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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3528, 28 October 1882, Page 2

The following extract is from a lecture delivered lately at Auckland by the Rev. Joseph Oook, of Boston, on " The Religious Signs of our Times":—"He had found through looking into the examination papers 6et for University students that we insisted upon high educational attainments for the winning of a degree, so that there was not much chance of any but the worthy and deserving acquiring the much-coveted educational distinction. He did not feel quite satisfied, however, with the exclusion of devotional exercises from our State school?. There was a tendency to secularism that proceeded from the dissevering of Church and State, but he recommended the colonists not to allow it to carry them so far aa to prohibit all religious exercises whatever. At the time he was in South Australia a movement had been set on foot by the Bishop of Adelaide to prevent the entire secularization of the public schools in j that colony. There should be just sufficient religion in the schools to show that conscientiousness was a necessary part of education. The experience of older nations was showing that something of the kind was essential to the proper training of children. Germany had put the Bible out of the State schools for a time, but the results were found to be mischievous, and it had to he replaced. America, also, had put the Bible out of the schools, but several of the States and leading cities had now commenced to order its re-admission, for there, too, the results of its exclusion had been shown to be pernicious. One of these was New Haven, in whiGh Yale College was situated, and the example of New Haven was now regarded as the model for the rest of the States. The Americans did not believe in denominational schools, nor in the connection of Church and State, but they were equally assured that the admission of the Bible into the public schools was not likely to lead to either of these results, or to open up either of these questions. There was a very large class of the population which did not go to church at all. and it was necessary that, (or their sakes, some devotional exercises should be allowed, and some lessons of morality taught. Evidence had shown that while the churches and Sunday-schools were efficient, they were not sufficient.