DR. WALLIS AND "GLORIOUS" GODLESS SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXII, Issue 9, 28 June 1895, Page 17

DR. WALLIS AND "GLORIOUS" GODLESS SCHOOLS.

The Wellington sessional correspondent of the Christchurch Press wired to his paper a report of a sermon preached by Dr Wallis on Sunday last in the presence of the Governor, the leader of the Opposition and a number of prominent legislators. According to this s[ ecial reporter, the Anglican Bishop " has a manly and straightforward manner and preached without notes of any kind." We respectfully advise his Lordship to make use of notes, and satisfy himself as to their accuracy when next he touches the Education Question. Dr Wallis spoke of the tactics of some politicians in reference to the Government as " unchristian and unfair." It is just a matter for grave consideration whether the epithets " unchristian and unfair " may not, with much truth, be applied to the remarks, in reference to the education of youth, of a gentleman who calls himself a Christhn bishop. Dr Wallis regarded their glorious system of State education as " an honest attempt to give the people an opportunity of living as Gon intended them to live." A tjhiriau* system of Mate education ! A system of instruction, d> fective m many respects, which attends solely to the cultivation of the intellect and neglects the training of the heart is called a system of education by one wh i should know that will — direction and mmd — cultivation are botli objects of any proper system of tducation. As to the glorious character of a system whic'i banna Christ in the schoo's of the nation wo leave our readers and all true pro-i fessing Christians to judge. The spread of larrikinism and widespread lack of obedience and reverence in the youthhood of this Colony do not shed lustre on the glorious system which the episcopal newcomer lav 's so highly. Dr Wallis considers the New Zealand public school system an "honest attempt to give the people an opportunity of living as God intendtdthem to live." So, my Lord? It certainly giv^s them an opportunity to acquire a certain knowledge of the things of this world, but we cannot say that its object is to train the heart and direct the child in the way in which he should walk before Glod and his Christ. God intended man to love and serve his Creator. The trend of a gfdless system is the ignoring of the Creator and the deification of worldly success. Success in business, and consequently pleasure in life, seems unmistakeably to be the goal of public school training. Religion, man's noblest duty, must shift for itself Our system, unless neutralised by thu intelligent effort of a model parent — a somewhat rare quantity — tends to make the dishonest more dishonest, the vicious more skilled in vice. And why not, if the heart be neglected ? If I am a rogue, education, as secularists understand it, will not make me less so. It may indeed help a man to conceal his villany, but surely hypocrisy is not a commendable vice at home or abroad. Dr Wali is stated " that the pulpit was not the place to advocate the views of any particular party but to enforce the great piinciples of truth, right, and honesty which should underlie all legislation."

Whydoeßhis Lordship advocate in a Christian pulpit the views of a particular party — forsooth the secularists, the patrons of godless schools, the schools which some Protestant clergymen go so far as to call pagan in thpir character ? Dr Wallis speaks of the schools of a glorious system. Go Hess and glorious are not synonymous. Certainly the pulpit is the place to enforce truth — and tho ttuth is that the godless school system is sapping the foundations of morality —and right and common honesty demand that an iniquitous burden should be removed from those whom conscience will not allow to make the vain attempt to be friends of Gon and Mammon. If Dr Wallis, as photographed by himself in his Wellington sermon, be a specimen of the ordinary Anglican ecclesiastic of the Colony, the granting of aid to Catholic schools would not mean the rush of the children of well-to-do Anglic ins to church schools from the so-called glorious public schools of the land.