RELIGIOUS TEACHING SCHOOLS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 168, 15 July 1908, Page 8

RELIGIOUS TEACHING SCHOOLS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It has been said that when our late good and great Queen was asked how the power and greatness of the British Empire could be accounted for, she placed her hand upon the Bible, and said "By this." Would to God the Government and people of this favoured Dominion may follow after her footsteps and be either hot or cold, and no longer lukewarm. If God be God, let us serve Him in spirit and in truth; if we are Christians, let us hold to the faith, and follow the teachings of our bl.essed Lord and His apostles, and teach our children to love and honour their teachings. Though schools have been established in many 'brack-country districts where there are very rieldom divine services or religious instruction of any kind, owing to the want of such instruction in these schools, and the carelessness, indifference or ignorance or parents, the 'jhildren are indeed little better than pagans, and Bishop Neligan is not very far out when he designated them as such. My own experience of the vast diocese of Auckland i 3 nothing to his; but what I have seen confirms the truth of the Bishop's statement. —I am, etc., EQUES. [Our correspondent asserts that one teacher endeavoured "to impress one of my daughters /with his unbelieving ideas," and that another, in the course of a school lesson, declared that "there were no such beings as angels; it was simply a fairy tale." If "Eques"' is in a position to prove these assertions, it is his duty to report the teachers concerned openly to the Board of Education. Anonymous charges of this kind we regard as most unfair and improper.—Ed.]