1. The object of the Union shall be to unite, strengthen, and assist fathers and mothers in the discharge of their parental duties. 2. Members shall be pledged, by the fact of their joining, to supervise the education of their own children, and to urge the responsibility of the parental relationship upon other parents. 3. Lesson sketches shall be furnished monthly to each family in connection with the Union. 4. Members shall bring their children to the monthly catechising, and sit with them, &c., &c. Probably the “lesson-sketches” are to secure that the children do just such Bible-lessons at home with their parents on Sunday as they have hitherto done at the Sunday-school with teachers. It seems to be contemplated that parents of every class will undertake their proper duties in this matter, and that the Sunday-school may be allowed to drop, the clergyman undertaking instead to ascertain, by means of catechising, that certain work is done month by month. The scheme seems full of promise. Nothing should do more to strengthen the bonds of family life than that the children should learn religion at the lips of their parents; and, to grow up in a church which takes constant heed of you from baptism or infancy, until, we will not say confirmation, but through manhood and womanhood, until the end, should give the right tone to corporate life. No doubt we have parishes, and even whole denominations, in which the young people are taken hold of from first to last; but then it is by clergy, teachers, class leaders, and so on; and all parents do not regard it as an unmixed blessing that the most serious part of their children’s training should be undertaken by outsiders. The thing that seems most worthy of imitation in this Australian movement is, that parents themselves are recognised as the fit instructors of their children in the best things, and that they are led to acknowledge some responsibility to the Church with regard to the instruction they give. But do we manage these things so well “at home” that we have no occasion to look about us for hints? It may be in the memories of some of us, that in May 1889, a Committee of the House of Laymen for the Province of Canterbury was appointed to examine into the religious education of the upper and middle classes.[8] The committee considered that they might obtain a good basis for their investigations by examining into the religious knowledge of boys entering school. They sent a paper of inquiries to sixty-two head-masters, most of whom sent replies; and from these replies the committee were led to conclude that, “for the most part, the standard of religious education attained by boys before going to school is far below what might be hoped or expected; and that even this standard, thus ascertained to be far too low, is deteriorating; and further, that the chief cause of deterioration is considered to be the want of home-teaching and religion.”