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Toua lea autres exempiairea originaux aont filmte en commen^ant par la pramlAre paga qui comporte une empreinte d'impreaaion ou d'illuatration et en terminant par la darniire page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un dee aymbolaa auivants apparaftra sur la darniire image de cheque microfiche, selon le caa: la aymbola — »• signifie "A SUIVRE". le aymbole y signifie "FIN". Lee cartea, planchaa, tableaux, etc.. peuvent itre fllmie i dee taux de riduction diffirents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour itre reproduit en un seul clichi, il est fllmi i partir da Tangle supirieur gauche, de gauche i droite, et de haut •» baa, en prenant la nombre d'imagea nicaaaaira. Las diagrammea suivanta illuatrant la mit^iode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 Works FnbliBhed by Maolear & Co., Toronto. THE RISE AND FALL OF PAPACY. BY THE REV. ROBERT FLEMING, London. Written in 1698, and firct Published in 170L In this work, the years 1794 and 1848 are pointed to as the most remarkable in the history of the Papal power; in the former year the wars of the French Revolution— during which the Pope was dethroned by Napoleon — were raging, *and in 1848, it is well remembered that PIUS IX. fled from the chair of St. Peter. This is one of the most extraordinary books ever written, and proves in a remarkable degree the truth of Scripture and the fulfilment of Prophecy. TRIAL OF ANTI-CHRIST ; otherwise the MAN OF SIN. To which are added, GAVAZZl'S SIX LECTURES IN DUBLIN. Price, 2s. Gd. DOYLE'S POCKET READY-RECKONER, for Timber, Plank, Boards, Saw-Logs, Wages, Board, and 6 and 7 per Cent. Interest Tables. By Edward Doyle. ^*^. vised and improved Edition. Price, Is. 3d. each ; five copies jr $1, or $2 per dozeh. '• The most correct lleady-lleckoner now before the public-"— iS' I'. Signal. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN : with an account of the Author and her Family. Third Edition. Only Is. 3d. POCKET MAP OF CANADA WEST ; adapted to the late Divisions and Alterations. All the Railroads are marked on this Map : it is Coloured, a)ul neatly done ixp in a case. Price, 2s. 6d. nn-m-nn-ia.TJci-ra- nn n m n n n -T\Tft%jr^4^m-^ _ _^^ RIGHT OF THE BIBLE IN OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. BY GEOFVQ E B. CH EEVER, D.D. TORONTO. MACLEAR & Co. KING STEEET EAST, 1854. STEKECT.i'"I> "Y J. V.'. BROWS, BOCUFSTEn, K. V. t \ rUEFACE 'J'O THE AMEIUCAN EDITION. 1 Tiik; ari^iuncnt iti lliese png(^s was coTiRtnicloc! with Fp(cial refer- ence t(>si.t;:e lalxned iiiul pbnisihle ci dtavdis !(» roniiiund to tint Cluistiiin roiniiivii'ily ilio l)Hriish;i,ciit of tlio IJiiilo and loliuious iti- 8tru(Ui'>ii fiom our Comtnon ISchools, 'I'iuv-c ciuleavors jtro inado witli reterciice 1o tlie deinaiuJs of a ])ortioii of ihe le.'idcis of a par- ticular Bccr, and for a temporary purjiose ; it is tJie pi-u sis of lioniaTi- isin, and I'ot. the common people, nor their cljildrcn. wlio wouUl break up our common school system forKcctariau purposes, and shut out ijio light, and inlluence of tlie word ot God. Ii ouuht never to be fori^otten that we are layincr the foundations of many generati«)ns. Our school system, and tiie principles oji whicli wo fi^routid it, or by which we alter it, must not be contem- tem]>lated thi<>ugh the eye-p;lasses of n p'Tseiit eliort-sighted sect, or political party, or temporary prejudice, but ihrouj^h the vista of a nundred i:^enerations, and a thousand years. To-day indeed we leg- islate for only twenty-live millions; to-morrow for a hundred mil- lions. Yet the ]iroject is up for legislatinc^ the Bible and reliL'ion (uit of our schools, and thus providing for the training ot the hundreds of n illiuns of the future generations of this countr}'. The question is not for ourselves, but f«)r our chihiren, and our children's children. The question is not local, but a question for the whnle country. It is argued on principles of exclusion on the one side, that apply everywhere ; and on principles of religion and of right for the luimau race, on the other hand, that apply every- where. If we, in this generation, get the Biljle and religion effectu- ally (Hit of our schools, ignoring it, or legalizing its exclusion, and putting the ban of sectarian ignominy upon upon it, another genera- tion will not be likely to restore it to its rightful place, or to redeem themselves from tiie fetters of this dreadful mistake. There are tliose who would establish in our school system the thunder of t!u! Vatican, with an Index Expurgatorius fur our whole school btc.atuie; and even good men are fearfully influenced by their sophistiy. '* It is a question," said Mr. Webster, " which, in its (hcision, is to iuuuenco t- e happiness, the ieinp(tral and the etern.d welf.-n-e, of one liiiudred iniilions of human beirg.s, aiiv!,' and to be !>orn, in this l.uul. ricRFACi: Ita (Iccibioii will f^ivo ii ln'o to the nppatent cTianioter of (nir institu- tions; 11 wiil Ihmi oomnu'iit cw York Ohseiver, coinnicntin-j' on tli(! rt'i'cfit (ixl.iaorilinary dccisioi of the Statt; Siipprintcndeht, foimd d on llui cornphiint of a Uoram Caihohc priest, in wlncli tin; facts oi ilic oase have he en sliowii t( have hcen cnUrely in si('[)n'scnUMl. \vt tlie Siipcrintrndi'iit.on an ej: parlR\\v.<.v, has issued a jud;.(ni('nt dmi,^' ^^r«!at. injustice lo indivKhi; Is, and assumiiii;, coidiaiy to llii* custom U!i' I special and common )a\v of our school syKteni, that neither llu- Jiihle may he read, nor 'vlieious instrncti(.iis jiiven. To say tlit*. tliey must, not 1)P ^ivcn, i.or ])rayer hi; olfered, in scliocd liours, is t>t l)aidsli tlxni entirely. 'Hie act is despotic, unaiithoriz''tl, illegal "Such a positi.in," says '.he author of the argument in the Ohseiver, " I hold to he not only niisustained V)y any hiw, hut to be at war with tlie spirit of our statutes, with the policy of our Stale, and with the hest interests of our country." From the histtn-y, nature, and laws of our Common Sclinol System, ns diivehip(!d in tids vcdunie, the reader wiM he ahle to demonstrate the perfect correctness of this statement. The decision at' tin; Statu Superintendent, and seme of the view.s elsewhere set. forth iinder like authority, tend, according to the argument of Mr. Welist(T, to "un- derndne and oppose the whole Christian religion," and consequently tlie cfunmon law ol the lan(l. " In all cases," Mr. Wehster says, •' there is nothing that we look for with more certainty, than this {general principle, that Christianity is a paht ok tiik law of the LAND.' \ CONTENTS. PAGK Prcrioc, Ititiddiictioii, * "' q liitiu(Iiifl.i/»ii to \]u> Ci!iKi(li;in "iMilioti, ".'.'..'.*.'..'.' ,".'.."..' 13 Tti(' Ariruiiinit (I'jiMiiisr, tlic !Scri|,liirc8 tlrivcn lo its Asurdilirs, 25 I'lic CliMHliaii'H ki-lil, (if CntKscKMiff!, ' ;jf; 'I'Ik; I'.ihli- not, Sccturiat '".'.'".'." ".".'.'.'.''.'.'* 3v ilif Si:it<'. •• lU'^iniiii j; nl tiif War mriiii'st the Scii)itnir« ... KHtHblisliiiioiil ul' \\<(> Vn*' S.'lio.il Svst»;in. IIcikjwiiI of flu- W'hv jiuaiiist llii- iMii| tiiu'H Argurruiil oi Danifl Wnr nyainst llin pi in «'i' tiliic-licii v.itlinrf the P'iltlo.. .- ••• Siiigul.-ir E.\!mi|.l(^ ot t^i'Cliuiaii L('<,'i«lii!i(»n HLr^iinst llu- <■!lli^l- iaii Siil'balli Comnn'i) ScliDol Systt 111 of Coniu'ctiriit Cdliiinoii Si-liool h\i-tiMii iTi; 17'.) I^b PAon. i:jc IJ^ i IV 1!)I ui; IV.» Ifri l'.t;2 INTRODUCTION 'lO TIIF. CANADIAN JODITION. i.,.'_, J . .1: t]. (^ivci ii) ! i,.i ! ■■ or all luiiVi'ir., 'aw, In; is coiiiii.u ■ '- .1 . •• ■ y . ."Ill ji,oc('[.fR 'I So • til 1 J •. ii \ , i>-y c;i) v. «.t .'.M 111). ^Tan'h 11','lit to iho Bi " ■' . .1 inipc'-Mlivo. It is ll.c >i'. ■■' rcorti of \].v vil; of ],;. Cr* . •■ .. it i l;'.iy ''i iiir iiru.'-f . .t Giii.U; Book of hi.s path, .trid tlin Tc;xt, 'io,,'. . liiiii iis arc tho giftH of t!. i»;. rcil woild, it is tlio I'^i-f n!:.' -i'' food of lu'av ;i — xiiiiM) ! ■ codo of divine, and tha foi, ./ «d ''road, iiii;rl; jind IcMrn • . riirlit is an iuLorojit ri^! — Jiiid ' ) be c.vnct'lled oidy '..j xii.- /:^ovt'rnmcnt,s, no suboniin.ite an nullify tho operations, of th" comma: ids of liK- siA'ca^i!; •'. , c (,[' .., | Jic. Liu'c^, so in t,]j(i Divine /;:r)vc:nmrnt, no powiir ordiiii'.iJ oi' Cs.d — the Makor and Ridei of all — ran sot asido tlie law.-* jlo iiiis oom- innnded t(» Iv; obeyed, or rtistiti-i tiio ii:t. tlijili \s luob is onnctn. 'y tho supreme civil mUliorif ^' r ■-o i;i religion — ', 'ti.t, whi;.ii pertuins to man's liigher destiny — thc'-o i? r hiw UiiL f God. And ii no iiiia of itrnorance or hindrance Cii: < \c " tl fMic; "eot. oi' Ituniiin l;iv, l.u^r much less will it avail in that wli oh is !d:o:;i'ti'f.r ^t: i. ii v- But this right is alflo an individnnl rit^ht .'ii.r. is b- -> ii nj:.'ui in: ii's imlividnal I'csponsibility to hi- (!i('a(>:r, a-' ■>' ri! as on ili.- iini\i-rsal axiom thnt "Sedionco to a conMnaml necessitates tlu uvderst.vu'itin' ot it. Thus () ; the solemn inau^!;ural ami promuli-oli'Mi of tho Divine law, — wlion God spaice in tho tlmnders of S'inni, in lain.niai^^e -ivnioh, from i - ;i.. 'I .-iiiveness, could leave no iol:epticism in tliu 14 miiulfiof tliDPo fo whom it was addressed,— Hie individual duty of each was strictly enjoined : " And tluae wonU \\'\nc\\ I command tlue lliis day, sliall be in tliiiie heart; and thou siialt tkacii thkm nn.i- GENTi.Y UXTOTHV ciiiLnREN% and phalt /«/A: of ihcm when thou kkt, st. m thine house, and when thou irnlkcst bylht iNiy, r,nd ^vlien thou lust thnru, and Avhen thou risestup. And tliou shalt hind them fovas:-^rn vpou thine hand, n\ A they shall he a^ fan, this hctiDcen thva mvs: An.'i Ihrai Rlialt write thnn vpon the posts of thine, hovs,, and o» lh>, pales." Deut. vi; f;-9. Could theie be a more explicit commandment iurih-ir iniiver^a] and unrestricted diffusion ? This tlien ib the law wlucli the Greatest Lrw-dv,- has bared upon the Statute Book of heaven. Enacted hy Divine authority it yet remains unamended and unrepeHlcd,-ashirrJin- now as it was when iirst proclaimed. To attempt to ]-,!cve nan's duty to obev it, w.add he to ],refeuppose iirnoranre of its author while to"je-is]atpel him to -'Search li.e Scriptures." Further, in the public interest of education o-overn^ inent has the power to prescribe that certain looks~ii,c ema" ations of human intellect, may be used in the inculcation of practical : niin "to ab.hor the evil and to choose the good," and it would be as im- ))olitic as tyrannical, for the State to interfere with, or inJiuence his decision. " TiK're is a constant tendency, not only among the cont^^ivers of political Utopias and ideal commonwealths, but also among practical politician*, to over-estimate the capabilities of a government; to as- sume that it can exercise a greater inlluence over the community than it really possesses ; and to forget that it can oidy act within a sphere Jctermined by certain conditions, and is endowed Avith legal omni- potence in no other sense, th^m that its powers have no h^gal limit. If the practical province of a State in matters involving truth luu! been considered with greater attention,— if facts and not ideas, had I'cen consulted, it would not Inve been invested with a character Avhica is unsuited to it, and been loaded with so many moral obliga- tions to which it is not properly subject."} K then the Bible be above all liuman laws ; if it be the o,.lj au- 1 hen tic code of morality ; if it bo the revelation of God's will to iran- H It be the great standard by which all religious and moral truth is to be judged, and the great fountain from which that truth is derive.! • lu'.d if Its Great Author has neither forbi-'den nor restricted its universal perusal, but by precepts and examples in both the Old and New Tes- taments enforced that .luty ; is it not then the rit, as well as the viLrcst of every Christiali cinzen to familiarize him.elf with the great i It-ill, p. ?,<). wall Lev.is, :»I. l\, ^lilL '^ '"' " ^ '" Mi^^a-i-^ of Opinion, l.y Georgo Coriie- 10 principles it teac]ie!!i, lliaL he may l)e fully pn^parcd to act upon lliat unalienable individual responsibility with which God has invested hira ? And how can that familiarity be so readily acquired as by lay- ing open to his mind in youth, the pages of Iho Sacicd A'olumc ? What period of human life is more susceptible of instruction, (,r ot trustfully receiving the words of authority, than the age (!;:ri;i^- which the puuciples and opinions of future life are developed ami formed, — wh.en tlie intellect granps and expands in thought'.'' Fii^t impressions iniluence the mind in its subseqiccnt reccplioii of facts and principles, and mould the mrral and religious churactcMistif'.s (d after life. With the great majority of the youth of our country, these impressions are made within the walls of the Common School ; tliey mark the intercourse of child with child, and foreshadow the inter- course of citizen with citizen ; their tendency, therefore, should be the inculcation of all that will promote "piety, justice, and a sacreil regard'*to truth, love to our country, humanity and univerrsal benevo- lence." And as m all these great principles of Christianity, the word of its Great Author is more authoratative and binding than lliat ot' man, that word in all its purity aTid simplicity, should be caierudy and Bysfematically impressed upon the minds of our youtli — tie future citizens of a Christian country. The fidl recognitiou of the Bible as above all liumrai laws and regu- lations is the ibundation and the pievading principle of the system of public instruction now in opiiration in Upper Ciinada. And as it is au acknowledged principle in our government that all reb'gious ilcrioiu- inations shall be equally protected by law, so in the educalional de- partment of th.;t government, it is equally as imperatively deina'lwed that nothing contrary to that principle shall be brought to beai upon the minds of the children placed under its influence. A public nwn wlien lie accepts a ])ublic trust accepts it not as a member <>' a par- ticular church, but as a citizen of tlie State, and is bound to admit;- ister it impartially for the public benefit; so a teacher of a public school, licenced by a public body, emploj'cd for a public inter'st, aud jiaid from ]iublic mono}', is bcmnd copscientiously to dir-chav^e embraoihg tin.' entire hittori/'of the Biblo, i iiintilidlon-^, cardluul doctrines and 7}iorals, to- ge er with the evidences of its mdhcntlcity." p. ii3. Such are the jjrinciples upon which our Upi)er Canadian system is founded, as may further be seen by the following extracts from the General Regulations in regard to Religious and Moral Instruction : "As Christianity is the basis of our whole svstem of elenientarv education, that principle should pervade it throughout. Where it can- ii»t be carried out in mixed , thools to the satisfaction of both Roman Catholics and Protestants, the law provides for the establishment of separate schools. And the common school act, fourteenth section, Kecuiing individual rights as well as recognizing Christianity, pro- vides, ' That in any model or common school establislied under this act, no child shall be required to read or study in or from any leliiji- ous book, or to join in any exercise of devotion or religion, v.hicli fchall be objected to by his or her parents or guardians: Provided always, that within this limitation, pupils shall l)e allov>-ed to receive such religious instruction as their parents or guardians shall dcsiio, /iccording to the general regulations which shall be jirovidcil accoid- ing to law.' " In regard t > the nature and extent of the daily religious exer- cises of the school, iuul the special religious instruction givm to pupils, tlia Council of Public Instruction for Upper Canadfi makes the following regulations and recommendations : — "1. Tlie public religious exeicises of each sclnmi shall 'oe a tuatt(n" of mutn:d voluntary arrangement l.'e.ween the trust,(H'.s an i ti-ai-her ; and it shall be a mattf r of muiunl volufitaiy atrJ'ngeiiuN t between the teacher and the pare:it or guarc'iaii of e;n'li i-'ip'', :is to u-iieilicr lie sh.. 1 l.ear pucb pupil lecite from tin; Soi iiilutc.-?, or caiccht-in, of ]9 ollitM- fiiirnmnry of religions dootrino and duty of the persuasion of Kiich parent or ^'.uaidian. Such recitations, however, are not to inter- fi'fe with the roguhir exorcises of the school. " 2. ]5ut the ])rinciple8 of religion and morality should he incul- cited !ipoii all the pupils of the school. What the Comrnissioners of Nationil Education in Ireland state as existing in schools under their ciiatge, shou d chaiacteiize the instruction given in each school in Upper C:uia Bible. The result was the proposed retirement <.f Dr. Kyerson, if this new element was adopted bv tho government, and the f•olh►v^'ing defence of the manner in wliich Religious Instruction hiid been provided for: " I have n(,t assumed it to be :. i duty, or ev(Mi constitution.d riijht ol tlu' Government to compel any thing in resp-i either to rcli-ious books or religious instaidi n, but to recouvn^^nd tlie lor-al Trustees to do s;,, and to provide powvn aftdfad'Hics to m-ihh thorn to do so av]!],- i 1 20 ill l.iie wls'! n-:^ti'icli<)!i iinpo.