It Educates the Physical

and mental faculties alone of our being, and leaves untouched, unmoved, and undeveloped the highest part of our nature—the moral and spiritual. I, therefore, claim to have the right-, and to have the duty imposed upon me of urging upon my fellow colonists, that it is not only desirable, but it is absolutely essential we should have the Bible daily read in our national schools. While I try to do, this, you will kindly bear with me for a few minutes. Education is, like the poor, a question that will ever be with us, for generation succeeds generation and there always will be changes and modifications required to meet the wants of advancing humanity, but the Word of God shall abide for ever as the rock upon which education must be founded. I am not one of those who regard our present education system as a gift from heaven, perfect and infallible, and who bow down before it as a fetish, and would page 2 "at all hazards" maintain it in violate with all its anomalies, in equity and expense. But with : nothing of all that have we now to deal. We have one specific and definite object in view, and to obtain that, we must bend all our energies and unitedly use all our influence. What that object is all know who are present, and I would, at the outset, deprecate that apologetic strain with which all former efforts have been marred, and righteously demand from the State what the large majority of colonists desire for their children. There is a great blank—an ugly chasm in the system that has now been in force for nearly twenty years, and that blank must be filled up, and that chasm must be bridged over with such religious teaching as can be given under the existing circumstances of differing creeds and varied interpretations of Scripture. This can without difficulty be accomplished by the adoption of the " Scripture Text Book," which is asked for in the Bill of Mr Smith during this session. However, I am almost sure, that in a moribund Parliament, with a general election imminent the Bill would not pass If my opinion be found to be correct, it gives great force and importance to the first part of the resolution 1 have read and moved—namely, that we must then be determined to return representatives to the next Parliament, who shall be in favor of the whole Bible being read in our schools, and if need be, to have their pledge on this vital point.