WELLINGTON DIOCESAN SYNOD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6045, 29 September 1887, Page 3

WELLINGTON DIOCESAN SYNOD.

* [Pbb Press Association.] WELLINGTON, Sept. 28. The Wellington Diocesan Synod opened to-day. The Bishop of Wellington in his opening address said that in addressing the Synod last year he mentioned two subjects of importance, one of which was the need for some understanding as to what canons of the primitive Churoh, or of the Church of England, should be deemed to be in force in Colonial Churches, and the other was the custom of the Bishop of London to issue licenses to clergymen in the Colonies and in mission fields, who sometimes relied on these to justify opposition to a Bishop whom, according to ecclesiastical usage, they were bound to obey. Having received from His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, an invitation to attend a Conference of Bishops at Lambeth next year, he had excused himself on the ground of advanced age, and had ventured to suggest that these two subjects might be brought under the notice of the assembled bishops. His Grace, in reply, had assured him that the suggestion would receive careful consideration, and he said, in reference to the licenses, " The j Bishop of London will guard his licenses to clergymen abroad in such a way that j they may not avail in any constituted diocese. There is evidently some misuse of the licenses which was never intended to be used, as they appear to have been." Beferring to the education question, he said that a system of State education for' children, which excluded all teaching on religion, all acknowledgment of God, to whom all are responsible, seems to be something altogether unprecedented. Every civilised heathen nation, of whatever period of the world's history of which we know anything, taught the young to reverence a divine, superintending power. The absolute exclusion in the State schools of any distinct teaching of their duty to a Supreme Eulerj to say nothing of the absence of Christian doctrine, has apparently been left for the Legislature of New Zealand. In this it has certainly gained for itself an uneviable notoriety. The enormous expense of the system was leading men to look more cloßely into the subject,and the general feeling,he thought, was that the results were hardly worth the expenditure of something like half a million annually. It would doubtless be very difficult to estimate the results, but after such an expensive system has been tried for eight or nine years it ought to be possible to point to some very definite results which had been obtained by it j but was this possible ? It was, he believed, an open question whether there was even a higher percentage now of those who could read and write than there was before the system came into operation. But what ought to be the true test was, are those who have grown up under the present system in any respect superior to those who were beforo them ? A strong opinion existed that they wero not. In conclusion he ventured to express an opinion tbat there already exists throughout the world a widespread conviction, daily gaining ground, that no system of education can be satisfactory that does not supply definite religious teaching, and that such definite teaching can only be given in a country governed as this is by leaving each so-called religious denomination full liberty to teach its own children.