-ed In- law. I liavi- jt-spectcnl Uie rights an-l scriij'l'o <»f tiie Koiuaii Uftthuiic us well as r,llo^e of tlie Protestanf. i_v soiuc. I have Ween aecufcetl (if luiviii;^ too friendly a feeling towards the liumaii Oatli.lios; but wliilo I wu.:ld do noiluiig to infringe the rij^hts and ieeliri;;'-; of IlotDan CatlioLcrf, 1 .'aniKtt be a party to de- pi'iv'inf^ Proiestants (if the Text-l>o'.'k (if ilieii' faiih — the chijicest ))a*- riinony bequeatlied by tiieir furoi'uti eis, and tlie noblest birth-rieht of their childicn. It affords me pleasure to record the fact — and i\i(i circunistance show the case and fairness -wiih wliich I have acted on this subject — that before rdoptinc( the Section in the printf^d Fornm and Rcigulations on tlie ' ConstUuiion and G ovcrnmfM of tjie Schools ill rcapcct to Jidirjious Inblrnciioti,' I subn)itted it, aniong others, to Ihi^ late lamented Jlornan Catholic Bishop Power,* who after exam- iiun^' it, said ho wouM not object to it, as Roman Catholics were fully ](!oliicted m tiielr rights and views, and as he did not wish tlaced under denominational control, and made the engines of sec- tarian in-.tiuction. Apart from the fads, that, duritig the existence and operations of the present system, no danger either to the faith I m * Thn-o lOKulH'idiis. ic ia understood, wptq nlso coiicurrod in 1;t Disliop Sfi-iK-linti, of lh=> Ch'.-rcli of F.ui-lrtrd. f 21 or ?noral.s of cliilurtMi, nor di.sadvauhi^^e lo any one reli^Mous (IciHuni- iiation, have occurred in Upper Canada, lliis derriiuid rucels with little sympathy from llie people at la'f^c-, and none at all from Par- liament. So carefully it seems have the rit^'hts of pan^iils in the re- ligiouK instruction of tlieir o}iildrtn Jbeen guarded, that those most interested, and from whom si!p])ort wtmld be moat naturally expected, liavc, with a few exceptions, ht;en eillier totally silent on the matter, or opposed to its advocacy. Were the demand possible tobecom- ])lied with, it would leave the youth of the minor religious persua- sions, witlioiit any adequate education, except as ]iaiipors, or at the fxpeiise of their religious faith. For if it be demanded that the pub- lic K'jhool shall be superseded by the denominatiomd scliool, it is on tlie same principle demanded that children slrdl attend none other than the school of the denomination to which their parents belong; Juul it is a well known fact, that in very few portions of the country can even the most numerous denomination support a school adequate to the wants of its own children ; while in every easy, t'uch a system would deprive tliethiuly settled portions of the country of the schooli tliey now possess. " But tlje establishment of denominational common schools for llie purpose of denominational r.digiou.s instruction itself is inexpedient. The children attending the common schools can be with the teacher, only from nine o'clock in the morning until fouc in the afternoon of five or six days in the week, while during the morning and night of each week-day and the whole of Sunday, they are with their parents tn- pastors ; and the mornings, and evenings, and Sabbath of each week, are the very portions of time which convenience and usage aud ecclesiastical laws prescribe for religious studies and instruction. I might here adduce what is enjoined on this subject by the Roman Catholic, and the several Protestant Churches ; but as an example of what is required, in some form or other, by the rules of every religi- ous persuasion, I will quote the 59th canon of the Church of England, which is as follows : 'Evey Parson, Vicar, or Curate, upon every Sunday and Holy day, before Evening Prayer, shall for half an hour or more, examiiie and instruct the youth and ignorant persons in his parish, in the Ten Commandments, the Articles of the Eelief, and the Lord'>^ Prayer ; and shall diligently hear, instruct, and teach thorn the Cate- chism SL't forth in the Bo^ik of Common Prayer ; and all fathers, mothers, mn.vtp.r--, rind mi.str(.s.:(.s:« and euDifes; hue if nuv should 'nejU'eet or ri fi-se, on the ple.a of heii>,-' e.xeii-])^ from Episenpnl jurisdic:if.n, it is ndded, "let noC the watehtul pastorid ciire of ihe BLsho'is Le wuiiiiiiii-, provided those ohnrchaa div h. •hiii . aeir (ijoc have asked for bread r.iid the hi re was none to bre.ik it unto them.' (hat \\ord lie ruilal d, ' Tlui yoiuij.;' children 9S b..lo„gs_w,tl> the local school n^JZw^^LZ'^ ^'"^'^^ of scliools-the government «r„, ""•"'""'• Parents and rnaoageni Cild, but be;„fdThrandTev^r?''.f"^'''."'™* P'""'»'» n.oral,t,e,co,oa,o„toXlsI^ 1 ''"""P'™ '"O ""«<« »' -recognizing tl dutie, of 7 *" ""■"Pdling nor prohibiting tttr^rdrrr^ The right of the Bib e in otXor l""'-'r '" ■" ^PP^'^anadaf word that liveth and aWd th ^ ^ThJ ','?'!' "' ™'='' "'"<' '^ «« .-ra. .ruth ia stepped ^* '„^ ZZ ^"^ °' f '"'«'°- "-» l^udaof those to /homLd has g^t1t6hV''th {""t" 1° ""^ good? Sliall it boused in (h. / that right be for which ,t was conceived or" ^wT""'/"'' ""s"""' »P'"' " -s, Shall the fl;. hi^f dX°of Ca d'T "^ "'^ '-»- all the nobleness of Christianilv?^-! '^'' ** "■"'■'d with elled atheismjXen^ylhavir '^ '""' *'"'''"-' »'"W''- and on ,our .nawTrt^^r rurf'';o':%"SJ" r "''°"''' P«.at; as^onr in.,gin:rres"';ou";:fZ rth^T"""' " t at child, ripened by yean. see. vJ^aZ . *"°° ""«"' the eye fail, ...d the iC s^es^lh™ grey-headed; wheu peaceful, and when your chiidtt^'yo'' Zin 2\ "^ !Z "" among the neighboi»-_thi>,t f 7" P'"" »»•''» homestead and tebe; think of whririt- ''°" "'"''' '»'' "«» chUd biiity God h j'pii'A "p^:;:: rd'th7nr:;":v* •" ** '«">»-'• be co-exiatant with you when ri^i.*! '"''''"" ^°" ""''' *»» have gone I Then act If 7 " "™'-''''«° Parent and child consciLe, of duty "f 'X„T '° ^^T ^'^'- "" *« "'«"''» «' Bootwhicijirwrnlhiweofwh i""* ^°""''"'' «>'">« 0«at TeU him that ittVodtirasfatri" rr",''°'"'"'''»'''''»- landscape. Let him can^ i? il'tt ? ,^ *"'' ""■• ""' ^'" »■><» he may take knowL»T •. "''°''' "°'° " ■"» ''««' '""'1'. n,.iuor. That book contains a section on the excellence of *..3 5:o) Scriptures. The very title is an offense to my conscifcK'e, But when, farther than this, I find the % 'M 27 a-riptures referred to as beyond all <4ue«tion the Word of Ood, a revelation from Heaven for our guidance, witli an absolute' denial that the soul can be saved without it; and when I find perhaps in some other section, an attractive and beautiful des- cription of the evidences of Christianity, or the grounds on which it is proved conclusively that the Bible is the Word of God; I say to myself, this is an outrage on my rights, a viola- tion of the first principles of religious liberty. I cannot suffer my children to be educated at a school where the instructions I give them at home receive the lie, v.here they are taught that all that I have taught them is false. But the committee tell me: sir, this book is one of the best class books in our Public School System, admitted to be so by all, and has been from time immemorial, or ever since its com- 1^ pilation, in constant use without the slightest objection. And unless you will consent to have your children instnicted from this book, they cannot enter; for it would be fatal to all order and authority in the school, if the pupils are permitted at every freak of opinion in their parents, to transgress the appointed discipline, or refuse the accustomed lessons. "Well," I answer, "this is an oppression of my conscience. I would rather have the Word of God itself read, or what you i call the word of God, than these alluring praises of it, and pre- tended demonstrations of its divine origin." And I have the right of it, if the assumed premises in regard to any "religious bias," or use of the Bible in schools, being an infraction of reli- gious liberty, are admitted as correct. I am, in such a case, deprived of any common benefit of Government, because of my religious faith. I am a poor persecuted Deist, oppressed in my rights and liberties, as a citizen, by the very Government which I support for the protection of both. I am shut out from the public schools, although compelled to pay for the sup- port of them, because the rrovpmmonf ,'n iU^r^ « a^^: x. 28 assume the control of my children's opinious. You are intole- rant by system, and you compel me to keep my children at home. Now, on the assumed necessity of a perfect indifference as to religious truth and error, assuming for belief and unbelief, The- ism and Atheism, Deism and Christianity, the same a priori claims, the same authority, tlie same right, or, in other words, assuming that a system of public education, to be impartial, must have no religious bias, and that the Scriptures, as the "Word of God, must be excluded, and absolutely ignored, the argument of the Deist is irresistible. But let us take another case. Su])pose I am si Jew, I say to myself — Well, in this happy llepublic, and under this unrivalled free-school system, we are at length delivered fror.i the accursed shackles of religious intoleiance ; we are not cor ipel led to en- dure the thrusting of that book of fables, the New Testainent, in our faces at eveiy turn, and to pay for having our children listen to a lie. Here my children c?in at length be educated without fear of any religious bias. Under this impression, I take them to the nearest school in the Ward or section of the city I inhabit. But one of thevery iirst reading books put into their hands is a book containing a section abridged from Lord Lyttleton, entitled " The truth of Christianity prov(»d from the convereion of the Apostle Paul." And it is a demonstration that Paul was neither an impostor nor an enthusiast, but a sin- cere and learned person, miraculously converted from the Jew- ish faith, to the faith of Christ crucilied, and conseqi ently that the Christian religion is a Divine revelation. Furthermore, in other books the truth of that religion is taken for granted, and whole courses of infonnation and of reasoning are buiit upon it, and the name of its founder, whom the Jews execrate as an impostor, is often referred to, and always with the most reveren- tial and adoring regard. Nay, the New Testament itse'f, which I i ft \ 29 the Jews teach their children to abhor, is referred to as divine, described in most attractive terms, and beantifu] passages are quoted from it. This is an outi-ag-e on ray conscience, a viola- tion of the first principles of religious liberty. My children are excluded from schools, for the support of which I am taxed, or else they are compell(?d to listen to instructions and to read les- sons which would persuade them that their father is a liar, ,and the i-eli-rion of their fathers a deception. My children are excluded from these schools because of my religious scruples, which the government of the schools would thus ignore, con- temn, or outrage. And, as a Jew, I am in the right, on the assumption that the use of the Bible, as the Word of God, in our public schools, or ihe admission of any " religious bias," is a violation of the rights of conscience. Let us take yet another case. Suppose I am a Mohamme- dan. I teach my children at home that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his Prophet. I teach them the Koran as a Divine revelation, and carefully instruct them that all men, except the followers of the Proplu-t, are infidels, and that none but Mohammedans can possibly be saved. But I pay my tax for the system of free public schools, and I have a right to have my children educated there. But the very day 1 place them there, they bring me home, as a sj-eciinen of the public instruc- tion, a reading lesson, entitled "The spirit and law.s of Christi- anity superior to those of every olher religion." The very title is an outrage on my conscience, an intolei-ant defiance of the claims of the religion of my lathers, the proclamation of false- hood as to all the teachings I have given to my children at home. But I also find in other lessons and sections, a mode of teaching equally subversive of my liberty and rights. I find the founder of Christianity sj)oke.n of as a Di\ine Pei-son, the Deliverer and Saviour of matdciiid ; and I find the apostolic teachei-s of that religion favoi-ably compared with Mohammed, 30 nay, and tliat great pr9p}iet liimself, entitled the Impostor of Arabia. I find things taught, which, by the laws of the Koran, are blasphemous, and punishable with death. It is a violation of religious equality and liberty for the government to institute Buch schools. My own childien are excluded from the benefits of education by the very religious scruples and convictions which are thus ridiculed and blasphemed. And for this I am compelled to pay the government. I am oppressed in my rights and liberties as a citizen, by the very government which I sup- port for the protection of both. Nay, my very usages and precepts of domestic life, which 1 teach as sacred to my children, are publicly "idiculed ; and under cover of the inoffen- sive title of " The Love of the World Detected," I find it asserted that Mohammedans themselves, in spite of the interdic- tion of their prophet, do eveiywhere, in some part or another of the unclean abomination, eat pork. I find a poem from one of the most esteemed writere of the English language given to my child to read, in which it is aflSrmed, That conscience free from every clog, Mohammedans eat up the hog. This man, again, is right, on the assumption that tlie recog- nition and use of God's Word is an infraction of the rights of conscience, and that an impartial system of public education must be free from any religious bias. The least allusion to the Saviour of the world as a Saviour, is a " religious bias." Yet again, we may take the case of a Chinese, a Pagan, a Hindoo. He is conscientiously attached to his own idolatrous worship, and teaches it to his children. Jupiter, Vishnu, Con- futzee, or what not, he has the shrine of domestic superstition, and brings up his children in his own faith. But he desires to avail himself for them, of the benefits of the free public schools ; for he has his rights as a citizen, and pays the government for protecting them. But the very first thing his children meet 81 with, is perhaps a reading-lesson on common things, declaring "that pure religion is the worship paid to one Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, but that men through wickedness have become worshippers of false gods, adoring im- ages wrought by their own hands, forsaking the worshtp of their maker, and deifying even animals and vegetables." This lesson teaches the children of this idolater that his own teach- ings are all false, and that the only true religion is taught iu the life and writings of Christ and his Apostles. Now this ia an incomparably greater violation of the rights of conscience, than if a Romanist had to send his children where the Word of God is recognized and read. It is, by your hypothesis, an oppression of him by the government that taxes him for the support of the schools. You compel him to take away his children, and forego all the benefits of a free public education, or else have them instructed in what he considers falsehood. « His children are excluded from these schools, because of his religious scruples, which the government of the schools would thus ignore, contemn, or outrage." It is, by your own theory* an intolerable oppression. We will now take but one more case, and it shall be that of the Romanist, We will take it as the othei-s, not now with reference to the Word of God iteelf in the schools, but to other books, insti-uctions, moral and historical lessons. He pays his tax we will suppose, for the support of a public free school system, and he wisiies to avail himself of the benefit. His priest has taught him, and he and his piiest has taught his children, that all out of the church of Rome are heretics and infidels, doomed to everlasting perdition ; that the so-called Re- formation was a gr.eat and dreadful schism in the only true churdi, a piece of wickedness set forward mainly by one of the worst men that ^yer lived, a licentious, profane, abandoiied, and. apostate monk, Maitin Luther; that the Pope and the papal 32 church are infallible, and that the Pope's followei-s, and they only, are good Christians. But one of the first books put into the hands of his children in the public schools, contains a speech of the Earl of Chatham, presenting the following •passage — " In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Bi'itain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties, and inquisitorial piactices, are en- dured among us. To send forth the merciless Indian, thii-stiug for blood 1 — against whom ? — your Protestant brethren ! