The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 1908. SCHOOL AND HOME

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 4 June 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 1908. SCHOOL AND HOME

KOUGIIAM trusted to the schoolmaster, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array. His trust was well placed if it backed, against the principle of brute force, the true education which (as Mrs. Jameson says in her ' Winter Studies') unfolds the seeds of immortality already sown within us, and develops the capacities of every kind— physical, mental, moral, spiritual — with which G-od has endowed us. The failure of this allround development— under the various systems of purely secular or secularist public instruction which have come to us as one of the evil legacies of the French Revolution — has contributed its share towards creating one of the grave problems that face the Christian Churches in our time. We refer to what the learned and broadminded Dr. Dunlop calls, in last week's ' Outlook ', ' the drift of young men and women away from church connection '. The home and the_church, as well as the school, have each their own responsibilities in this connection. George Canning sang in his ' Anti-Jacobin ' :— ' We see, in plants, potatoes 'tatoes breed, Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed, Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed ; Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume To flower like -myrtle, or like violets bloom '. In an analogous way, like succeeds to like in the social order. It would be as reasonable to expect the cooling cucumber cto flower like myrtle ' as lo look for good results from" the bad or careless home, left to itself, or

from a system of instruction which (as a system, and left to itself) trains children \b pass a large part of the most impressionable years of their lives without any reference to God as their -first beginning and last end. And a grave measure of "censure, in this connection, falls upon the • Christian • creeds that watch the drift of youth away from the' practice of religion, and', instead of making real sacrifices'! to arrest it, go on piling up little sand-heaps /of talk^talk, talk on the wind-swept shore. ' Ridentenl dicei'e verum 'quid vetat?' There is no reason why one may, not say a true thing" with a laugh wreathing, his. face.. And the laughing philosopher, Wilton Lackaye, ' worked off ' a truth that is sometimes forgotten,- when, during a gambol at the Lambs' Club, he said,; in the course of a mock epitaph on the indolent, procrastinating Barrymore, that those who ' lead the life of going to "do ' will ' die with nothing done '. , * The following significant, words from Dr. Dunlop's article in the ' Outlook ' will well' bear quoting here :— ' If the problem of the religious education and nurture of the child is not adequately dealt with as it arises it makes itself felt with -a vengeance later on in the period of adolescence. Here is where the influence of the home tells its tale.' Some statistics in the recent book entitled "An Efficient Church ", by Doney, show this with startling 'clearness. The results of- a questionnaire are given as ' follows : "Ninety 'per cent, of the children born of parents who gave to their offspring wholesome and well-rounded Christian training became members of the Church, while' 40 per cent represent the proportion of those who had not such training. In homes where family worship was observed 88 per cent, of the children are professed Christians ; where it was not observed 57 per cent, are connected with the Church. . . Where both parents are Christians 94 per cent, of the children are Christians ; where one parent is a Christian 6G per cent/ of the' children are connected with the Church ; and where neither parent is a Christian only 25 per cent, of the children are in the Church ". The advantage of both parents attending the same church is suggested by the following facts. As the result of extended investigation by the Young Men's Christian Association of America regarding Church membership among young men from Hi to 35 years of age, "it was found that 78 per cent, are members when both parents belonged to the same church, 55 per cent, when parents belonged to different churches, and 50 per cent, when but one of the parents belonged to Church." ' Similar figures, in so far as "they relate to mixed marriages, appear in Williams's ' Christian Life in Germany '. The whole extract serves to emphasise one of the conclusions of the author : ' The fight for the lives of the young manhood and womanhood of our people must be practically won in advance '.