A Warning Lesson.

New Zealand Tablet, 12 July 1906, Page 23

A Warning Lesson.

Experience is a thing that all mm praise but only the wise profit by. The secular system of public instruction in New Zealand has been for nearly a generation quietly driving into the minds of youth in the Colony the idea that religion is for Sviulay alone, and that it has no place in the workaday life or business of this world of ours. And yet the non-Catho-lic clergy are cudgelling their brains to discover ' why men don't go to church,' and why so much Sunday eloquence is wasted upon desolate rows of empty or half-empty benches. They seek for reasons in c. cry direction ■except the most obvious one — like Mr. Vii c Crummle's Hamlet thrusting his sword th-ough the threadbare scene in every direction except the place where the legs of the hidden spy were plainly visible. Well— the good men belong to the grand army of the unwise who praise experience, but are careful not to profit by its lessons. The Anglican Bishop of Auckland has so far learned the lesson as to plead for a continuance of denominational schools in England. * The ' Aye Maria ' conveys a warning lesson to the shallow theorists who hug the delusion of a ' ncn-sec-tarian ' and ' non-dogmatic ' code of moral instruction in public schools. Our American contemporary q;.otes the following paragraph from, a paper *by the Abbe Bertrin, a" professor in the Institut Catholique of Paris : — ' About twenty-five years ago the State introduced into its schools, under the . name of laicization, the teaching of a morality independent of all dogma. Approximately one-half of the children of France still remaining in schools -where the instruction continued t o bo Christian (the proportion has changed since then), the other -half -was not formed to Christian morality., save partially, and imperfectly— that is to say, in the. Jew families 1 that took the trouble to occupy themselves therewith, and in the -catechism classes which were w s til I attended no doubt by many, but

whose influence was greatly diminished, if not practically- ruined, by that of the school. 'Now, this weakening of moral principles based on dogma, in favor of a morality independent of all religious dpctrines, was not- slow in yielding, its fruit, and an account thereof is easily taken. ' As a matter oi statistical fact, ten years'^after the establishment of such schools, instead of the 16,000 * criminals in their teens present in the country the year of the establishment, the official figures registered 41,000, more than two land a half times as many. In one single year during this decade, of 26,000 malefactors arrested in Paris, 16,000, or nearly two-thirds, were under 20 years of age. An Advocate General of the time said in open court : " To-day all the great crimes a re committed by adolescents.'" And that the direct consequence of the new morality was palpable to all. A magistrate whose position and studies were a guarantee of his competency, M. Guillot, a Parisian Judge, emphasised the point very tersely in a book that caused considerable comment. "No serious thinker can fail to observe," he wrote, " that this frightful in crease in criminality coincides with the changes introduced in the organisation of teaching in the State schools." ' ,