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these ungovernable savages !" Tyranny of Rome, and Popish cruel- ties ! These teachings are against the conscience of a Roman- ist; it is an oppression by the Government, to compel him to pay for its protection of his rights and religious liberty, and then in the public schools, to have his own religious scruples, and historical learning and belief thus ignored, contemned, or outraged. But again, he finds the character of Martin Luther drawn by the historian Robertson, and he cannot endure that a picture so contrary to all tl;at he has been tiught, and that he wishes his children conscientiously to believe, shall be brought as truth ]>efore their minus. It is an infiingement of his i-eligious liber- ty, his rights of conscience, for his children ai'e debarred from a school where Mai-tin Luther is presented as a good man. It is intolerance in the government. But again, ho finds the historical nan-ative of the execution cf Cranmer, Archbi.^hop of Canterbnry, exti-acted from the pages of Hume, and it is against his conscience to permit his children to be taught tlmt Cranmer was a good man, or that the Romish Court wtis guilty of barbarous persecution in put- ting a heretic to death. It is an oppression of the government to have this taup'ht in th*^ sehof>l«. Ills relio'ious seruplt'S ait) in this ignored, contemned, and outraged. t or "\ 33 Once more, he finds an extract from the exquisite poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, in which the inhabitants of Italy ai'e des- cribed in two of the lines as follows : Though grave, yet trifling, zealous, yet untrue. And e'en in penance planning sins anew. This agair is an intolerable oppression of his conscience. His children have been taught that penance is a rite and duty of the Church, and that those who practice it are good Christians; but here is a hint that penance mt/y be merely the cover of sin; and it is contrary to his I'eligious scruples, and his rights of conscience, that his children should be made to hear any such thing. It is intolerance in the government to offer them an education that exposes them to such knowledge ; it is a violation of his religious liberty. Now, of all these supposed cases, which is the most pinch- ing? Who are most injured by an education containing such examples of "religious bias," such presentations of known, common, and admitted truth 'i Deists, Mohammedans, Jews, Idolaters, or Romanists ? And of all these forms of conscience, which shall be taken as the rule of religious liberty ? Accord- ing to the assumption in the argument against the Bible in the schools, they ought all to be taken. But that again would cre- ate intestine war; each and all would complain in turn of reli- gious scruples and beliefs ignored and outraged by the other. Jew, Mohammedan, and Romanist, would contend against each other more earnestly than any or all, against the Word of God. Therefore, the only rule of equality and impartiality, is the Word of God for each and all. But the assumption of the argument against a " religious bias" takes the sacrifice of the Word of God on the altar of religious hberty as a necessity at any rate in the free school system ; and now, following out these princi}>les logically, con- sistently, in the formation or expurgation of our whole school B* 34 literature for the relief of conscience, for tlie liberty of con- Bcience, where, and at whose instigation, by whose conscience for the rule, for the guide, shall the great work of relief and liberty begin ? Shall the conscience of Deist, Mohammedan Jew, Pagan, or Romanist, be the leader and bear sway ? Your argument compels you to the choice of some one, for you reject the rule of the majority, and a mixture of opposing con- sciences you cannot have, but if conscience be your principle of regulation in the school system, you must take the, conscience of some one sect. Whose shall it be ? You have already de- termined the matter. Your whole argument goes for installing Romanism as the supreme deciding authority. You propose the exclusion of the Bible, because the conscience of the Roman- ist requires it You are ready to follow the Priest of Romanism at his beck, through the whole region of school literature and usages. You have already begun to do this; and the p^issages I have pointed out as incurring the excommunicating curse of a Romish conscience, your school commissioners have already obliterated or mutilated, at the priest's bidding; and you have thus made the conscience of one sect tlie tyrant of all the rest. , And to this day tins disgrace stands perpetuated in the school books. The Romish edict has marked its wny, as it generally does, so that there is no mistaking" it. And it stands a palpable demonstration of the consequences to which this argument against the Bible, at the demand of the conscience of a single sect, must lead. The obliteration and mutilation of the school books is one legitimate result, and some of the noblest bursts of eloquence in the Engli.sh tongue, and most exquisitely-wrought compositions, historic, poetic, and didactic, nnist be cut away, and cast out as sectai'ian, against which the suspicion of secta- rianism was never before breatued, the idea never thouo-ht of. Compositions of superior acknowledged excellence and imme- Biorial use are to be chaiged a-* seclarian, in which no quality a5 or aspect of sectarianism can be detected, because the imprima- tur of a particular sect is withheld from them ! Because they are not sectarian, — because the historian was not a Romish historian, — because tlie poet was 710^ a Romish poet, coloring his descriptions with the colors that the church demands; there- fore they are to be marked and condemned as sectarian, and, on that ])retence, excluded ! And in the gaps thus made, in the speech of Lord Chatham, for example, the blackening im- pression is stamped upon tlie page thus : — Whole pages were thus defaced at first, because this was a cheap mode of accomplishing the Romish expurgation, the remainder of the volumes being still readable. In other pages, couplets of straggling stai-s filled up the omissions; and in ano- ther edition, the offensive stereotype plate, where it formed a whole page, was destroyed, and pages totally blank were left here and there thi'ough the volume. Such is the aspect of a a portion of tho school literatm-e at this moment. THE CHRISTIAN'S RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE. Thus have you done. But in doing this, you have forgotten or Ignored tlie f^ict that otliers, besides the opposers of the Scriptures, have a conscience also. They are, moreover, the overwhelming majority, a point which we shall thoroughly consider. They will tell you that after the Word of God is thus prohibited, and the whole round of literature expurgated of every "religious bias," all the religious element, and even the Protestant historical element eliminated, they, in their turn, are conscientiously prohibited, by that very exclusion and elimi- nation, from the benefit of an education by the Government. They pay their tax; but the Government oppresses and tram- ples on their constitutional and conscientious rights, and offers them, instead of a free education, an education fenced round with bars and lances, an education provided with dykes to keep out the influx of Christianity, like the swamps of Holland with their embankments sustained at such an enormous expense, to keep out the sea. It offere them, instead of an education for freemen, an education hoodwinked, fettered, jealous, that like a liveried hoi-se, cannot travel in the public highway without blinders. It offers them, instead of a system open and fearless, producing habits of inquiry and investigation, a coward educa- tion, that cannot bear the light, — nay, an education of which one of the fixed and guiding elements is the exclusion of the light; an education that must stifle the voice and muffle the drum of history; an education that cannot endure so much as the mention of the name of Martin Luthor, but with priest's curses. 37 But that is by no means the worst. It is a system of oppres- sion; you fall by it into the very evil for the avoidance of which you have required us, at the conscience of the Romanist, to keep out the Bible. It is an oppression which, favoring every sect in its turn that is opposed to Christianity, .ets itself against those only whose conscience binds them to Christianity You have chosen a public school system that legislates in behalf of every congeries of unbelievers, every squad of opposers of the Lible and religion, under whatever shape, and at their com- mand, arranges the coui^e of instruction, puts the expurgatory bnish in turn into the hands of a committee from every one of them, saying in succession, if logically consistent. Now take your conscientious turr. in blotting out; and resiste, disregards, and really outrages the consciences of those only who love the Bil»Ie, and demand the full historical truth. Have they no rights of conscience ? Have they no ckim to a perfect religious freedom ? Are all sects in turn to be promoted, and they alone contemned ? They do solemnly believe and aver that a system of education which, from being in the outset grounded in the Word of God, fearless, free, unsectarian, yet shining with high religi- ous light, is deliberately altered, is emasculated, is blinded and fettered, to meet the imperious demands of a sect opposed to the Word of God, and becomes jealous against all truth hated of that one sect, being thus sacrificed for a sectarian purpose, is unfit for the children of freemen, unbecoming the republic. They believe that a system of education which thus studiously and guardedly excludes a religious bias, and puts the Bible under a. public ban, is in essence and inevitably infidel, and deleterious in its tendency; and they cannot conscientiously support it. But you compel them to suppoit it; you pay no attention whatever to their consciences. Their conscience happening to be in behalf of the Bible, is branded as an intolerant conscience, in- * -fering with the rights of a perfect religious liberty. ' The ler 88 conscience of the Romanist, who hatea the Bible, and must ^^et it out of the schools, and not only so, but must have tlie school- books expurgated by the priest, or he will not send his children, you respect. The conscience of the Christian, the Protestant, who sincerely believes that the Bible ought to be recognized, and its teachings admitted, or if they be put under excommu- nication, he cannot conscientiously send his chi: 'rcn, you des- pise ; you pay no attention to his scruples ; you no moi-e regard his deepest and dearest right* of conscience, than if his love of God, and his veneration of God's word, were the most otfensive and licentious superstition. 1^ ;get lool- Iren, taut, zed, mu- des- ^ard e of isive THE BIBLE NOT SECTARIAN. The question of tlie Bible in schools is not the question of a distinctively religious instruction as sectaiian ; it is a confusion of terms and ideas to present it as such. The Bible is the only unsectarian book and system. The Bible is religious instruction, all-pervading, pure, perfect, but not distinctive or sectaiian, as opposed to this or tbat sect; just as the atmosphere is omnipresent, translucent, vital, but not as oxygen or nitrogen. The moment any sect claims that the Bible is sectarian, and therefore would have it excluded, this would be just averring or intimating that they are themselves opposed in it; but no sect will avowedly do that. The Bible, then, is neither Protestant nor Romish. It has never been used as such in our schools; it was never at the outset introduced as such ; and it is a slan- der against those who love it, and a libel on the founders of our school system, to make any such assertion. The Bible is used as God's Word, our guide to everlasting life, and not as a book of Protestantism. If God's Word is against RomauLsm, so be it; we cannot help that; but that is no good reason why we should hide it from our children, or expunge it from our school literature. If God's Word is against Romanism, it is because it is God's truth ; and not because it is Protestant truth. The Bible is older than Romanif>ii;, older than any sect iu the world. The Bible is the only Catholicity; the oiily form • in which religion can be taught without a sectarian r ".igioua bias; and that is a great and mighty reason why it shoidd be taught, or enter in some way as an acknowledged divine ele- ment into our public school system. It may be used \n a 40 thousand forms; there are already most unexceptionable exam- ples, most admirable compilations of Scripture lessons. It is by no means necessary to use the liible as a text-book ; but selec- tions may bo made without offence to any Cliristian denomina- tion, and still conveying a great amount of instruction from the fountain of light and life. And much might be said as to the prociousnejw, the invaluable worth of such a model of our na- tive tongue, in its sweetest, simplest^ purest Saxon idioms, to be familiar to the youthful mind; a book of style, as well as thought and religion, at that tender age, when every book, lia- bitually read, forms the habit, both of thought and expression into a reflex image of itself. The dews of elemental purity and power in our language, as well as of heavenly thought and instructions, should thus be permitted to fall daily, gently upon the opening blossoms of intellect. And here it is proper to notice and expose that artifice of RO])histry to exclude the Word of God, by representing our li^nglish translation of the Scriptures, as a Protestant or secta- rian translation. It is no more a Protestant translation, than the Bible itself, in the original, is a sectarian book. Neither was it ever the particular version, but the Word of God itself, which the translators of our English Scriptures set forth as an antidote to Pojiery, Unless it be argued and admitted that the Word of God in a faithful translation ceases to be the Word of God, there must be a translation in some shape used. Now, as to the gi-eat Conscience argument, of which we shall farther sj)C'ak, thousands and millions of those who pay taxes for the schools, conscientiously believe that our common English trans- lation of the Scriptures, being neither Protestant nor sectarian, but the true Word of God, ought to be used ; that at any rate it ought to be used till in the providence of God a better trans- lation shall be afforded; that it ought to be used, and is used, with no sectarian or Protestant design, but as a thing of equal 41 vho pay for the school system, and conscien- tiously believe that their children ouglit to listen to the Word of God somewhere, in some way, in the iniblic school^, to have that Word used, to enjoy that privilege; and those who would .orbid and prevent this privilege, those who would exclude the word of God, are the intolerant party; those who, bcK^ause they themselves dislike it, would make their professed and con- scientious dislike the iron and intolerant rule of all the rest. ^ But the sophistry in regard to a Protestant Bible is so plaus- ible with some, that it requires a further notice. There is no Buch thing as a Protestant version; there never has been: it is a mere figment, used to cover the attiick against the Word of vTod. There is a Ilomish version, but there is no Protestant version. There is an English version for all who read Eno-lish ; the work was begun by WicklifTe, in the Romi.sh Church, be- fore the art of printing; it was renewed and continued by Tyn- dale, Covei-dale, Matthew, and others in the same Ilomish Church, before the public protestation against the errors of that church. It wa-s printed, published and circulated by the au- thority of a Ilomish king, King Henry the Eii.-lith, with a license, procun^d by Cranmer and tlie Vicar- General, Ci-um- well, of the Romish Church, ])orniittino-, in Cranmor's words, that it might be "read of every person, without dangei-s of any act, proclamation, or ordinance heretofore granted "to the con- trary, until such time as we the l^ishops shall set fortli a better translation, which I think will not be till a day after doomsday." 