; the two subjects are closely connected with each other, and the consideration of the one will very materially assist us in deciding how we shall act as Churchmen with respect to the other. * * * * Such principles as these must, I maintain, ever have place in the Christian advocacy of schools. Without them the mere sharpening of the wit and storing of the mind with facts will be little worth; it may possibly be productive of much harm. And, bearing this in mind, let us look into the education measure now under the consideration of the Provincial Council, a measure which not only proposes to withdraw all aid from, aud thus endeavour to starve out, those denominational schools in this city, which up to the present time have undertaken alone the education of our children, and that creditably and efficiently, and combined with religious instruction, but a measure which also proposes to suppress all religious teaching whatever, save the mere reading of the Bible as a lesson book for half an hour each day, from the. schools which it is proposed to establish in their stead; and what can you say of such a measure 1 Can we accept it ? Can we as parents, as citizens, as Churchmen, accept it? I say no; a thousand times no. And I will tell you why. Because none of us, in our hearts, wish our children to depart from God, and we know that if we lay so much stress upon accomplishments, and so little upon good deeds ; if we are so solicitous about outward demeanor, and lay far less emphasis upon rightness of mind ; it we allow our children to be cheered on to academical success by those who do not minutely enter into the moral conditions under which they liv»., 1 say we know that we should be educating them for this world merely, for admiration, for success, but not for God and a strict devotion to duty, and a home at last in Heaven. Suppose we submit to the proposed measure, do not imagine for a moment that for all this worldliness an hour or two hours of catechetical teaching in the Sunday school, or a few extra sermons to children, or a regular course of church-going, will be any remedy. Do not be persuaded to believe that the parents of these children will undertake their religious teaching ; many of them are totally unable to impart such teaching ; many of them have not time or opportunity to devote to the cause ; aud many, alas ! would absolutely neglect it altogether. Be assured that you can do your children no solid good unless you train them in a daily and hourly walk with God ; that unless the mind of Christ is being daily formed in them, you can never hope to prepare them for their eternal home in heaven. What, then, shall we do ? If you are persuaded that I am not far wrong in the view I have taken of the subject, then I say it is your bounden duty to rise to a man and protest against the introduction of such a measure before it be-

comes a settled law, wdth all the power and ability of which you are possessed. It is said it is not the duty of the State to provide religious teaching; but I maintain in my humble opinion that it is the duty of the State to have the well-being of the people at heart, to consult their interests and reasonable demands, and, without absolutely providing for religious instruction in district schools, yet at least to recognise and grant aid to the existing denominational schools so long as they may be found to satisfy Government requirements with regard to numbers, discipline, and secular instruction.” And he concluded his sermon as follows : “ And if, after all our endeavours, our schools are still to be cast adrift, we can only accept the position in which wo shall be placed, and the Church must then take the training and instruction of the young members of her flock in hand, alone and unassisted, believing that in His own good time, God will cause the course of events to be changed,” This was the sermon which had been referred to in the Council by Mr Maude, the present Secretary for Public Works, On another occasion preaching a sermon in connection with the Sunday school on August.'list, 1873, he had used theso words : “The only effectual means under God of rendering a community either a blessing to themselves or to others, useful members of society, or sincere disciples of Jesus Christ, appear to consist in imparting to the young mind when yet its sentiments are unformed, or its habits settled, the principles of a virtuous and Godly education ; 1 say advisedly a Godly education, because on this point sufficient stress does not seem to have been laid of late by many of the advocates for or promoters of the instruction of the young.” These were the only times on which he had referred to the Education Ordinance, or the system which the Government had adopted, aud it was not fair to go to the electors with such placards as those he had referred to, and to make statements such as had been made with regard to him. He had said that he would work alongside the Ordinance, but at the same time he said that the Church had a duty to do by her children which she could not abrogate, to see that the children received that religious instruction which they held they should get. It might be said why did he not avail himself of the permission given by the East Christchurch committee for religious instruction during the year. The committee did grant this, but accompanied with a recommendation that the ministers should agree upon some scheme of co-operation. This was explained by Mr Habens in a recent letter to the papers, where he says : —“ In due course the request of the ministers came before the East Christchurch committee. After a discussion, in which I declined to take part, it was resolved, on the motion of the Rev H. C. M. Watson, that the request should be granted, but that the committee would have preferred the adoption of a scheme in which all the ministers should co-operate.” Now he might say that he only got to know of this by a side-wind, through the newspapers. But leaving that out of the question, it seemed to him that it meant giving unsectarian instruction, which he was opposed to, still was, and should always be. Besides this, he had his own school to look after, and when the assistant curate came into the parish religious instruction was given to the children attending that school week about by himself and the curate. He might have been wrong in not taking advantage of the permission, but he had not done so, aud he had told them the reason why. He now came to the 62nd clause, and ho thought that it was not intended that the children should be drafted off to the churches or other buildings, because it would be productive of great disorder, and because we cannot make the masters responsible for their transmission, say from the Music Hall to the school where they then were or back again. The Ordinance, he contended, never contemplated that. It would be easy to arrange for it being given in the schools. The committee give the ministers of the various denominations permission to do this, and he could not see why Mr Watson, Mr Buller, Mr Fraser, Mr Habens, and himself could not go to the schools and take their own children into different parts of the building where they would be quite private. He contended that the recommendation of the East Christchurch committee