Sounding Brass

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 34, 24 August 1905, Page 1

Sounding Brass

4 An outstanding feature of the R.C. Church,' says a writer in the N.Z. ' Outlook ' (Presbyterian-Metho-dist-Congregiationali'st), 'is the thoroughness of the way in which they secure the education of their children. We know how in this Colony they have taken the education of their children into their own hands, at their own expense, riather thatfi hand them over to the free, but secular, schools.' We add the following comment, borrowed from a discourse by the Rev. Dr. iLorimer, a New York Baptist preacher : 'If Piotestant Churches were as interested m the education of their children as the Catholic Church is, there would be no religious problem in our country.' This outspoken declaration holdsi as good for New Zealand ' as it does for home-land of Uncle Sam. Instead of teaching children the way to life— and leading, them thither— your average Brbile-in-schools cleric sprains his arm welting the political tomtom and dislocates his tongue beseeching electors to throw his chief duty as a Christian minister upon the reluctant shoulders of overburdened State officials. For noise he is a miniature Niagara. For spiritual effort or personal sacrifice x for the little ones he has no more snap or energy than a pound of putty. The good man persists m reminding us of Ms resemblance t[oi a kettledrum: sound galora, but empty of effort. The selfcongxatulatiom, of that party at the suuposed success of their political drumming reminds one of a caustic "wisdom ' of Mark Twain's : ' Noise proves nothing. Often a hen which has laid merely an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.'