42 1 his very translation, which, in the main, was that of Tyiidale, was substantially taken as the basis of the translation issued under King James; it was, in effect, adopted by the forty-seven translators employed by him, so that our present incomparable English translation of the Sciiptures cannot be called a Pro- testant translation, but simply the English translation, and ot such peifcct freedom from anything sectarian, as between Ro- manism and other sects, that the learned Dr. Alexander Ged- des, an ecclesiastic of the Romish Church himself, called it " of all vei-sions the most excellent, for accuracy, fidelity, and the strictest attention to the letter of the text." The learned Sel- den called our English translation " the best version in the world." But it is not a Protestant translation, nor a Protestant Bible, but it is, simply, the people's Bible, the Word of God in English, for those who speak the English tongue. If no Bi- ble but the original Greek and Hebrew were the Word of God, then none but Greeks and Hebrews have the Word of God ; and if all Bibles but Greek and Hebrew are sectarian Bibles, then the Romish church itself has nothing but a sectarian Bible; lier chosen version of the Latin Vulgate is a sectarian version, to say nothing of the Douay Bible. This stigmatizing of our English translation as the Protestant \'eision is a poor trick resorted to in order to banish the Word of God from our r?hool3 Tt is not a Protestant version, but it is simply a faith- ful translation oi the Word of God in English, for the free use of men, women, and children of all classes and denominations. If the Romanists choose to use any other English version in the schools, they ai'e at perfect liberty so to do ; let them use their Douay version, if they please. Classes might be formed in any or every school with the Douay vei-sion, or the common English version, and either be used at pleasure. But for one party to say to the other, — Because we do not desire to have 43 the English translation used in the schools, you shall not have it, and for this to be enforced as the rule, would be glaring injustice and intolerance. The Word of God in English is no more the Protestant Bible or the Protestant version, than the science of Algebra in Eiglish is Protestant Algebra, or of astronomy the Protestant astronomy ; no more than the stai-s in America are Protestant stars, or the sun a Protestant sun. Both the vrorks of God, and the Word of God are God's truth. The works of God, this sun, these stai-s, are seen in England, through an English atmosphere, in America, through an American atmosphere, but they do not on that account, in America or England, cease to be the sun and stars of God, or become a sun and stars of English or American workmanship. The light is not American light, nor English light, because it poui-s from the sky, through clouds in the English or American climate, but it is God's light, though it poured through a London fog. Suppose now, (to take another line of illustrations,) that a poor man comes with his children to a public asylum for some thing to eat. He is received and placed with his children at a table bountifully spread, and is told to eat abundantly. But suddenly he sees a sali-cellar on the table, and declares that he cannot eat salt, neither he nor his children, nor anything cooked with it, for that he has a scrupulous religious conscientious ob- jection against it. And suppose that, rather than turn the man away hungry, you set a separate table for him, and pro- vide food that has no salt in it But, meanwhile, the other inmates of the asylum come to their daily nourishment, and sit down and eat at the other table with the salt upon it ; and then this man of so great conscience farther declares, that nei- ther he nor his children can partake of food in that house, uul(?ss tlie}'^ exclude salt from the house; that it is an oppression of his conscience to be obliged tr- oat anything where othei*s 44 are eating salt, and that if you persist in having salt as one of the regular articles of food in that asylum, you will be guilty of starving him and his children to death, for that he has no means of getting food anywhere else, and his conscience pre- vents the possibility of his availing himself of the food offered to him there. Would you say tliat the government are to be bound by the conscience of this family, and that they have no right to authorize the use of salt at all in that asylum ? To this extent does the demand of the Romanists against the Scriptures go. Now, apply this to the case before us. Suppose that a par- ticular family object to their children studying arithmetic out of Colburn's Sequel. It is no matter what the ground of con- science in this case is ; it is sufticient that it is . onscience that professes to make the objection. The children come to school and in obedience to their parents' command, refuse to get, along with the other children of the class the lesson set them. They persist in their refusal, till at length they are forbidden the school, unless they will observe its discipline, and use that book. Now, would any man undertake to set up a cry of intolerance and hardship in this cfise ? Supjwse there were a score of families and a hundred children united in the same objection. Would the sense of right and justice in the com- numity demand that Colburn's Sequel be excluded from the school, or that otherwise those children were oppressively treat- ed, deprived of the means of education ? No, you would say ; it is a wilful obstinacy in this case, interfering with and break- ing up all possibility of order and discipline in the school, which must be maintained. Suppose again, that the New Testament is used as a class- book in the schools, and a certain numbei- of children refuse to read that, and persist in the refusal. Is it anv less wrono', anv less a breach of order and discipline, to refuse to read the lesson 45 in tlic New Testament, than it would be to refuse to get the lesson in Colburn's Sequel ? And if the Superintendent of the school decides, that unless the children will obey the rules of the school they cannot be received into it, is it any more injustice in this case, than it would be in the case of Colburn's Sequel ? The use of the New Testament as a reading book, is no more sectarian than the use of Colburn's Sequel, as a book of the science of arithmetic ; indeed not so much so ; for whereas the New Testament is the pure truth from God, not passed through any human or sectarian system, Colburn's Se- quel is God's mathematics, passed through Colburn's particular mind, with his selected formulas, put into his system ; as Col- burn's arithmetic, it is sectarian arithmetic, and the Romish Index Expurgatorius would have denounced it as such, had he lived in Galileo's time, and been a heretic. But the New Testament is God's Word, and not man's, nor men's, nor the pi-operty, nor right of any one sect or denomination. And they who, on the ground of an obligation to their own particu- lar church, should refuse to use the New Testament, and demand of the Legislature not to have it used on this account, would be guilty of the most monstrous intolerance towards all the other churches, or sects, or denominations that claim it, or have been in the habit of using it, and still insist upon that privilege as their I'ight. The Constitution of the State of Maine declares that, « No suboi'dination nor preference of any one sect or denomination to another, shall ever be established by law." How much more that no preference of any one sect above all the others, shall be permitted, and that there shall be no one denomination to which the arrangements of all the othere shall have to submit. Now, the banishing of the New Testament as a class-book, at the demand of a hundred Romish child iv^n iha T^qpano.^ ^f -. law requning the Superintendent of Common Schools in any 46 township or county to do this, would be, in fact, absolutely and unquestionably installing and establishing the one Romish sect in preference and power over all the othere. And yet a public writer has* quoted that very provision in the Constitution of Maine, to prove that neither the Legislature nor tlie School Superintendent .have any right to appoint the reading of the New Testament as a class-book, and to require the children who attend school to attend to that lesson ! Has quoted that very provision to prove that the Romanists ought to be admitted to make a law for all other sects, preventing them from having the Bible as a class-book. The argument is, that if the Bible be. admitted, the Roman Catholic children are excluded, and inasmuch as the Constitu- tion says that no subordination nor preference of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law, therefore the Bible must be excluded. But why ? Be- cause a particular sect requires it ! Then what is that, but just preferring a particular sect to give law to all the others, contrary to the Constitution ? And yet this absurd argument will seem plausible with many ; and any case where the Bible is used in school, notwithstanding the opposition of a party against it, and where, on right principles, the established custom and law of the school demanding it, the teacher and superintendent cannot do otherwise than retain the Bible, or trample on the rights of all denominations, will be paraded as a case of intolerance and usurpation! Because the Constitution requires that no one sect shall have preference over another, therefore it is unconsti- tutional to use the Bible ! therefore the Bible in the school is a usurpation and oppression ! Because the Constitution requires that all denominations shall have equal rights, therefore no denomination shall have a right to the Bible, if any denomi- nation object to it. Is not that an admirable logic of equality and freedom ? ^ 47 The appointment of a reading lesson from the sacred Scrip- tures, with a rule that the whole class, or the whole school, ai the case may be. shall take part in it, is no more an instance of religious compulsion, than the appointment of a reading lesson from the Task, or from the Paradise Lost. If the children were compelled to give their assent to it, or signify their belief of any religious truth in it, then indeed it would be compulsion. But the appointment of a reading lesson from the Bible is no more an oppression upon conscience, than the teaching of the art of reading itself is an oppression upon conscience. Any school exercise is as much an oppi-ession as the reading of the Bible, if any child refuse it, and be compelled to join in it. Yet, to avoid even the appearance of compulsion, it should be entirely at the option of parents to say whether their children shall join in such an exercise. We shall consider this matter again under the example of Scotland. CONSEQUENCES OF THE REASONING FOR THE EXCLUSION OF THE BIBLE, ON THE GROUf^D OP ITS BEING AN OPPRK«!?ION TO TJP,i2 IT. t The reasoning of those who would exclude the Bible, makes the assumption that if only one conscience object to it, its use is wrong. No ultimate rule of conscience is proposed, none admitted ; and although the Divine Being has given his Word to difsipate the doubt and darkness of the human conscience unenlightened, and to set it right, yet this reasoning assumes that a conscience without the Bible and against it is of as nmch validity and authority, as a conscience guided hy the Bible. A man who rejects the Word of God, has, on this theory, as much right to set up his conscience as the ground in ni;iking that rejection a rule for otheis, as one who receives the Word of God, has to propose that Word as the rule. And if the conscience of any pereon is set in opposition against that Word, it is, on the assumptions of this theory, a pereecution of such persons to place that Word before them, or to put them in e situation where they cannot avoid beholding its light, or even to offer them a vast benefit, if at the same time the natui-e of that benefit is such, that their abhorrence of the Word of God causes them to relinquish the boon. The reasoning on such premises is destructive of the right to spread the Word of God anywhere. Take the Duke of Tus- cany's dominions as a pertinent example. The Duke's con- science, under that of the priests who keep his conscience, forbids his permitting any of his subjects to use the Word of God in the vernacular tongue. Now, on the reasoning of those who 49 woiilrl exclude the Scriptures from our free public schools, you are intolerant, if you give away a copy of the Bible, or teach it in the Duke's possessions. You go against the rights of con- science, and the rule and reason of a jx^ifect religious liberty, if you, in opposition to the dictates of that conscience, thrust tho Word of God before the ])eople. And when the Duke seizes you, and tiirusls you into pi-ison, it is not he that is committing a eiime ag linst God's Word and your conscience, but it is you that have violated his fi-eedom of conscience, his impartial liberty, ■which, in and for the education of his people, ought to be left without any '• religious bias." It is not he that pei-secutes you but you that endeavored to persecute him ; and he simply gives you the just punishment of your intolerance and bigotry in thrusting upon his subjects the Word of God. For the Duke of Tuscany^s dominions are merely a moderate sized public school, where the experiment of an education fjee from " religi- ous bias," free from the intrusion of the Word of God, is going quietly on; and you disturb that quiet by your intolerant pre- sentment of God's Word, against those conscientious scruples which the Duke of Tuscany's government is bound to protect. And the district school is but the Duke of Tuscany's dominions in miniature, where you administer an impartial education in the same manner, free from any "religious bias," and with a scrupulous exclusion of tho Word of God. You can exclude the Word of God from the common school or from Ital}'', only on the same ground ; a tyrannical pj-etence of regard to con- science, the pretence that you are bound, fi-om regard to the conscience of those who oppose the Word of God, to exclude it from the presence and hearing of those who love it, desire it, and need it. On this theoi-y, that is, tho theory that a conscience outside the Word of God, and against it, is as auihoritative^ and as much to be respected as a conscience enlightened by it, and c 50 acting under ite guidance, if the conscience of the majority bind them to persecute, the minority ouglit to make no opposi- tion, for such opposition would itself be an intolerant interference with the rights of perfect religious libeity. On this theory, the moment the Romanists should become the majority, and set the engines of inquisitorial cruelly in play in our own country, you have not a word to say; for even if you had the power to stop such persecution, it would be intolerance and bigotry to do it; it would be the oppression of your fellow-citizens, thus to prevent them from exercising and enjoying their conscientious preferences. Nay, if you even have the majority, you have no right so to lord it over the consciences of the minority as to prevent them from persecuting. You have no right to prevent them from burning every Bible in the land, or tearing down every Protestant chapel; because, if otherwise, then, by parity of reasoning, if they should have the majority, they would have the right to force your consciences according to theirs. To this absurdity do such reasonings, or rather such assumptions and false premises, lead. TH£ JUST PRINCIPLE OF SETTLEMENT. mOHTS OF THE MAJOKITV. You object to the settlement of the question as to the Biblo by the majority declaring that "wherever the question of readmg the B.ble m the Common Schools was settled affirma- tively by the bare force of majority, it was settled upon a wrong Fincple" "Conscience" you say, "knows no majorities." Does It kr,ow mmorities a«y more ? Does it mend the matter to have the mmority rule ? You are bound to suppose as much conscience on the one side aa the other; if a con^ience in the n.mo„ty aga,nst the Bible, a conscience also in the majority demanding ,t. If, then, it is not the bare force of a ma ority hat retains the Bible, it must be the bare force of a minority that exclud^ ,t; and which intolerance and injustice is tho riLtr f ^^ ^°" '■''^'"°^' ^"" ^''-^ Siyo M the positive lights of the majority mto the power of a negative in the mmonty sacrificing what is dear as a matter ^f conscience to twenty millions, for the prejudices of two millions. The question IS no^ as assumed, between a «,ligio„s education and no education, but between an education in which the conscience of the minority, or that of the majority shall be respected. If you make the conscience of the minority the rule, you take the mons(To„s position in ,a Christian land, of legislating against he Christian conscience, (the con*.ienee that decides in fafor of fte Scriptur^) and in behalf of the anti-Christian, the con- jnce tha decides against them. You set up the l^nscience of Jew^ aWK Infidels, Deists, Atheiste, Romanist^ Pagans luom^m, as uuperior, as h,»-ing higher claims, as bein.., in fac*' 52 the standard of religious liberty, against the conscience of those who hold to the Word of God. It is not the professed indiffer- ence of liberty, but it is the favoritism of infidelity. You have, in your reasoning, conr^'jtely ignored the fact there is a conscience in favor of the Scriptures, as well as against them. And yet, on the ground of such conscience, by the tenor of your own argument, a system of univereal education, supported by the State, cannot exclude the Bible and all religious instruc- tion, except with the free consent of all concerned. It cannot do this, and be a universal and an impartial system. If I am a Christian, and pay my tax for the support of Government, I am entitled equally with my Romish fellow-citizens to all the benefits of Government. To deprive me of one of these benefits, upon the ground of ray religion, is an outrage upon my conscience, and upon the principles of religious hberty, without which there cannot be perfect civil liberty. But you do deprive me, when you refuse the