PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1915, Page 7

PRESBYTERIAN SCHOOLS.

DEVELOPMENT AND AIMS. LADY PRINCIPALS ADDRESS THE ASSEMBLY. Auckland, Nov 22. The movement for the establishment of Presbyterian girls' and boys' colleges is having a rapid development. Though it was only in 1!>11 that the first step was taken by the General Assemblv there have been opened this year girls' colleges at Haveloek North", at Duncdin, and at Auckland, and in February next a new girls' college will be opened in iMasterton, and a boys' college in Wellington. The presbytery of Southland also have just appointed a committee to promote a pirls' college in Invercargill. Miss I Macdonald, M.A., the principal of the Auckland College, to-day delivered an address which seemed to one competent critic the finest he had ever heard. It dealt with the aspects of her own college, but asserted her view of the manner of imparting religious instruction. ''With us," she said, "religion need never come in at all. It is there all the time, before all things and in all things. It is possible to act oil the assumption that reference to Christian standards is always and everywhere, and by all welcome. We should be unable to think that the last word on religious education had been spoken by John Knox, 01 even by the fathers of the Westminster Assembly Some of my! own ancestors signed' the 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 rredal 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 Maedonald is the daughter of the late Professor of Systematic Theology >1 Ormond College, Melbourne. She is a second cousin of the late Principal Rainy, of Edinburgh, of whose eloquence Miss Maedonald's style is suggestive. Mrs. Lawrence Thomson, M.A., of Solway House College, Masterton, spoke at greater length. She paid a fervent tribute to the religious influence of the principals of the various Government High Schools known to her throughout the colony, mentioning some of these in detail. She showed how the Presbyterian Church was shedding a beneficent influence upon the religious character of the girls of these schools. On the other hand, these good women would acknowledge that the Church schools would provide an atmosphere unfettered by the restrictions inseparable from Government schools. The workers in these Church schools would look forward to the living bond of the church. Mrs, Thomson indicated at length the character of her college, in 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, and as Mrs. Thomson was leaving the platform the leaders of the Assembly came forward extending thoir hands to her with much emotion. The demonstration showed the place Mrs. Thomson had already gained in the heart of the Church.