THE WAIMUMU SCHOOL.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 17, Issue 17, 9 November 1894, Page 3

THE WAIMUMU SCHOOL.

TO THB JBDITOTJ. SIB,— As great rivers often take their rise from small springs, even so great principles may be precipitated by small events. Who would a few week* ago bave dreamt that Davidson, the modeßt secretary of this obscure school, could have raised a clamor in all the newspapers of Otago and Southland? Tne sententious writer of a sub-leader in the 'Otago Daily limes ' of Saturday wiites : " The system is secular aa well as free and compulsory." This writer has no children at school or be would have learned in practice the system is nothing of the sort ; but let us take him as the oracle of the secularists, and bring out the logical results : The system is secular ; therefore the teaching must be secular ; and Tne teachsr must be free, to ba secular. Now, whit .saye -^the Roman Catholic Church ; its territorial bishop and local priest ?— that secular teaching. alone is Godless, and therefore intolerable. Hence no a.U. is free to be a mere secular teaoher. And the Waimumu secretary is therefore —...-It —„.-,-. «,. --;i„l *,> lha Unm.wi ..i«l *t. n — UIUVU uiuto luviviou ••« '— W _>V»_i^>J f»" l»ui»— ber champions— ho would preserve her Boui ; they would fill ber scoouch. Ho would have her consistent j they would have her to dissemble. The idea that a young girl going regularly to devotion would not obey God (her church) rather tban man (secular) jb absurd ; therefore, until thn Roman Church say— which it never will—We approve . of this secular education, I say that then, but not till then, has any of her members a right to complain tbat tbey are shut out from the loaves of the secular system, woich to eat at the present is to the true B.C. a poison. the truth is that since the mountain (the Education system) will not cbme to Mabommed (tbe Roman system), Manommed will go to tbe mountain, invade every secular school in the colony, and as you may demonetise silver, still it is silver, so you may dtmoninalise a Catholic and call him secular, but his church will see he is Roman still, and as such he must obey his church and instil ber doctrine. Well done, Davidson. You have in simplicity detected what might in time prove a deep-laid soheme to Romanise our national secular schools. Once fill tbe sohool desks with B.C. teachers, and the national education will not be secular, but Roman.—, am, etc., O-SERV-B, November 8, 189_.