BISHOP COWIE AND THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 62, 4 July 1874, Page 9

BISHOP COWIE AND THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

, Auckland. A wbitbb in the Auckland ' Church Gazette ' calls the attention of his co-religionists to the unaccountable and, as he thinks, reprehensible line of conduct followed by Bishop Cowie and the Synod in regard to the question of education as it now stands. He reminds the Anglican public that the Bishop, in his opening address to the Synod, referred to the subject of religious education as "the most important subject for consideration of the Synod at the present time." Yet nothing, he says, has been done by the Synod to bring to any practical issue this •" most important subject. If, observes febe writer, this is the way that such a subject is to be dealt with by our Synod, can we expect that He who took the little onos in his arms and. blessed them, will honor the Anglican Church with his presence and his blessing ; and if these be wanting woe to us and our children. This statement comes from an Anglican " Layman," and is surely a very becoming and proper one. This official trifling and trimming with the important subject of religious education in public schools, seems anything but creditable to the Anglican Bishop of Auckland and his community. Well may the more zealous and consistent members of that community be scandalized at it. Would it be uncharitable U hint that possibly the Anglicans and other Protestant communities in the Province of Auckland are afraid to make any definite and practicel movement in the direction indicated by " Layman," lest by by doing so the Catholic body might indirectly profit by it. It has lately been asserted at a public meeting by a dissenting minister here, that it was to please the Boraau Catholics that Government prohibited the reading of the Bibl* in school hours. He might as well have said that it was to please Protestants that Government forbid Mass to -be said in Government schools — neither the Bible nor the Mass-book is admissable there. In England the singing of " God Save the Queen," has been prohibited in some Government schools, as that is a prayer or hymn to God. This is extreme, but logical. If religion is to be banished the school-room, so must the name of the Deity. There may be another way of explaining the Bishop's disinclination to press the Synod to any definite action or even expression of opinion on the important subject relerred to ; .mditie an -explanation I very much incline to. He may view with a JeeJiug of despair any attempt to obtain Government aid to denomijaatianol schools^ under present circumstances-rwhen the current of public opinion in this Colony runs so strong in favor of a purely secular education in Government schools. He may, therefore, think H the best policy quietly to encourage Church of England schools, and ieave the Government alone. The Church of England body are rich mough to provide schoolmasters and school-rooms of their own, independent of Government aid ; and they have sufficient zeal for their fsith, as a general rule, to induce them to send their children to their »i?n schools. This is our own position s and we may sympathise with the Anglican body, instead of blaming them. Still, Anglicans and Catholics ought to unite for the purpose of preventing so much public Stoney being diverted for the purpose of founding and supporting •shools from which the religion and the very name of God are to be -vanished. Moreover, Anglicans and Catholics see public schools, as in Otago, enjoying large public revenues on pretence that they are purely lecular, while in point of fact they are, in a certain sense, rank Presbyftrian, opposed in their teaching alike to Catholics and Anglicans. Ihis species of impudeDt public hypocrisy should be put down. It is contra bonos mores, and a public scandal— saving Mr McAndrew's presence — and with all due. respecct to the delicate feelings and nice lenee of decorum of the Dunedin Protestant Press. — Laic.