To the Editor of the "Otago Daily Times."

Sir,—A primary duty rests upon every parent who brings a child into the world, of caring for that child, by feeding, clothing, and educating it. With regard to the latter there can be no real education apart from religious instruction, and every parent who has incurred the responsibility of the birth of a child has incurred also a responsibility of bringing up that child in the fear and love of God.

Religion, morality, and knowledge being essential to good government, it is the duty of the State, as it is also to its advantage to encourage this feeling of responsibility in parents, and to assist them, in every possible way, in promoting the religious instruction of their children.

Parents very generally desire that morality and religion should form a part of the daily instruction of their children; and some provision should be made by law for religious observances, and for moral and religious instruction in all State schools.

It is frequently said that the churches ought to instruct their children in religion; but if they are not allowed to do this during the hours set apart for education in the day-schools under the State system, it is difficult to understand when they could do this.

As a rule, as soon as children are washed and dressed and have had their breakfast, they are sent off to school, and when school is over, and they have had a short time for play, by the time they reached their homes (in many instances having to come considerable distances), it is time for them to have their tea. After tea the younger ones are sent to bed, and the elder ones have their lessons to prepare for the next day's school. It is difficult, then, to see when a minister of religion could get his children together for religious instruction, for it would not of course be expected as even a possibility that he could give any efficient instruction by going to the homes of the children, as from their numbers he probably could not visit each more than once or twice a year.

If he were to try and have a class of his children between school times, or before or after school, there would immediately be page 33 an outcry, and a reasonable one, that he was overburdening the children's brains; and, in fact, when grown-up men object to having to work more than eight hours a day, surely five hours daily in school, and one and a-half to two hours at home, is enough to tax the brain power of growing children.

If the clergymen were to take the children on the Saturday's holiday, people would say that they had surely deserved their holiday, and that it was very hard that their only holiday should be curtailed for religious instruction.

The religious teaching of children then becomes confined to one short hour on Sunday, when, perhaps under a young and inexperienced teacher, they spend an hour, but come away little the better for it. And this is considered to be sufficient to instruct immortal souls in the things of eternity, though, as they are not compelled to attend Sunday-school—and many do not—many do not even receive this amount of religious instruction.

It is time that the people of New Zealand looked at this question fairly, and asked themselves whether they are satisfied with this amount of religious instruction for the rising generation—whether, as parents, they believed that they were conscientiously discharging their duty to their children in securing for them a religious education, or whether not only are they willing but desire that the minister of their denomination shall go and take a class of the children of his denomination during the week and give regular religious instruction during a time set apart in school hours.

Anybody who knows New Zealand will feel that churches and Sunday-schools, and other religious agencies, are not sufficient to impart a religious education to the young of the Colony. It is to the interest of the country that they shall receive a religious education.

It means a great danger to the State if a large number of young people grow up, having had little or no religious teaching, and without the checks and safeguards which religion imposes; and yet, unless the Government can see its way to sanction in some way religious teaching in our State schools, this is the inevitable result that will follow.

The argument has long been used that, as long as schools retain their distinctively Protestant tone and spirit, the Roman Catholic population have a just ground of complaint, and will be shut out in large numbers from the benefits of the system. That ground of objection once removed—an objection which men think they can understand and appreciate—then it is superficially believed that Roman Catholics will avail themselves of the common school conducted on the purely secular system.

Large numbers of persons are anxious that the schools shall be made purely secular, on the ground of justice to all sects. But it is a great injustice to most sects—to all, in fact, except infidels. The Roman Catholics declare that they are not satisfied with the State "secular" system, and wherever they have a sufficient num- page 34 ber of their own Church in a district they will raise and support their own schools. The secular system does not satisfy them, neither is it that in the main which keeps them away. If religious instruction were given in the schools, those of their children who might be attending the school would not be allowed to be present at it; but for the sake of the others, for the good of the country at large, they prefer a Protestant Bible to none at all, and some species of religious teaching to godlessness.

The experience of New Zealand and Victoria teaches us that we are no nearer getting the Roman Catholics to come into the public school system by making it purely secular than we were before.

When it comes to be felt throughout the country that there is a deep religious principle underlying this question, and when the religious communities awake, as they are beginning to do already, to their responsibilities, and to see the injustice and undesirability of all religious instruction being excluded from our State schools, then the destruction of the secular State school system becomes simply a question of time. Insist upon an absolutely secular instruction, and one sect after another will demand in tones that will be heard and obeyed, either that religious teaching be sanctioned, or in default of this a division of the funds contributed by the State.

