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Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2860, 15 April 1878, Page 2

On " Speech Day" at Derby School (we learn from the Derby and Chesterfield Reporter of Feb. 1) the Bishop of Lichfield presided and presented the prizes to the boys. The proceedings are described as being of a highly interesting character, rendered more so by the success of Mr Hobaon, son of the Mayor of Derby, at Cambridge the previous week, where he took honors as senior wrangler. Dr Selwyn delivered a most interesting address at the presentation, referring to a question which bits for some time past agitated the public mind of this colony, namely religious education. On this subject the Bishop said:— ■U He could not help believing tbat they might be losing,sight of the fact that those attempts to keep bishops and religion from their schools, or rather to reduce the bishop to an inferior position, was going back to those days of ignorance and barbarism, when it was supposed the

greater went round tho less, nnd not the loss round tho greater. He hoped there would be a counteracting effect. There seemed to him to be powers and influences at work to lower religion nnd ministers as agents of public education, and the public feeling of the country must unmistakeably declare the necessity, of having the religious element in schools, unless they desired to go back to tho poor religion of past days. When he used to visit Shrosberry and Repton and other, schools, they were tho days of the greatest happiness, the greatest thankfulness, and the greatest enjoyment, for on thote occasions all boys who were of ago to be conGrmed were brought forward for confirmation in a state of careful preparation, and with inch evident reverence in their demeanour tend manner that he believed nothing could' remove the religious element from their public schools. .He hoped God would protect them from the spread of infidelity, and that He would not allow it to enter into their public schools. It was their religious'education that had enabled them to take the iead amongst the nations of the earth, and it was the religious element alone which could preserve them in that state."