TO PARENTS.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 35, Issue 4, 1 June 1944, Page 11

TO PARENTS.

Recently in religious instruction at the State School, each child was asked to write but the Lord's Prayer"; then to put their name . arid the church to which they belonged oh the palper. And in due course each of us— that is, the clergy— got our own .children's papers /handed to us. I was' amazed to find that there were some 20 or 30 families who never send their children to Sunday School,' all owing to the fact that the parents themselves never under any circumstances go near a church. Add to these " those others who do send the children to Sunday School, but never come, near the Church themselves. And a most serious problem is revealed. Now, those children are the most priceless possession you have, but in this matter you, whom they love and trust the most, are the. chief stumbling block in the path that leads to happiness. Without due" reverence for God there are no high ideal of life. This is true whether you believe it or not. In Germany God and religion were deliberately withdrawn from the schools and -lives of the people, producing the blond beast of to-day. This generation, and possibly the rising one, will have to die out and a generation brought up on Christian ideals must take its place " before there can "be peace in the . world. And without religion and religious education for our children we become one of the chief obstacles to any new or better order of society being established' in the worldi— The Vicar of Portland, the Rev. Canon F. W. Coupe, in the Church Chronicle, Ballarat.