A Striking Omission.

The other remarkable omission is that of the special lesson on "Drunkenness, a sin against God and our fellow-men, and a wrong and insult to ourselves," based on I. Kings, xx., 1-12, 16-21; Prow xxiii., 19-21, 29-35, and Isaiah, xxviii., 1-7. No dogmatic or critical difficulties were raised by this lesson, and it is presumably from its relation to another burning question of the day, which it is not for this League to discuss, that the one lesson proposed by the Victorian Commission for the specific teaching, not of total abstinence, but of temperance, has been deemed unsuitable for the State school of New Zealand. With these exceptions the alterations are confined to a few amendments of the text, mostly from the Revised Version, and a few additions to or excisions from the notes. Slight as these changes are, they constitute on the whole decided improvements, and the same may be said of the omission of various allusions to subjects which are best kept from the attention of children In the same spirit such a verse as Gen. xi. 27, might well have been omitted from the Junior Lessons, and the story of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts viii., 26-40) from the Senior Lessons. In the latter case a reference to the Revised Version would also have shown the editons that verse 37, which contains the only doctrinal statement in the lesson, is omitted by the best authorities. The net result, however, of all the alteration proposed is that the book remains substantially what the Victorian Commissioners made it.