Bible and all religious instruc- tion, and thus compel me to educate my children against my conscience, or else exclude them from the schools because of my religious scruples. My scruples in favor of the Bible are at least as sacred, and as worthy to be regarded, as the scruples of any other man against the Bible. The Government cannot any more rightfully deprive me of the benefit of an education, because I happen to have a conscience in favor of the Bible, than it can another man, who has a conscience agair.st the Bible. Admit such an equality, and how is it possible to decide the matter, but by the majority ? If the question be determined by majority, there is a perfect safety ; if by conscience, there is not, unless, indeed, you admit the Word of God as of ultimate and supreme authority, and determine conscience by that. If the conscience is to decide, the question instantly comes up, — What conscience shall it be, and whose! For there ai'e two parties supposed, and not 53 supposed only, in the argument, hut really exist intr; tlie ono consc:iunti(>usly opposed, the other conscientiously in favor. Moreover, the one in favor claims a L;<int of fact^ a conscience uninstructed by the Word of God does know majorities, and is guided and determined by them. Hence the necessity of that great and impres.sive command m the Word of God, " Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." So long as no ultimate standard is admitted, (a non- admission which we shall show is the great and fatal proton pseudoa of your argument,) if the conscience of the majority la agreed, it ought to determine. If the conscience of the majority is not agreed, it will not be the majority, and will not and cannot determine. But if the majority determine without any conscience at all, or with a mixed conscience, they have a perfect right to do so, a conscientious right, according to the very essence of representative republican society. If it is a matter that does not trouble their conscience, but their will and pleasure are sot upon it from considerations of expediency or otherwise, then their judgment may be fairly argued as a matter of conscience, and may be fairly proposed as an offset against the alleged conscience of the minority, which, after all, is but a mere blind judgment, without any ultimate certainty. If you respect the conscience of the minority, or of any particular sect and make that the rule for the majoiity, you may be, and are in one and the same case, going contrary to the principle both of the majority and of ox)nscience. In respecting conscience in the minority, because it is conscience, you outrage it in the majority, whose conscience is on the other side ; and in respect- 55 ing conscience in the minority, because it is the minority, you outrage botli the civU rights of the majority and cou^-cienee at the same time. Kow, as to the case of Romish schools under llomish nuthority, or of Jewish schools under Jewish authoritv, you say, Admit that w(3 have a right by majority to teach the Bible in our schools, they would also have the right by majority to teach the Talmud in their schools. The example is badly chosen, because they do not pretend that the Talmud is divinely inspired, aa the Word of God, and your proposition admits that it may be. It would l)etter liave been stated thus: If we have the right by majority to teach the New Testament in our schools, they would have the same right by majority to teach the Old Testament in theirs. And surely they would. But take it as you state it, and set even the Talmud or the Koran in the balance, and on your own premises as to conscience, they would have that right, as well as on the principle of majority. And it would be the height of absurdity and intolerance to refuse it. You are not obliged to '^< Mid your childem to listen to the Talmud, if you happen to be living under a Jewish govern- ment; you have the privilege of giving them whatever instruction you please at home. But you would not send your children to such a school, you say,— could not conscientiously do it— and the.efore you assume that it is wrong to have such a school. But this is just setting up your particular conscience as the law for theirs. And by what right could you pretend to do this ? Thoy have the right to teach the Talmud, both by majority and by conscience; and are you to play the tyrant, and on the plea that your conscience is outraged by their schools, demand that they themselves shall outrage their own conscience for your sake, and banish the Talmud, which conscience requires them to use, bpcanp^ yo^j aver that it is a pain and oppression to your coniience to hear 56 it ? lliis would be despotism indeed. Are you g-oing to deny to a Jewish government the right to appoint the Tahniid in its schools fur the thousand.^ who beheve in it, because you, i\s an individual, do not wish your children to hear it ? Yes, you say, because you have to pay a tax for the support of the S'-hoois. But on your own argument it is better to have schools oven with the Talmud, than no schools; so that no injustice is done you in taxing you for that which is as much for your good as for the good of society, even though you profess yourself conscientiously debarred from availing yourself of the benefits for your children. You say you have the right to demand of the government a scliool according to your principles, because you pay your tax ; be it so; then certainly the majority of tax-payers have the same right to demand a school according to their principles ; they have the same light with yourself, on the ground of paying their tax, to say what kind of schools they shall have. Are you ready, by the feet of paying your tax, to claim the right of legislating by your opinion over all the other tax-payers? Have you the right, "because you pay your tax, to tell them that they shall not have the Talmud, which they conscientiously demand, because you, a tax-payer, cannot conscientiously listen to it? Just so with the Koran and the Mohamniedan. On your theoiy, you would have the right to turn a whole village of Mohammedan children out of school by means of conscience ; making the government for your sake exclude the book and tho element, without which they cannot conscientiously attend the school and receive its benefit, in order that your children may, ■\\'iih tiieir scrupulous consciences unviolated, avail themselves of its teachinirs. It is then, after all, the majority that 7nust determine, con- science or no conscience; if you have no ultimate auth<»'ity, no higher law than the conflicting judgment, taste, preterences, 57 and universally varying conscience of mankind. It is the majority that must determine, unless you assume, as in point of ftict your theory does, that the conscience of the minority ought m all cases to prevail, or else that the conscience of some par- ticular sect, and that the smallest and most pertinacious, must be the. ruling law. It cannot be made to appear just, that one man's tenderners or scrupulosity of conscience should be turned into the means, or put forward as the reason, for trampling on all the positive rights ot another's conscience. One man's preference, in a beueht to which he is entitled, is not to be sacrificed to another man's aversion ; much le«, is the privilege of a whole people in a right and benefit so dear as the freedom of the Word of God tor the education of their children, to be sacrificed, because a particular sect set forth the rule of their Church against it and threaten to withdraw their children from the schools, if tha Word of God be retained in them. Their children need not be obliged to use the Word of God, but may be made an exception; nothing is easier than this. But it is a piece of intolerance and oppression in the extreme, to require that because they dislike and reject it, therefore, u,e shall not U permitted to u«, it and enjoy its light. The thing is so mon- strously absurd, that it only needs to be contemplated as ,t js, stripped of all p ntioal distortion and apologv, to be seen known, and felt in its deformity. ' We are by no means without example, of just and wise legislation in such a ca.^.. Our government has had to deal with tender consciences on more than one occasion; but it Irs not, as IS demanded in the schools, set the example of intolj^- ance towards all othe,.. I„ „,« ease of the oath, it had to determine in regard to the scruples of the Quaker.^ who were conscientiously opposed to taking it. If the co„,«, had been pui-sued which B required in and for the schools, at the dictation 58 of the scruples of the Romanists against tlie Woi-d of God, tlie formality of the oath would have been expunged from exis- tence; its practice would have been forbidden. But inste'ing it taught or recognized. SUPREME AUTHORITY AND RIGHT OF THE BIBLE. TBUTH MORE RIGHTFUL THAN ERROR. But we come now to the decisive point, that the Bible is of ultimate and univemil authority over all consciences and sects, majorities or minorities. On this ground, and thus only, can we clear away the sophistry that has been accumulated as a chevaux-de-frise of piejudice and confusion around the question of a public education, free from « religious bias." The Bible is of no sect, and belongs to none, and may not be ostracised or excommunicated by any, nor lightfuUy complained of in any presence, nor under any circumstances, as an opi)i-ession upon any conscience. The right to spread it, and to teach it, is from God hnnself to all mankind, and not from man, whether in the social or the savage state, in governments, or sects, or poHtical parties. It is the exclusive propeily of no church, nor denom- ination, nor ecclesiastical, nor civil authority. The argument to which we have referred, against the use of the Bible in the f.-ee public schools, on the ground of conscience, confounds the claims of truth and error, and assumes, as a premise, that those who reoeixe the Word of God have no more right to spread that, than those who receive the word of devils have authority to spread that. But in regard to the Bible, as a revelation from heaven, for the guidance and good of all mankind, the duty of making it known is paramount to every other duty: no obligation of conscience towards our fellow-meu IS clearer than this, nor can any supersede \i. I 60 The case stands thus: — You either know this book to be the Word of God, or you do not; if not, then you are engag-ed in a solemn farce in teaching it anywhere as God's Word. But if you do know it to be God's Word, then you have no right to put a book of fables on an (^quality with it; — you have no right to permit the plea of another man's conscience as against it, to prevent you from circulating it, wherever you have the proper opportunity and the power. If you know this book to be the Word of God, you cannot, without a glaiing inconsistency, which is fatal to the claims of God's Word, admit the con- science of a Mohammedan or a Pagan as of equal authority with the conscience of a man instiaicted out of God's Word. The conscience which commands the worship of idols is not to be treated with the same respect as the conscience which commands the worship of God. If you say that it is, you are instantly driven to the most dreadful conclusions, fatal to the very existence of Christian society. For the conscience of a woi-shipper of idols may and does command the worshipper to the commission of unquestioned crime, as infanticide, or the Molochism of the sacrifice of children even in the fire. But, according to the theoiy on which the exclusion of the Bible from the schools is defended, the theorv that the con- science of an unbeliever in God's Word, of a man who rejects it, is as much to be respected jis the conscience of a man who receives it, and is guided by it, you have no right to resist or to punish such crime; you have no lio-ht even to legislate against it, for that would be a Aiolation of perfect religious equality and libert}-. The Government being in the majority, may see fit to oppi-ess and pereccute the idola- ter who destroys his own children, and to i)unish him Jis a mur- derer; but on this theory they lia\e no i-ig' o do it — no moi-e right to legislate for his conscience than he has for their' s. The Government are bouud to protect his scrupulous beliefs s t c A S c '^ t v )• V 1 61 and conscientious rights as a citizen, a tax-paying citizen, who cannot enjoy perfect civil Hberty without perfect religious liberty, nor either, without liberty of conscience. Suppose the conscience of a person who has married two wives, and becomes a citizen of this nation claims the common benefits of governmental protection and insti-uction. It is an outrage for the Government in such a case to proclaim his chosen mode of domestic life as sinful, or to pi-omulgate any law by which he would suffer in that state. It would be an outrage in the Government, just because it happens to be in the majority, to punish that man for bigamy ; and we prove this, because, "by parity of reasoning," if the bigamists were in the majority, they would have the i-ight to make a law in favor of bigamy. Certainly they would, on the principle of this theo- ry; the same conscientious right, which, when in the minority, it is affirmed should be respected and protected. If so, then, when in the majority, it is to be respected and protected also. Indeed, the case of the Mormons would have been singulai-Iy applicable to show the incogruity of this reasoning. Suppose a handful of the followers of that superstition, with their priest and " Book of the Lord," should settle in the city of New York. ^ They claim the benefits of governmental protection in such wise, that their scruples of conscience shall not be made the instrument of their oppression ; they claim the pri\ iloges of the Common Schools, for which they assert an equal i-ight with all citizens and tax-payers. But they find in the public school literatui-e some scrij)tural or historical reading lesson that condemns their whole system of religious and domestic policy, and proves it to be a gi-oss and wicked superstition, conti-aiy to the Divine Law. Huw can they send their cliiUh'en where their dearest beliefs, and conscientious sciuples are thus ridiculed and belied ? They ai-e oppressively exclude.:! from the public schools; and they have as much right to coraplaiu of 62 oppression as the Romanist ha.s, when tlie Word of God is read in the pubhc schools in the presence of his children. But we affirm that neither Morinans nor Romanists would have any right to cut and square the public schools according to then- church and conscience. We affirm that their supersti- tions are not to be treated with the same respect as the Word of God, and that they have not the same claim to a conscien- tious regard. We affirm that there is such a thing as ultimate and absolute truth, and that such truth is in the Word of God, and that no rights, either of majorities oi- minorities, either of law or conscience, can be jjledged against that, or in exclusion of It, or m ban upon it, to the prejudice of its circulation. The right to teach and circulate it, is the very fii^t right and duty, given and enjoined with it from God to all mankind. No man, nor system, nor any body of men, nor any pretence of conscience, can rightfully interfere against it. And here we say, and we defy any man on grounds of just reasoning to deny ir, that if there be any solemn charge in re- gard to the children of the commonwealth resting upon the republic, if there be any right ^■ested in. the government to meddle in the matter of education at aJI, it is the right and tlie duty to provide the children with the Bible, and so to arrani>-e the couise of instruction in the common schools, that they shall there come to the knowledge of the Bible. By consent of all who receive the Bible as the Word of God, this is the element of greater power and importance than any other; and it is the paramount duty of the State to secui-e it for the children. It is the one estate given to the children by the will of their Heavenly Father; it is an estate which every Chi'istian com- monwealth is bound to convey to the chil,l.