CHRISTCHURCH DIOCESAN SYNOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9013, 19 October 1892, Page 5

CHRISTCHURCH DIOCESAN SYNOD.

ADDRESS BY BISHOP JULIUS. [BY TKLKGRAPH —I'RKSS ASSOCIATION.] Cuuistchdrch, Tuesday. Tiik Diocesan Synod was opened to-day. Bishop Julius in his address referred in feoling terms to the deaths of the Bishop of Carlisle, Cardinal Manning, and Mr. Spurgoon, whoso death was, he said, a loss to tho whole church ; and to that of Tennyson, "poet, prophet, and teacher;" also to the death of the Bishop of Goulbourn and of Archdeacon Dudley. He said the clergy in the diocese numbered 64 against 62 last year. He urged the necessity of the clergy making groat efforts to obtain candidates for confirmation, always remembering that confirmation is a means not an end. Referring to the education question he said secularists were more powerful than Christians, not because they were more numerous, but because they were more united. If Christiana knew what they wanted, and were united, they would obtain it. He feared the result of the growth of even one generation without .religious teaching. He remarked that the restlessness which caused many people to run after a strange teacher arose chiefly because they had nob been properly catechised and grounded in the Christian truth. He advocated the improvement of Sunday-schools, and urged the younger clergymen to take a pattern by the methods of skilled public school teachers in training younger members of their flocks. He strongly urged greater devotion and liberality on the part of churchmen, and said church people did not give as they ought. They spent their hundreds on racing, and grudged their fivepound note to their parish priest, while the claims of the diocese and the Church they utterly ignore!. Referring to the temperance question, lie said that, though he admired the earnestness of the prohibitionists, he could not work with them, because ho could not deny liberty of conscience, and the right of any man, except a drunkard, to take alcohol in moderation. Though they would not accept what seemed to be an extreme and dangerous policy, likely to produce reaction, they could and ought to promote that moral sentiment which must accomplish the same ends.