The result will be several systems of schools instead of one; the free common schools will disappear, and each religious sect will have its own schools in their place. This is the result sure, sooner or later, to come about, if all religious instruction be absolutely forbidden to every sect, and the just demand for some religious teaching to be given in State schools be disregarded, and religion excluded.

The important question has been raised, whether the secularization of schools would bring in the Roman Catholics?

It is admitted that their ulterior object is to secure a division of the school fund. The Tablet says :—"The School Board of Cincinnati have voted, we see from the papers, to exclude the Bible and all religious instruction from the public schools of the city. If this has been done with a view of reconciling Catholics to the common school system, its purpose will not be realised. It does not meet, or in any degree lessen, our objection to the public school system, and only proves the impracticability of that system in a mixed community of Catholics and Protestants; for it proves that the schools must, to be sustained, become thoroughly godless. But to us godless schools are still less acceptable than sectarian schools; and we object less to the reading of King James' Bible, even in the schools, than we do to the exclusion of all religious instruction American Protestantism of the orthodox stamp is far less evil than German infidelity."

Whether the Roman Catholics, who constitute the main force of the sectarian malcontents, would be reconciled by a secular page 35 system or not, is clearly proved by the experience of this country and of Victoria, where the Roman Catholics are not satisfied by a purely secular system, and, wherever possible, support their own schools.

If we say that the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic, together with the reading of the Protestant Bible, is a Protestant, and therefore sectarian action, it is intelligible that Roman Catholics should not be willing to send their children to the public schools where this is allowed. But it is also clear that their ground of objection to sending their children to a State school where religious teaching of any sort is given by the schoolmaster, is cut away from them, when that teaching is absolutely prohibited, and the education is wholly secularized.

But this very secularization of the school teaching—the teaching of reading, writing, and arthmetic alone, without any religious instruction at all—satisfies them still less, and not only them, but dissatisfies Protestants as well. In fact, education without any religious instruction whatever is irreligious and infidel, and is therefore sectarian action, and is protecting infidelity with a vengeance, to the injury of both Protestants and Roman Catholics.

A Roman Catholic ought not to be compelled to support a system, the prevailing tone of which is opposed to his religion. Much more, then, Roman Catholics and Protestants ought not to be compelled to support a system which is opposed to every religion by being "entirely secular."

Assuming that public necessity compels the taxation of the whole community for the support of public schools, it still remains the bounden duty of all parents to secure for their children a religious education.

If it be absolutely proved that it is impossible for the State even to sanction any religious instruction whatever, it then becomes the bounden duty of every denomination, and every parent belonging to that denomination, to adopt a system of education, at any sacrifice, which will secure that the children belonging to their denomination shall be brought up in the religion which they deem so important.

If they do not do this, it argues a great indifference to religion which people, and especially parents, ought to be thoroughly ashamed of. If all denominations carried this out thoroughly, there would then remain but few to be educated by the State, and the vast majority belonging to the various denominations could reasonably demand that, whilst they were supporting schools at their own expense for their own children, the education provided by the State for those belonging to no denomination, and for which they were taxed, should be of a simple and economical character.

By almost universal assent, distinctive denominational teaching ought to be prohibited in the public schools to the schoolmaster, page 36 but some religious instruction should be, and (D.V.) will yet be, given in the schools. What we contend for is not distinctive denominational teaching, but the teaching of a higher Being than man, of higher duties than mere worldly ones, and of a soul and future state—all which Christians hold to be necessary, but which cannot now legally be taught as part of the curriculum of education in the State schools. Some teaching of this character is absolutely necessary, as of vital importance to the individual souls, and of paramount value in instilling a sense of individual responsibility and high principle into the component parts of the community. We desire religious and moral teaching, as opposed to worldly and secular. The question is, not of one sect against another, but of the worship and knowledge of God, as against the worship and knowledge of this world.—I am, &c.,

Prophetes.

P.S.—It is not pretended that these letters are original; their sole object is to bring to the notice of the people of New Zealand the fact of the present absence of religious instruction in the free public schools of the Colony, and the necessity that for the good of the whole community some should be provided. With this object in view, any ideas which have been written or spoken, and which seemed to throw light on the subject, have been freely borrowed and adapted for the purpose.