-en, and to apply its interest wholly for their benefit, as guardians in trust. That command by our Saviour is binding no less upon the State than upon the Christian members of the State, *' Suffer the 63 little children to come unto mo, and forbid them not !" But you do not suffer them, you do in tact forbid them, it; under- taking their education, taking the whole care of their educa- tion into your hands, which, both in theory and practice, you do in the free common school system, you ignore and ex- clude the Bible and the religious element. You really de- fraud the children of their estate from Heaven. Oh, but you say, that is none of our concern; they can pick up that estate, or the crumbs of it anywhere ; leave that to the catechisms. A more deliberate fraud and breach of tj'ust was never com- mitted than is involved in this course. The Bible is unsectarian and pure light. The sectarian schools distribute it as through a prism, but tlie common school takes it from the sun, admits the sun's light, hangs up the sun itself within the school-house. Now, you might as well shut out the sun-light, and light up your school-houses at naondjiy with gas, because there are prisms, as exclude the Bible because there are various sects. In fact, we have no more right to ex- clude the Bible than wo have to exclude the sun, for they are both God's proxision of liglit for us** We have no more right to exclude the Bible from the schools, and from the use of our children in them, than we ha\ e to exclude the conmion air, and to pass a law that the children, while in the schools, shall breathe nothing but sulphuretted hydrogen, or exhilirating gas. Indeed, this uuivei-sality of the sun-light, as opposed to any monopolies, affords us a good illustration. Let us suppose the Manhattan Gas Company to enter a conscientious plea against the sun-light in our school-houses, on the ground that the use of the sunlight prevents the use of their gas, and con sequentiy deprives them of the bonelit that might accrue to theui and then- families fi-om the monopoly of light. Besides, they have among themselves a church canon, interdicting their own families from the use of any light but -the company's gas. G4 Under these circumstances, the sun-light becomes Protestant light, for all except those connected with the company, and un- der its authority, protest against the monopoly of light; ergo, the sun-light is Protestant light, and it is against their con- sciences to endure it, or to permit the use of it; and though they wish to send tlieir children to the public schools, yet they are prevented from that privilege, if the children are compelled to read by sun-light; they cannot conscientiously put their chil- dren under any light but that of the company's gas. By that light they may read and study aritlimetic, history, and even Martin Luther's character, and what not, but never by the Pi-o- testant sun-light. Whose picture is this, the counterfeit present- ment of what faith ? And now suppose you mai^e a compromise, and say to them : well, to make all fair, you shall have the privilege of introducing the gas light for your children, but at the same time the sun-ligbt shall come in also, so that all may be satis- fied. Ah, but that will not answer; the sun-light must not be let in at all, for wherever it is, it absolutely puts theirs out. Tis of no use whatever, they say, to attempt a competition; it is a gone case with us, if the sunlight is let in at all. Our sas in competition with the sun ? Why, the childi-en would read on, and i-ead on, and not even know that our gas was lirrhted. Well! so it is, in very truth, and we cannot help it, that the Bible really does give so clear and beautiful, so pure and powerful a light, that all other lightis beside it are but winking tapers, and you can scarcely even see that they are lighted. In the lan- guage of Cowper's exquisitely beautiful hymn, A Glory gilds the sacred page. Majestic like the sun ; It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none Nay, according to God's own declaration eonoernino' ft you determine by it infallibly what is light, and whether other 65 to tilings proposed as liglit are not darkness. " In thy light shall y\(i see light." Wo shall see and know what the true light is, and not be imposed upon. This common, all surrounding, vital air is not more my right to bieathe, ami yours, and all men's, that this air of Divine Truth, which is to the life and healthful movement of the soul, what the air is to the lungs, to the blood, and to the life of the body. You have no more right to interdict this atmosphere of Divine Truth, than you have to interdict the pure air of Heaven from our school houses. Nor is an imperfect or vicious ventilation so bad for the body, as the interdiction of the fresh air of truth is pernicious to the soul. Stifle out of it all religious truth, and it will die, not of suffocation merely, but of poison with malignant error. Shall this be the treatment of the millions of youthful immortal creatures crowded in our common schools as in a dungeon ? No, no, no ! but let all the windows, as in a clear summer's day in the country, be thrown wide open, and let the sweet breath from every wind of Heaven flow through, joyful, balmy, exhilarating. Let the gladsome troops of children breathe freely, and not begin their liist rudi- ments of knowledge by trying how far they can be stifled, and still live. This common, all-shining siin is no more my right to see by, to have its cheerful beams pour warm and bright upon me, wherever in the world I am, than this Sun of God's Truth in . his Word is my right of conscience and rf heavenly life. This Sun of truth is as truly the possession of all mankind, and the gift of God for the race, as the sun in the heavens, and as necessary for the light and life of the soul as the sun for the light and life of the body. Who dare interdict the sun from shining, or men fi-om looking at his light ? What vain Canute would lift his puny sceptre to that orb, and say, as Lucifer from Hell, I speak to thee, O Sun, only to teJl thee how I hate thy beams! And is it less a blasphemous defiance of God to interdict his Word, and to say to the creatures for whom it was given, ye shall not enjoy it? Tliis Word of God is as neces- sary for our perception of moral truth, as the sun is necessary for our perception of colors in nature; it is as essential for the growth of true moral principle, and the right development of our immortal being, as the light of the sun is necessary for the growth of plants, fruits and flowei^. When the sun goes down in either case, it is night, and all the beasts of the earth come forth from their hiding places. What infinite madness to in- troduce into the constitution and custom or common law of our school system, as one of its guiding central principles, the ex- clusion of Divine light! If the country were bent on self- destruction, it could hardly discover a subtler and surer mode of suicide. Volcanoes and earthquakes are said to have been heralded by the drying up of wells; and so, there is no con- vulsion or evil which may not be apprehended, if from the tountams of our common education the elements of Di- vine truth are drawn away; it would be the most certain pro- phecy of evil. ^ Now, if we take simply the ground of the great command of God and our conscience. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself on that ground, whatever we find to be essential to our own life and welfare as human beings, we are bound to give to others, if we have it in our power. If the Word of God is dear to us, and we know it to be essential to salvation, we are bound to give it to others; if necessary to me as an indivi- dual, I have no more right to it myself, than I have to commu- nicate It toothers; both the right and t..3 duty are incontrovert- ible. Neither man, nor men, nor government, nor hierarchies have any more right to say to me. You shall not spread the Word of God, than they would ha^ e to say to me, You shall not give a mo-el of bread to the wretch whom you see dyinjr of hunger. It is both my right and my d " * y duty trom God. 67 But not only is it mine, but of humanity, of nations, of ali mankind. And whatever country, or people, set up enactments against this right and duty, they are, so far, outlawed of God and of conscience, and such enactments are not to be regarded in the least. Any nation, and any church, that makes the use, enjoyment, and distribution of the Word of God a crime, is out of the pale of international law and of human right, and against it, and ought to be treated accordingly. We like the langujige of Captain Packenham, of the English Navy, that energetic and fearless soldier of Christ, who undertook to dis- tribute Bibles and religious truth in Italy. "It is time," says he, speaking of the case of Miss Cunninghamo's imprisonment and release by the Duke of Tuscany, " that our rights should be acknowledged and respected. Let it be known that we are not to receive as a grace, that which justice demands as a right. It is time that diplomacy cease to sue in forma pauperis^ and that individual favoritism, however amved at, give place to a well understood, authoritative demand, so well expressed in our royal motto, God and our right. It is time to say to this man- ufactory of delinquencies and crimes, this modern inquisition, Stop ! Whatever be not rcvilly a crime, your pigmy, paltiy. Papal legislation shall not make one; and if you dare to punish a free-born subject of England, by the application of your pe- nal proclamations or processes, you shall repent it quickly." Clearly, this is the only right and safe position. Christiani- ty, based upon the Word of God, is the gift of God to all, and as it respects Europe, it is the profession of all nations. Shall any then dare, or shall they be permitted, to make it a crime to circulate the Word of God ? This is the common right of all to whom that Word comes, and the prohibition of it by the Roman Catholic Church, in Tuscany, for example— Church and State being one — Ig well set forth as being a complete self-con- demnation, a' demonstration of not being v/ithin the pale of 68 triio Clirkianity. It is .1 g] kI laino. 'J Int. iiinfr syllorrlsm, ficrv rod witJ o riri'iilHto Hii y I'Ook wliicli is contrary to the R fiinaii But t o circulate tlio riiuc, aiul an English CalJi(jlic religion is made a Irgai crime. Word of Ood is proiiihitcd as siicli a c lady was tlirown into prison for d(»i„g- it. C\>nseeyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of enlight- ened and well-principled moral sentiment. We hope to con- tinue and to prolong the time, when in the villages and farm- houses of New England there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors." Mr. Webster was a man that weighed his words. And now in perusing the succeeding paragraph, let it be remembered that this speech was on an occasion that demanded the greatest soli- dity and accuracy in the formation and expression of his views, being no less important than the revision of the Constitution of the State of Massachusetts. His opinions wera therefore. 71 deliberate and well considered, and they are decisive-as to the power and duty of the State to provide a religious education lor her children, if an education at all. « I rejoice that every man in this community can call all pro- perty his own, so far as he has occasion for it to furnish for him- self and his children the blessings of religious instruction, and the elements of knowledge. This celestial and this earthly light he is entitled to by the fundamental laws. It is every poor man's undoubted bnthright; it is the great blessing which this constitution has secured to him; it is his solace in life, and it may well be his consolation in death, that his country stands pledged by the faith which it has plighted to all its citizens, to protect his children from ignorance, barbarism and vice." These are noble words, and the speech bears the stamp of Webster's magnificent mind. The children of the State are entitled by the fundamental law to a celestial as well as earthly light, and to the blessings of religious instruction, as well as the elements of other knowledge. The assertion would seem a truism; and yet we are aware of the plausible sophistry with which a decision right the revei-se is maintained in some quarters, and proposed as a fundamental school law; the deci- sion to exclude all celestial light as sectarian, and all religious instruction as an oppression of the conscience. But if the State undertake to educate the children at all, is it not under obligation to give them as good an education as they can get elsewhere? If the State tax its citizens for the expenses of such an education, does it not stand pledged to teach the children of the citizens all that is essential to their welfare ? Is it a fulfilment of that pledge to say that they may get religious instruction elsewhere, but that the State shall not provide that vital element, for fear of sectarianism ? May get it elsewhere ! And who stands responsible for the consequences, if they should noti THE BIBLE THE COMMON INHERITANCE OF THE WORLD. OPINION OF JUSTICE STORY. In dwelling on the liberty of speech, and the importance of securing it, that great writer on the Constitution of the United States, °Judge Story, remarks: « It is notorious that even to this day, in some foreign countries, it is a crime to speak on any subject, religious, philosophical, or political, what is con- trary to the received opinions of '"the Government, or the msti- tutions of the country, however laudable may be the design, and however ^^rtuous may be the motive. Even to aniraad- vei-t upon the conduct of public men, of rulers, or of represen- tatives, in terms of the strictest truth and courtesy, has been and is deemed a scandal u,.on the supposed sanctity of their stations and characters, subjecting the party to grievous punish- ment. In some countries no works can be printed at all, whe- ther of science, or literature, or philosophy, without the previ- ous approbation of the Government; and the press has been shackled, and compelled to speak only in the timid language which the cringing courtier, or the capricious inquisitor has been willing to license for publication. The Bible itself, the common inheritance, not merely of Christendom, but of the world, has been put exclusively under the control of Govern- ment; and has not been allowed to be seen, or heard, or read, except in a language unknown to the common inhabitants of the country. To publish a translation in the vernacular tongue, has been in former times a flagrant oflense.* "Story oil CojiBtitutioii, p- a^-3- 73 This is an impressive passage, which, like many others, that might be pointed out, must, as a legitimate consequence of the exclusion of the Bible and all religious truth from our Com- mon School system, be obliterated from our school literature. The Roman Catholic Church can no more permit the Bible to be spoken of as the common inheritance of Christendom and of the world in the volumes of the District School Library, than it can pei-mit the Bible to be read in the common schools. And the theory that there must be no religious bias in the schools will operate with an equally fatal logical distructiveness to the obliteration of thousands of instructive pages in the established common school literature. There can, mdeed, be no such thing as freedom in that literature on this theory; and restrictions which Judge Story points out as crim- maland disgraceful iu other countries, and destructive of the spirit of liberty, would be found realized in this. It is a true and noble expression, in which Judge Story has characterized the Bible. The common inheritance of Chris- tendom AND OF the world. It is an expression that accords with that of the divinely inspired Legislator, when he said:^ « The things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever." The question may be asked. Are the children of Christen- dom alone,— those gathered in a system of Common School education— to be excluded from the possession and benefit of this inheritance? Are the children,-those persons whom tho State designates as entitled to the privileges of an education, say during the period between six years of age and twenty,— a part of Christendom, or does this common inheritance belong only to pei-sons who are not minors ? Are they alone to be r^- garded as capable of this freedom? Must this common inhe- ntance be shut out from the knowledge of all for whom tho btate undertakes to provide an education until the --rio-^ -^--n 74 that education is finished? Or say from the knowledge of those, who have no other schools or teachings than those which the State furnishes, and no means of gaining any other educa- tion ? The Common Inheritance of Christendom and of the World! — Then those who would conceal and withdraw it from the world— those who would put it under ban, restraint, imprisonment — those who forbid it to be read, are the common pirates and highway robbers of Christendom and the world. They might, with as much propriety, dispute the common high- way of the seas. The principles embraced in this just view of the universality, supremacy, and freedom of the Bible for all mankind, are fundamental, and of the greatest importance in relation to the claim to governmental and international protec- tion on the part of those who undertake the spreading of the Scriptures. Oui' country's authority and power may justly be exei-ted to shield to the uttermost those who are engaged in carrying the Bible to other lands. We may rightfully demand, from all nations, this privilege of freely circulating the Word of God, and that reciprocity of religious liberty which we give to all, and which, by international law, we maintain in the con- cerns of our commercial policy. The Common Inheritance of Christendom and of the World ! — Let not, then our own free countiy submit to the exclusion of it, at the instigation of a sect, from the public schools, those foundations of