DECLINE OF RELIGION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3419, 10 January 1912, Page 8

DECLINE OF RELIGION.

WHAT IT IS DUE TO. A BISHOP’S OPINION. Speaking at a' prize distribution at the Christian Brothers’ School, Gondburn, Bishop Gallagher said other parents could have their children educated for nothing, but the parents of children attending that school' must first pay a heavy tax for the education of the children of others, and then impose a heavy tax upon themselves for the education which their own children received. In a controversy between Sir Henry Parkes, the founded of the Public school system, and Archbishop Vaughan both ageed. though arguinc from different standpoints, that the system if adopted in its entirety meant death to theealling of the clergy. ' It required' neither the Archbishop nor a statesman to assure them .that any system of education from which reieimts teaching and religious practices were altogether excluded /ultimately meant destruction to Christian dogma and. Christian faith nor did experience fail to confirm the philosophy of this view. How many among the young >'pie of both sexes were, through, he believed, a radical flaw of. their education., gradually easing off from a belief ill/ even the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and from the practice of its most ordinary precepts Many would openly state that tliev regarded Christianity as a fa hi re. and religion as a game played out. 'Die decline of attendance at church, divorce, race suicide, the growth of ,superstition, want of belief in the Bible, self-destruction, etc., were ample evidences of what he meant-