THE IMPERIAL EDUCATION BILL.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXI, Issue 12061, 4 January 1907, Page 4

THE IMPERIAL EDUCATION BILL.

The Rev. E. R Gange, an ex-President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, who is on a visit to this colony, has been expressing his views on the Imperial Education Bill to a Press interviewer. Mr. Gange says £hat another Bill will be brought down, and it will be more stringent than the last measure. The position taken up by the Church of England is, in bis opinion, absurd. " They asked the Government to take over their schools and dump the expenses on the rates paid by the people. Yet they wanted to control the schools. The position of the Free Churches was representation and control in accordance with rates paid. The only logical outcome of the stand taken by the Established Church, and the opposition of the Lords to the Bill brought down, is purely secular education. The Free Churcheß were quite willing to have juat the bare doctrine and teachings of Christianity taught in the schools, but the Church of England wanted to have their creeds and catechisms and dogma taught. What wrecked the Bill was the fourth clause, which was a sort of compromise, allowing the right of entry of a clergyman of any denomination if the parents of a certain number of pupils wished it, when he could go- and teach his own dogma."

Mr. Gange shared in the passive resistance movement, and had his own goods distrained. This passive resistance would be intensified, he said. Formerly they were resisting a Government unfavourable to, them; now it was the reverse. About the iniquity of Bal four's Bill (the present enactment) the Free Churches were as one. The Bill said that the headmaster and mistress of one of tho schools must belong to the Established Church, while for assistants,

nominally, it was not compulsory. Ab the same time of the six managers of such schools two only were elected to look after the rights of the yrople; the other four were appointed by the Church. The Bill which was the outcome of this system, and about which ■ the trouble was, would have given the ratepayers full control. The Free Churches would go on resisting. A more stringent Bill would come down, and the end would be a. purely secular education. The plain position was, said Mr. Gange, that the parish schools were practically insolvent; that they asked the Government to run them, and to let them (the Church) atill have full control. "The Free Churches would not have minded," Mr. Gange went on to say, " if they had thought the religious instruction consisted only' of essentials, but the Free Churches are preserving the Protestant character of the Church, and the Anglican Church is honeycombed with Roman Catholicism. Only a while ago the Anglican bishops asked the Pope to recognise the validity of their orders. I cannot see any difference between Notre Dame and our big English churches in England, and the whole reason of the fight on this education question is that we thought we were handing over our children to the priest." Finally, Mr. Gange considers that there is not a possibility of the House of Commons allowing the House of Lords to force them into an appeal to the country. That would be idotic, after the last election, which was such a rout. Mr. Gange does not believe in an Established Church. One thing that strikes him in the colonies is the religious equality. The socialistic tendency of the times was not a burning question at Home. He had heard more about it since he came to the colonies than ever before.