THE LAW OF GOD

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 31, 7 February 1927, Page 14

THE LAW OF GOD

TEACHING THE CHILD

SdDRBSS BYsA.RCHBIS.HOP

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

OAMARU, 6th February.

The opening of the new Christian Brothers' Roman Catholic College of St. Mary's this afternoon was attended by all the principal f dignitaries of ;the Hierarchy of New Zealand, and about 2000 people, including 250 who came by special train from Dunedin.

The new college is a palatial edifice surrounded, by beautiful, well-kept grounds, two miles from Oamaru, and well known until acquired by a syndicate for the Christian Brothers as the Redcastle Estate.

The visiting clergy included the Most Rev. Dr; Redwood, Archbishop of Wellington; the Most • Rev. Dr. O'Shea, Coadjutor Archbishop of Wellington; the Right Rev. Dr.- Cleary, Bishop of Auckland; the Right Rev. Dri Liston, Coadjutor of Auckland; the Right Rev. Dr. Brodie, Bishop :of Christchurch, and the Bishop of the diocese (Dr. Whyte). Addresses were delivered by Archbishop Redwood, Bishops Whyte and Liston ? Mr. F. Milner (headmaster of Waitaki Boys' High School), and Messrs. W. H. Frith and J. B. Collan (Dunedin). . Archbishop Redwood congratulated the Christian Brothers on their eminent success as teachers, not only in the Dominion but in Australia and other lands. He said the educated Catholics' idea of what education ought to be was, in part, as follows: "Against the growing evils of violence, divorce, juvenile crime, desecration of home, the degradation of the' theatre, and the lowering of all standards of womanly modesty and decorum."

Mere legislation, said the Archbishop, would be lamentably powerless. No force except the force of the human conscience could render men and women orderly, chaste^ and just for any considerable time, and especially when they were under the witchery and spell of strong and prolonged tempetation. Men and women, he said, must undergo a change from within; their minds and hearts must be attuned to the message^ of a _ higher ideal than that of mere civic virtue" or social service,. or patriotism. Some message of another world must enter their minds and souls in order to lift them above the allurements and temptations of the present world. The highwayman who robbed the passer-by of his purse, or-the burglar who lifted ones silverware, was far less dangerous than the State or the educator who: despoiled the helpless child of the one and only guide, support, and strength which enabled him to battle with life successfully. . To take God out of the life of the child, or to leave Him there only during the brief hours .of the Sunday school, waa not only a.crime in a Christian nation, but a gross ■'. anil well-nigh irremediable pedagogical error; The great duty of education, considered purely from the standpoint of the natural and normal development of the human, faculties, was ■to'put God in the schoolroom, to enthrone Hun in the heart and the mind of childhood and youth. There was no education substitute for the Ten Commandments Thoushalt not steal" would not restrain the thief or the highwayman'if he had only to fearihe human law and prison. It nad some chance of doing so when considered as the command of a Supreme Being who had the;right to cammond obedie°?J ?? d rV; po?er to Punisb- disloyalty witn the full and awful consequences of His just, wrath.-. "God and His Law"— ?n^ education omitting to putv these two m its programme was but a scrap of paper ■which; m : the moment of blind passion wl ulA.¥ ! orn to shreds. There was no substitute for God ana His Law