was contrary to the Ordinance. The 62nd clause particularly guarded the interests of every denomination by saying that ministers of religion or other persons appointed by them may impart religious instruction to children who may belong to their denomination, but if they were tc impart unsectarian instruction. as was implied by the recommendation of the committee, they would be taking children who might not be of their denomination, and this would be opposed to the Ordinance. He thought that they as parents, when they sent their children to the schools, desired that they should have the right to see that they received religious instruction from the minister of their own denomination. There was no such thing as unsectarian education, because no man could teach the Bible without giving his own interpretation, and'commenting on it from his own point of view. So also with English history. Any one taking the history of the Reformation of the Church of England would be bound to give his view of it, even taking it from the text book. The West Christchurch committee, when applied to to allow the ministers to give religious instruction, offered the Saturday, but he (Mr Lingard) contended that this was opposed to the Ordinance, which said that it should be one whole or two half school days. Now Saturday was nota school day, and further than this it was the day upon which parents required their children at home, it was also the only holiday the children had and it would be cruel to take that from them. He contended that religious instruction should be given in the morning ; it should form the first lesson of the day. If the committee camto them aud said “ Gentlemen, you can come in from nine to ten o’clock and make your own arrangements,” they could then take the children of their respective denominations and impart religious instruction without interfering with the work of the school. The writer of a letter signed “ Presbyter,” imputed that he (Mr Lingard) wanted to get on the committee, as a traitor, but he denied it. What he wanted was to see the 62nd clause of the Ordinance carried out, and he had stated so at the recent meeting. If successful, his first duty would be to endeavour to impress upon the committee to carry that clause out, and allow ministers to come into the schools. He believed that they would have considered the Ordinance a Godless one had the 62nd clause not bien retained, and if the resolution on the 11th May to strike that clause out had been

carried then he might have said that it was so, but he had never made use of any such expression on any occasion. As he had told the meeting on a recent occasion, if elected, and he failed in his object in getting the committee to carry out the 62nd clause, he should resign, not on account of personal feeling of failure, but simply to allow of some other person being elected who would work with the other eight gentlemen. Mr Lingard then announced his willingness to answer any questions which might be asked of him. No questions being asked, Mr Lingard resumed his seat. Mr W. R. Mitchell said that as a candidate he might be expected to say something. He had attended the adjourned meeting at Christchurch cast as a visitor, but he was asked to come forward as a candidate, and when he saw Archdeacon Harper’s motion for the establishment of day schools in connection with the Church, ho felt that this must be looked upon as being an upsetting of the Ordinance, and that they had something to guard. How he looked at the case was this, that the Ordinance, which had been accepted by the people, should have a fair trial. It had shown that there was a very large amount of good in it; they had succeeded in bringing the children of all denominations under one roof, receiving the same instruction, which ho took to be a great thing. It could not, he thought, be denied that the opposition to the Ordinance came from the clergy of the Church of England, nor that to a very large extent this opposition met with little or no sympathy from the great majority of the ratepayers. They were bound to regard the Synod as the representative body of the Church, and there he found that motions had been brought forward [affirming the necessity of continuing the Church dayschools, which, as he had before said, could not be looked upon in any other way than as in opposition to the Ordinance. He found, also, that the representatives in the Synod from Geraldine and Okains Bay had stated that the Church Catechism had been successfully taught. Now he (Mr Mitchell) contended that the introduction of the Church Catechism into their national schools was opposed to the Ordinance as being dogmatic teaching ; except during those hours when the clergymen were permitted to attend, this kind of teaching should be strictly confined to these times, and not allowed to be given at any other time. He found that he was in error when he said that all the denominations were represented at the public schools, because he found that the Catholic clergy would not allow of their children being sent to the Government schools, and they looked upon any one sending their children as not being a good Catholic. He was sorry that this was so. because he thought that the sixty-second clause provided means for getting over this difficulty an 1 meeting all denominations. One instance of liberality on the part of their Catholic fellow citizens, however, he must mention, which was, that that when religious instruction was to be given in the Catholic Schools, the Protestant children, of whom a number attended, were removed to another part of the room, and set to arithmetic or some other task. In speaking upon this question of religious education, he was placed in rather a peculiar position, because they had all been taught to look up to the clergy, and therefore, to speak against them was somewhat painful to him. Mr Lingard had read portions of his sermons to them, but he must say that they appeared to have been preached with a motive. It was, he held, a premature step for Mr Lingard to have taken, because the Ordinance at that time was not in force. No time had been allowed for it to be tried, and he could not help thinking that it would have been better that it should have been allowed to work out and see how it did so, and then, if the clergy found that it was not doing well, it would bo for them to then have taken steps against it ; but it was, in his opinion, premature at the very outset. The public took the Kyuod to be the representative of the clergy, and looking at it from this light he thought the clergy should have stood aloof, and allowed the Ordinance to work out the great amount of good there was in it. In reply to a question from Mr Meddings, Mr Mitchell said that if ministers of all denominations agreed amongst themselves to go into the schools, and a day was fixed for that purpose, he would agree to allow of this being done. In reply to the chairman, Mr Mitchell said that he would be prepared to carry out the 62nd clause of the Ordinance so far as laid down in the Ordinance. Mr Lingard—Do you consider the establishment of church day schools as being in opposition to the Ordinance. Mr Mitchell—l certainly do consider that it would be so. A vote of thanks to the chairman concluded the proceedings.