pure and virtuous opinion. Let us not set rhe example to Christendom and the world, of treat- ing the Bible as a sectarian book, a book that must be excluded because it is religious and teaches religion, which its adversaries assume that it is no function of the Government to do. But if the Government undertake to provide for the children an education in all things essential to their well-being as citweps, it on the hope or pos-nibility of any- thing essential to the well-being and good citizenship of tho ]>upil, being tauglit anywhere else, and on account of that j.os- sibility to exclude that vital element. There is, in point of fact, a nudtitude of pci-sons, whose chil- dren are never taught religion at home, not even the existence and attributes of God, the laws of moral probation for man- kind, nor even tiie beuig of a Sa\iour. They never see a BibK never hear its lessons, ne\er listen to a verse of it. From such^ ia K'gislatii;g the Bible out of our schools, from a pi-ofessed regard to the largest religious liberty, you taue away the oi ly opportunity of coming to a knowledge of the nature of Chris- tianity and the uord of God, in the mast impoi'taut and critical bi of all periods for laylnfv the foundations of the character. It would bo treason in tho State towards the inteihiront and im- mortal creaturos thus thrown upon its care, to withhold from tliem what is most essential to their welfare. The amount of immigration alono, into our country, and of the inci-enae in this way of a population-element needing to bo taught, IS upwards of four hundred thousand a year. Of what infinite importance that an education which, to say tho least, does not ignore and exchide Christianity and tho Ijihle, be given to these I Of what importance tliat the thousands of children not likely in any other way to become acquainted with tho Bible at all, learn something of it in tlie common school ; learn at least that tliere is such a volume as the ^Vord of God, and know something- of the beauty and power of its sacred lessons. It is admitted on all hands that we are in great danger from the dark and stolid infidelity and vicious radicalism of a large portion of the foreign immigiating population. What, then, can be done U? ward olf this danger, and how can we reach the evil at its i-oots, applying a wise and conservative radicalism to defeat the working of that malignant, social, anti- Christian poison ? IIoW can the child ren of such a population be reached, except in our fre.; public schools ? If the Bible be read in them, its daily lessons cannot but be attended by the Divine blessing, and in many instances may beget s eh a reverence for the Word of God, and instil such a knowled^-'e of its teachings, that the infidelity of tlieir home education shall be effectually counteracted. And if the religions influence that prevails in our best sch' !-books be thrown around them, that infiuence, eonstant and t'amiiia!, though in no respect sectarian, will be as a guiding and transfiguring liglit in tlie formation of theii o]»inions and the education of their feelings. But exclude the Bible from the schools, and accompany thnt exclusion, as to be logically consistent you must, with a dephlo- 82 gistication of your scliool-bookf, to expui-gato from thorn tho whole religious elemest, and wlieio will the children of this chiss of our j)opulalion Icurn anytiiing hotter than tho gloomy and destructive infidelity of their j)arents and ?ussociates? The Jiilde does not spring up as a guardian angel in tho beer-sho})H, and the exclusion of tho Bible and of all " religious bias" from the common 8cho^, without teaching that for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account in the Day of Judgment ? How can the power of an oath be felt, wit'-iout the knowledge of its sanc- tions, the knowledge of the truth, and holiness, and justice of Jehovah, the knowledge that if it be falsely taken, all liars ai-e by name excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven, and appointed to the endurance of God's righteous indignation? Now, these things are religious teachings, most important, most invaluable, for the training of the conscience and the heart; and if the State have any right to command the oath^ the State has the same right, and comes under the highest ob- ligation, to provide for and appoint such teachings, that her citizens may know their conmionest forms of duty, and be pre- pared for their sincere and intelligent performance. And what did Washington say upon this very point? Let us recur to the sentence, which he wrote expressly to prove the absolute necessity of religion as well as morality for the existence and well-being of the State, and therefore the necessity of the teaching of religion as well as morality. " Let it be simply jisked," said he, " whei'e is the security for property, for reputa- tion, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?" But that sense nmst desert them, if men are not taught those reli'^ious truths, by which only the oath can bo understood in its sacrodness, and in the knowledge of which alone it is woi-th anvthing. Now, is the State bound to provide means for the preparation of the children for the obligations and duties of a citizen, in taking upon itself the woi-k of their education, or is it not? If any education be given by the State, surely it must be such that by means of it the children may arrive at 87 th'^ knowledge of those obligations and responsibilities which will rest upon thei)i as merabei-s of the State. And what an anomaly, what a profound and j»aip it)i'.', hm nsistency, to ap- point Jiiid enjoin a religious obligation for our civil and social life, and at the same time enjoin the exclusion from our common schools of all the peculiar instruction and knowledge I'equi.site for performing it! Jf the State have any authority to prohibit sectarianism in the common schools, it has a still higher autho- rity, and more binding obligation, to pypvide for the teaching of religious truth. The truths on which an oath is founded, the State inust teach. The very last occasion oi. which Daniel Webster ever ap- peared in Faneuil Hall, in Boston, he uttered a passage on the nature of the work of a popular ed. nation, which deserves to be insci'ibed over the door of every common school-house in America : — " We seek to educate the people. We seek to improve men's moral and religious condition. In short, wo seek to work upon mind as well as upon matter. And in working on mind, it enlarges the human intellect and the human heart. We know that when we work upon materials, immortal and imperishable, that they will bear the impress which we place upon them, through endless ages to come. If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to the dust. But if we w^ork on men's immortal minds IF W^E IMBUE TIIEM WITH HIGH PRIN- CIPLES, WITH THE JUST FEAR OF GoD, AND OF THEIR FELLOW MEN WE ENGRAVE ON THOSE TABLETS SOMETHING WHICH NO TIME CAN EFFACE, BUT WHICH WILL BRIGHTEN AND BRIGHTEN TO ALL ETERNITY." INFIDEL ASPECT AND TENDENCY OF THE EXCLUSION OF RELIGION FROM A COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. It lias been tlie conviction of some of the wisest men that ever lived, that an education raay be infidel, and therefore im- moral, in its tendency, ^vithout a shade of positive infidel teach- ing, by the bare fact of entirely ignoring and excluding Chris- tianity. Certainh', there are no direct moral lessons in mathe- matics or any of the sciences, unless the light of religion is brought to play upon them. Morality itself, according to the sentiment we have quoted from Washington, is based upon reli- gion, and if religion be excluded, morality is also. The nost perfect knowledge of physical law will not restrain the passions; the sanctions of i-eligion are essential for that. But really, to ignore and exclude religion is to teach that it is not necessary, if it be not also directly to teach that there is no such thing, no one true religion, in regard to which there is uny certainty that it is the truth, any more than all forms of religion under heaven are the truth. Is there not, must there not be, necesvsa- rily, inevitably, an infidel influerce in such teaching ? There is power and truth in this declaration. It is not bigot- ry, it is not attachment to sectarianism, but it is true religious knowledge and feeling, that produces tliis sentiment, this con- viction, on the part of those churches that entertain it ; and they are not few. They do believe that where you carefully 89 divorce and exclude all religious tea^,hing from secular teachim and pei'mit only the kst, the inculcation is that of a potential inhdehty; and if this become, a characteristic of our scho,,! system, and the grand rule for cutting- aud drying it, is to be ^he carelul expuLsion of the religious elen.ent, under politi- eians for connnissioners and superintendents, the churches ^vill not support It, and will refuse to be taxed for it. They will never cons^t that the Government, merely because it allows the people to tax themsehes for free schools, shall set up su-h a ty- rannical expurgation of the Bible and religion from the system ot the education of their child len. But here you are prompt to answer, algebra is not infidel ; reading, writnig. arithmetic, are not inlidel ; there can be no irrehgion in one's A B C s. Ko! but if to each one of these branches, and to the learning of them, is attached the prohibi- tion, you shall not couple with them any religious teaching, you shall not read nor teach the Scriptures along with them; this ban of excommunication leaves a positive taint upon the school. The jealousy and exclusion of religion and of the Scriptures attaches unconsciously to all the branches taught under such an interdiction; and instinctive repulsion is taught, on the part of all the school exercises, habits, discipline, against religious light and liberty. The pressure ot such a negative may "not be felt or acknowledged definitely, at present, on any one point; but m the long run, and as a whole, it must be of prodigious and pernicious power. It acts as a standing, perpetual insinuation, argument, and warning, against the Word of God. Taken in connection with a multiplicity of other infiuences and efforts of infidelity to weaken the hold of tlie Scriptures on the public mind, the mass of i. comnumity will be poorly prepared to withstand the insalioi..^ attack. The general voice of the natian will seem to be against the Word of God, and it will be pre- sented in the attitude of an object of the fear and jealousy of I! 90 the conntrv. This is :m eflk't quite inevitable from any such o-ua,aecl excliusion of it IVom a system of free public edueat ion ', auv oanaid ii.ind must be convinced of this on a moments reliection. Suppose that in Austria, for example, any copy ot the American Constitution, an-l all allusions to it, and to the Bvstem of free government founded upon it, were torbidden m all the scliools, so that any teacher ^^'ho should undertake to enli Oon, and tho relations of man to the future world, as a world of rcliibuLion and reward. ; and if they ffcit no edncation but such as the State g-ives thcni in such a Bchool, in what bet- ter condition Avouid they bo, as respects "the lii»-hts of heaven," than that of tho inhabitants of tlie mines of Poland ? Strange delusion, to think of benefiting the childrer. of the poor and vicious, by brina'ing theni into schools under the rule of a studied exclusion of the Bible, and all religious instruction; a system of education prope"ly described as wearing the stani}) of systematic irreligion! Yet such is precisely tlie course of policy to which this community are urged, on the plea of ac- commodating the school system to the conscience of a sect, the maintenance of whose power depends on keeping the Bible from their children, and their children from the knowledge of the Bible I « ARGUMENT FROM THE NECESSITY of RELIGIOUS SELF-GOVERNMENT. I have at this moment lying before me a discou,^ by a popular preacher, reported in one of onr public pape.3, in which ;t .s proc umed that in our country, the founitin of po.er n the ,nd,v,dual and liberty in the masses is self-govermnent Siv Z T'"": '"'''""'" """"'^"-^ the'necessity is fo cbly and eloquently presented, of "religious inspiration and ^ g.ous solf-coutrol in the individual," and it is declared tha those be los or corrupted, our expiring anguish will su^aL hat o any nafon that ever lived." This position may be completely mamfamed; it is almost a truism concemiJth« naureof .-epublican freedom, that it is impossible with^ft th habit of self-government. But who ever heard of relio-ious in- W ord ot God ? And where shall this sense and knowledge of religion and of the scriptures, presented as of such vital impor- tance to the preservation of our country's liberties, be tauWit' Can It be safely left to the churches, and to those schools where sectanan tenet« are taught.^ The answer insfcintly presents Itself that, as a general rule, the churches and those schools are patronized or frequented by those only, or mainly, who have the Bible taught in their families, and that, moreover, tiere are not enough of such churches and schools to accommodate a fourth— no, not an eighth-part of the community. Jhe argument in behalf of the very existence of free public schools, is au argument for the necessity of the Bible in them!!^ 94 The churches and the parochial schools are glaringly inade- quate; perhaps not more tiian a sixth part of the families in our country ever attend any church, or any other schools than the free schools. Consequently five-sixths of our whole youthful population are left unprovided with the knowledge of the Bible and any religious inntruction, if you exclude it from the ivQQ public schools. Consequently, if it be so excluded, \\\o very idea of it will come to five-sixths of our children only as a thino- to be guarded against, and of which they know little else but this only, that it is forbidden in the public schools. Nor would this interdiction be particularly likely to make them inquire for it elsewhere. The inconsistency of such a course is manifest. Our whole possibility of safety and prosperity as a country is founded on habits and influences of religious self-control, and yet, the only book that teaches such control without sectarianism, and pro- vides the elements for it, is forbidden in the free jjublic schools, and shut out from the knowledge of fi\e-sixths of the people's children ! Language cannot state strongly enough the gross- ness of this iuconsistency, nor the greatness of the danger from such a course. Then, too, the evil which needs to be diminish- ed, of such a rivahy between private schools and the ivQQ school system, as places them at antagonism, and presents the private schools as the more moral, more respectable, more select and safe, both for the mind and heart, the manners and morals of the pupil, — that evil would be greatly increased ; for any parent of sane and unprejudiced mind would prefer, though at far greater cost, to send a child to school where the Word of God is free, and religious instruction at least is possible ! If you undertake to educate all the children of the State, to bring them all together in harmony, in one and the same grand system, that all may have the advantages of each, and each of all, that every division may be avoided which has the eflfect of 95 plaang .n« portion of the chiWron in a higher and better sys- <«■«. anJ another k^ favored portion in a poorer and more lm„ted ay.ten.i ,f you w,„ !d thn« dispense with the necossi.y of pur ,cular and private scbook for thoxe wl,o are not ..•ui.fied w,th he governmental , ,,,« jhey do l,nt half edu- cate the chdd, n,edncat.„g ,l,e mind only; then „,n»t you con,bnK., „. your connnon ^.h„,l s.y.tem, all the re^jui^ites for a thorough edue, .n of the whole b..ing. You cannot leave ont theu,oral and rehg.ous ele„,ent, and satisfy the people; they w,ll not long, nor unUedly, sustain a «yste„. with ^l-ing and rnheal a deh.eney. If yon would provide an education for nil, and equally, then mus- •, level „p, „ot do,vn It you demand that the private and par.., i.ial ,ehook shall throw away thur Bible, and it, preci,..,s regions truth, Tu wuhont theBAle, your sehoob dnorced from religion, and patnot™, a, that in the Church of Christ in America. If™ chvorce your schools from the Bible and religion, you will d.vorce them f»m the afleetions, the respect, the support, and the patronage of Christians; and so divorced, the commonLhli system cannot stand. They who love the Bible will not eon- sent to have the education of their children levelled down, to ex dude .L They who beheve and declare that the f..^dom of rehgious truth alone can render an education truly free and comprehe„s,ve, will never consent to put their children nndr, system of jealousy, restraint and fear, in the presence of Divine truth, and m the guarded exclusion of it It ,s singular to see, in the same breath, an utterance of the con- . v.ct,on. or professed conviction, tbatitis to the supremacy of ^U- g.ouspnnc.ple and religions truth m the minds an'd heaXof our fathers that we owe the \>vtk and ......HishTr-' -' - - - - ««* _ii. — -*u*a)iimcutui our aamirabie BlWfl .