e is the Sunday school. According to the
latest returns, the Church of this country claims over 39,000 Sunday
scholars, and rather more than 3,000 teachers. Here the North Island far
outstrips the South. There are those who decry the Sunday school with
its limited hours and its often untrained teachers, but the devotion of
these voluntary workers is one of the brightest features of the church
life of to-day; while the results of their labours--could they be really
measured--would probably astonish the gainsayer. That the ethical ideals
of the community are what they are, and that the moral standard achieved
is what it is, must surely be largely due to the simple elements of
Christian faith and duty which are inculcated in the Sunday school.

In comparison with the churches of older lands, the Church of New
Zealand may seem to do little in the way of _charitable relief_. In a
young and prosperous community there is not the same call for
eleemosynary effort; and in New Zealand the whole community has taken up
whatever burden of this kind there may be, and bears it as a part of its
ordinary governmental task. That hospitals and asylums, homes for the
aged, and even reformatories for the vicious, should be thus undertaken
by the State is doubtless right and good, especially as every facility
is given for ministers of religion to visit the inmates. The case stands
differently with the care of the young and the rescue of the tempted and
the fallen. Here the spiritual atmosphere is all-important. Our Church
possesses orphanages in most of the large towns--Auckland (with three
large institutions), Palmerston North, Nelson, Christchurch, and
Dunedin; while in Napier and Wanganui it co-operates with other
religious organisations to the same end.

[Illustration: NEW ZEALAND BISHOPS IN 1914.
Bishop Mules.
Bishop of Nelson.
Bishop of Melanesia.
Bishop Williams.
Bishop of Wellington.
Bishop of Christchurch.
The Primate.
Bishop of Auckland.
Bishop of Waiapu.]

Of rescue work not so much can be said. Through the influence of Sister
Frances Torlesse, many devoted ladies in Christchurch entered upon this
Christ-like work in the 'eighties, though the home they established has
now been made over to the orphans. In Wellington, Mrs. Wallis took up
the task, and the city still keeps up the institutions which she
founded.

More pleasant is the thought of the agencies which aim at preventing
vice, rather than at undo