The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

P.N.E.U Notes.

Sydney, N.S.W.--We must postpone other notices of March work to say a word of the movement initiated by the Rev. H. L. Jackson, M.A., incumbent of St. James's, Sydney, N.S.W. The work of giving religious instruction to children of all classes appears to be delegated to the Sunday School in Australia as in the United States. Mr. Jackson is persuaded that, by this universal use of the Sunday School, parents quit themselves not only of their responsibilities, but of their opportunities. During the last four years Mr. Jackson has been ventilating and perfecting a scheme for "Parents' Unions," which should help parents to fulfill those duties of training and teaching which they now make over to the Sunday School. In the spring of last year he came to England to ascertain what was being done "at home" in the way of Parents' Unions. Mr. Jackson gives full details in the St. James's Kalendar (Feb. 1871) of the "Mothers' Unions" and "Parents' Unions" of Winchester, York, Lichfield, and continues--(See Kalendar, 426, 427, 428, 429.)

P.N.E.U will gladly welcome her first Australian child; and still pleasanter will it be to us "at home" to know that the Australian Daughters' Society is in full operation, and numbers many branches. Meantime, might we not with advantage take a leaf out of the "St. James's, Sydney, Branch's" book? The children of the more educated classed are not usually sent to Sunday School with us, but that by no means proves that they get regular and methodical 'Sunday" teaching and training at home from their parents. Indeed, nothing is more sad than the way in which young people are allowed to group up without definite religious teaching. Mr. Jackson's scheme is well calculated to remedy the evil. Parochial, or in the case of Nonconformist bodies, congregation branches of P.N.E.U., whose distinct object should be the religious training of the young people of richer classes, would do exceedingly valuable work. Such teaching should, no doubt, be given by parents to their own families, but many parents would be glad of such aids as Mr. Jackson proposes to give through the Union, to make the home teaching definite, purposeful, and progressive.

Typed by Beth Dittmer , Mar 2013