BISHOP MOORHOUSE ON STATE EDUCATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2982, 15 January 1881, Page 4

BISHOP MOORHOUSE ON STATE EDUCATION.

HIS SPEECH AT THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CONGRESS. Concerning religious education he observed that he had so recently spoken on the question it waa not necessary now to do more than reply to certain comments which hare been made since. It has been frequently alleged that Q-overnment can have nothing to do with religion. What then has Government to do with education ? The right and duty to educate the child rests with his parent. It is just as much the parent's duty to feed his child's mind as to feed its body. The only difference between the two cases is this, that generally the parent perceives and acknowledges the latter duty, as yet he is not sufficiently educated to peroeive and recognise the former. In this state of affairs it is the duty and interest of the State to take the parent's place. The State needs intelligent and above all, virtuous citizens. Tf it cannet get these it will have to pay police and build gaols to restrain the ■vicious. It cannot afford to do this. It has, however, no business to let society be harrassed, injured and torn to pieces by the viciously ignorant. All this granted: If the parent neglects his duty the htate must do it, making such regulations as lo the negligent parent as the justice of the case demands. But now if the State undertakes this duty it is bound to perform it. If by Its competition it prevents others from interfering, it must do what it undertakes to do—it must make virtuous citizens. Now, intellectual training alone will not do this. There must bo distinct; moral training, and no moral training can be effective which is not bnilt on a religious basis and enforced by religious motives. If, then, the State meddles with education at all, it is bound to make it religious— not denominational, not dogmatic, but religious. (Applause.) But even if this be true, it has been argued that schoolmasters are not generally fit to be religious reachers. Would you set men to teach religion, he had been asked, who were only appointed to their office for their knowledge of arithmetic ? To which be would reply, dare you appoint men to such an office for no other than such a reason ? Is a knowledge of arithmetic, or of the three E's, qualification enough, who, by his example and conversation during four hours of every day, must have more influence on the formation of our children's character than any other human being, to say nothing of the respect commanded by his office ? Has character nothing to do with the choice of our schoolmasters ? The present Minister of Education, to his great credit, has more than once publicly announced that he should lay the greatest stress upon inquiries as to character. Well, then, if he is as good as his word, and there is no reason to believe that he is not, he (the Bishop) affirmed that men so selected or fit—not perhaps to convert children, not perhaps to touch their hearts with the fire of religious enthusiasm —but at least to teach them the facts and principles upon which religion is founded. It is one thing to teach a child that he ought to love God ; it is another thing to make him do so. (Applause.) To teach him the duty is the office of the schoolmaster ; to induce him to perform it is the office of the church. Does anyone think, perhaps, that to get a schoolmaster to teach the facts and principles of religion is but a small advantage ? Let him then remember the effect of the ignorance of these things on the French mechanic. He listens, we are told, to the ordinary addresses of religious teachers with a bewilderment as

great as that manifested on alike occasion by a Hindoo or a Buddhist. He has never heard anything about the facts and principles to which the religious teacher appeals. There is no common medium of thought between teacher and hearer. The words, facts and imnges of the Bible are to the city mechanic in France like the accents of an unknown tongue. Taey awake in his mind no definite thoughts, no hallowed associations. Wow nearly half our children never enter a Sunday school —never, so far as we know, receive any religious instruction whatever. Do you want to reduce these to the condition of a French ouvrier ? (Applause). Besides, to assign to the schoolmaster the duty of imparting general religious instruction is to supply him with the only effective means of keeping up the moral tone of bis school. A head teacher asked him (the Bishop) not long ago if he thought that the act allowed him to refer to God's will or to the future results of sin in rebuking children for lying, cruelty, or impurity. Don't you see from the very fact that such a question could be put how the act chills the teacher's heart and seals his lips, or when he does speak, smites his words with barrenness ? What a moral force can there be in rebukes which have been thus scorched and withered by the burning sirocco of secularism ? With such disabilities indicted on masters, and with 100,000 children who never enter a Sunday school, what do you think in a generation or two will be the result ? He (the Bishop) heard it on the testimony of a public officer, that already in Victoria we are developing a new type of criminal. In the old country he says, and in the early days of the colony, he had no difficulty in getting information about crimes. Now, however, the educated larrikin is driving the police to their wits' end. This modern Victorian criminal is intelligent enough to know the advantage of combination. He keeps his own counsel and he baffles the police. Now observe, that of this class of crime (the most dangerous of all) there will be absolutely no records in the returns of our police courts and, assizes. For the most part of it is committed with impunity. It goes to swell that enormous mass of sensual sin of which the law takes no notice ; of which its returns exhibit no trace, although they are so often fallaciously quoted, as a reliable test of our moral condition. You know what ordinary criminals are. You have yet to learn what intelligent criminals can be — what a scourge to society, what a terrible peril to the common-wealth. God grant that we may take warning before it is too late.—The Age.