^. «> A %. lAAAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) fe A^ ^^. 1.0 ILO I.I 1.25 13.2 |2.5 2.0 III l.fi U 1111.6 Hiotographic Sciences Corporation # r,^ f^ s^ k c\ \ 'f^^ <^ ^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 87!2-4S03 PI? M \ <^ 96 institutions of civil and religious liberty ; that it was their sense of dependence upon God, and their earnest seeking of Divine guid- ance, and their deep impression of the same principles on their children, thai rendered those institutions, or could alone render them, permanent ;-and then an utterance of contempt or of serious argument against the Bible and religious instruction in our schools, just as if there were no more connection between our future prosperity and the truth by which our fathers pros- pered, than between the harvest which wa^ reaped a hundred yeai-s ago, and that which we confidently believe will cover tho hill-sides of New England next year. Have wc aii'ived at such a religious state, are we so permeated already with the know- ledge and the influence of religion, that the process of mstruc- tion in divine truth may safely stop, the Bible be turned out of school, and religion exorcised from the common school educa- tion, as a superfluous or intruding visitor with whom we have no longer any necessary concern ? It is admitted that we owe our present high prosperity, our good order, our civil and rehgious freedom, to the knowledge and influence of the Bible among all classes. And can we now afford to throw down the ladder, by which we have as- cended to these blessings, and leave othei-s to gain them as they may? Can we safely rely upon an uninstructed generation to keep them, or even to appreciate their value? Or is there really such an indefatigable and all-conquering zeal for teaching religion to the children of the masses out of school, as will supply the want of it in the common school education. IBLUSTllATIONS FROM SCOTLAND. ARGUMENT BY Dft. CANDLISIf. OPINION OF BUNSEN . Mr. Gladstone of England recently declared, in speaking of the hai)])y union of religious and secular instruction in the schools in Scotland, that there is the closest and the happiest harmony between the scientific training of the intellect and tlie religious tiaining of the heai-t; that he commits a profanation against God and against human nature who would attempt to di&sever them; and that where the truths of the Christian faith are fully taught and rightly received, there you will best and most fruitfully pursue the work of that temporal and secular training, which is the specific object of the school. In the ac- knowledgment and light of the Christain faith, and not in the exclusion of it, that s|ecific object is to be pursued; for surely one specific result, if not design, of a school from which the Christian religion is by law excluded, will be the product of infidelity. Dr. Candlish, in speaking recently in Edinburgh, on the im- portance of retaining the religious element in the common schools, established the point that that element may be intro- duced without sectarianism, and without oflfence to any con- science. The children were permitted to avail themselves of the religious instruction in the ichools or not according to the pleasure of +heir parents ; but it was found that the Eomau Catholics themselves chose the whole course. "Dr. Candlish then showed the non-sectarian character of the education given in the schools, as indicated by the fact that it appeared from E 98 the returns of 568 of the schools, that there were in these ftchooU 31,999 scholars whose parents belonged to the Free Church, 10,054 belonging to the Established Church, Gi4 Hoi nan Catholics, and 9,223 belonging to other denominations. It is a principle of our scheme, said Dr. Candlish, as 1 believe it is generally in schools in Siotland, that parents may withdraw their children from religious instruction altogether. They may avail themseUes of any one branch of education, and decline to avail themselves of any other branch. That liberty is conceded in most schools in Scotland. I think it a proper principle, and one which greatly facilitates the right set- tlement of the question. Of the 618 Roman Catholics attend- ing our schools, I have not learned an instance — and I do not believe there is one — of an application for the exemption of their children from rehgious instruction. I believe they gene- rally conform to the whole course of education, unless some priest comes over from the laud of intolerance with fresh zeal. But be that as it may. The second statement I have to make on this point is this: — We selected 75 schools in the large towns of Scotland, and found that there were in them 4,658 children of parents belonging to the Free Church, 1,904 be- longing to the Established Church, 212 Roman Catholics, and 3,357 of other denominations — in all, 4,658 of Free Church children, and 5,487, or a considerable majority, belong- ing to other denominations; so that our scheme manifestly bears on the face of it the chai-acter of thorcuo'li Catholicism, thorough un sectarianism." This is a most important and impressive testimony ; and not less important, and applicable to our own case, is the principle justly laid down by Dr. Candlish, tliat as to the matter of religious instruction, the Scottish educational traditions and hereditary principles of education ought to be re^rarded ; " it was the nght of the Scottish people, for there were such # . ^^J 99 hereditary educational principles in Scotland, as mado it easy to bring m a system of education that would harmonize all, and place education on a religious, and yet non-sectarian basis. Ihere ought to be, in Scotland, a national system, and that sys- tem ou-).t to be, according to the hereditaiy traditions of Scot- land, the use aud wont oi Scotland, in educational mattei^ since Scotland was a reformed country." Now, in regard to ourselves, this right is still clearer and niore positive. The he.-editary educational principle with us always luxs been the Bible at the foundation, and rehVious instruction from the Bible. It is no new thing. The innova- tion would be the exclusion of the Bible, a tyrannical defiance and destruction of all our usages from the outset, at the demand of a single sect. The Bible in the schools has been the custom and common law of the schools from their origin. The Bible ousted from the schools is a new and 0|.pressive law sought to be forced upon us by a particular political and ecclesiastical party. We have the i-ight of our forefathers, and of habit and law from the beginning downwards, as well as the right of God and duty, for the Bible in the schools; and none s\all take it fi-om us. Dr. Candlish would have the question so settled in Scotland (and it is the right view) as that it shall not be in the power of local boards so much as to raise the question whether there shall be religious teaching; there always has been, and it ought not to be in the power of any to say that there shall not be. «Let there be exceptional cases, if you choose, but surely the national mind of Scotland being clear, all but unanimou^ It will be a grievous hardship, a gross outrage, if we be hin- dered from getting a settlement of the national question on that footing, or be forced into a settlement of the question on a footmg that shall leave out the whole matter of relio-ion by some scruples in cortnin quart<«rs about the recognition in -m Act of Parliament that there should bo religious teaching, and that It should bo conducted in the manner hitherto in usl" 100 Dr. Candlish then declares his fear that wo are on the eve of a very serio. 8 stiuggle as regards education ; and he goes on to bear te.^iinony against the views of those who would exclude the Bible and all religious bias, and would base the system of education mAaly on the broad principles of " secularism." Ho refers to some productions by those gentlemen, and then says, that it "seems to be the faith of those parties that the mere knowledge of the physical laws of nature will secure the moral and socicJ well-being of this great conmnmity. That radical error runs through all the productions to which I have referred. There seems to be a fixed belief in the minds of those men* that simply to know the physical laws of nature, the laws that regulate demand and supply, is sufficient — in short, that physics and pohtical economy are enough to secure the social and moral well-being of the community. In the face of such announce- ments as these, I do humbly think that even some of our friends who have difficulties about the action of the State in religious matters, might pause a little in this question of national educa- tion, and consider whether, in these circumstances, and in tho view of these influences, it might not be well to have all the security which a most thorough recognition of the religious element can give, that the rising generation shall not be left to the tender mercies of those who would teach them physics and political economy, and say that it is enough to make them 'od citizens and good men." The evil and the danger here referred to are precisely the same with those against which we were \/arned by the foresight of Washington, when he said that we could not hope for the permanence and success of our institutions, in the exclusion of religious principle from our system" of education. It was the voice of a wise, discerning, and sincere patriotism, and no sectarian prejudice; for who will dare accuse Washington of sectarianism or intolerance, in his farewell Jijddress to his country- men? 101 * In this connection tlio word of tlio CIiovali(M' Biinsen are W)itli3' to be quoted. Tlio nations of tlio ])resent ago, says Bunsen, "want not le.ss religion, but more:" they want it "to reform the social relations of life, beginning- with the domestic, find culmiuating in the pohtical; an honest bona fide founda- tion, deep as the human niind, and a structure free and organic as nature. This aim cannot be attained without national etibrts* Christian education, h-Qii institutions, and social reforms. Then no zeal will be called Christian which is not hallowed by chai'ity, no faith Chi'istian >vhich is not sanctioned by reason. Chdstianity enlightens now only a small portion of the globe but it cannot be stationary, it will advance, and is already ad- vancing, triumphantly over the whole earth, in the naiue of Christ, and in the light of the spirit."* Mr. Gladstone said, speaking of Scotsmen, and the natural proverty of their country, and the effect of education in placing Scotland in a position among nations second to no other; three or four hundred yeai-s ago, they were a nation in the rear of Europe; they are nov/ in front, in the van. The reason for this prodigious and astonishing change was to be found in the fact, that for two centuries the people of Scotland had had the advantage of schools far beyond any other country, far beyond England; and av^ry laboring man in Scotland had had the means of sending his children to them. But tliey were not schools destitute of religious bias ; if they liad been without the Scriptures, in vain would they have been instituted. They, no more tnan the schools of New England, founded by our Puritan Ancestors, were left without the Bible; and it is to the Bible in schools, high and low, common and select, that Scotland, as well New England, owes her high position. Her independent rugged peasantry, and the inhabi- tants of her mountain homes, would never otherwise have main- * Hvripolitus and bis ago, vol. 2, p. 116. wmmmmmm 102 tained their unconquered and unconquerable religious patriotism, their spirit of civil and religious liberty. In this connection the interesting t'aet may be named, relative to the advancing character and po;,ition of the Sandwich Islands, wholly based fi-om the outset on the Word of God, that at an early period the teaeliers of the connnon schools finding a deficiency of school-books, and that the New Testa- ment was the cheapest as well as the best class-book they could employ, adopted that universally ; and to the powerful redeem- ing and enlightening influence thus daily exerted, the rapidly improving character and inci'easing attainments of the children were to be attributed. Miss Edjxworth tells us that formerly there existed a law in Scotland, which obliged every farrier who, through ignorance or drunkenness pricked a horse's foot in shoeing him, to deposit the price of tlie horse until he was sound, to furnish the owner with another, and in case the horse could not bo cured, the farrier was doomed to indemnify the injured owner. At the same rate of jnmishment, asks Miss Edgworth, what indemni- fication should be demanded from a careless or ignorant pre- ceptor ?* We may add, suppose that he had neglected to fasten the nails so that the first hard piece of road the horse had to travel, his shoes would be knocked otlj and his feet made incurably lame for want of protection. The security of good principles is what we want in education, and it can be found only in the religion of the Bible ; and that system wdiich neglects or wil- fully refuses to provide those fiistenings, the nails of divine truth, is justly chargable with all the consequences. • Practical Education, vol. 1. p. 202. I rREi^ENTATION OF THE SUBJECT BY JOHN FOSTER. In arguing with characteristic energy and power for a scheme of popular education, John Foster ai-gues with equal power tliat religious instruction should form a material part of it. He exposes the misei-able absurdity of the plan of divorcin£( education from religion, and teaching the latter as a separate thing. He shows the importance, the duty, of combining religious with other information, and thus rendering it familiar and natural, a companion of every-day life, and not a formalistio god, or influence of Sundays only, or of Sunday schools. Religion must not be forced upon the mind, or presented by itself as a mere catechetical speculation or abstraction, but must be a daily companion of other more attractive knowledge, because it requires so much care and address to present it in an attractive light; and it is desirable to combine it with other subjects naturally moi-e engaging, and with associations that are most familiar and pleasing to the thoughts. The question being how to bring the people by tlie ordinaiy means of education to a competent knowledge of religions truth, we have to consider the fittest way. "And if," says Foster, " in attentively studying this, there be any who come to ascertain that the right expedient is a bare illustration of religious instruction, disconnected, one system from the illustrative aid of other knowledge, divested of the modification and attraction of associated ideas derived from subjects less uncongenial with the natural feelings, they reahy may take «■> 104 flio satisr-iction of luivinnr ?iscertaineil one tliincj moro, namol}', that human naturo has become at hi.st so mio-htilv clianired. that it may bo left to work itself right very soon, as to tho uil'uir of religion, with little further trouble of theirs." While, therefore, this great writer insists upon the mental cultivation of the masses by all means, at all hazards, accounting all knowledge as being absolutely valuable, an apprehension of things as they are, and tending to prevent delusion, and to remove tho obstacles, some of them at hiast, in the way of right volitions; yet ho maintains that never, in any case, slioulJ knowledge be separated from religious truth. " We are not beard," says lie, " insisting on the advantages of increased knowledge and mental invigoration among the people, unconnected with the inculcation of religion. The zealous friends of poj»ular education consider religion (besides being itself the primary and infinitely the most important pait of knowledge) as a imnciflc indispensahle for securing the full benefit of all the rest. It is desired and endeavored, that the understanding of these opening minds may be taken ]->os8ession of by just and solemn ideas of their relation to the Eternal, Almighty Being; that they may be taught to apprehend it as an awful reality, that they ai'e perpetually under His inspection ; and, as a certainty, that they must at length appear before Him in judgment, and join, in another life, the consequences of what they are in spiiit and conduct liero. It is to be impressed on tliem that his will is tlie f«upreme law; that his declarations are the most moi'iientous truth known on eai-th; and his favor and condemnation the greatest good and evil. And it is wis]ie«l and endeavoreil to he by the light of this divine wisdom, that they are disciplined in other parts of knowledge; so tliat nothing they leai'n may be detached from all sensible relation to it, or have a tendency contrary to it. Thus it is sought to be secured, that as the i 105 fv 1^ pupil's mind grows stror.gcr, and multiplies its resources, and he therefore has neccssaiiiy more power and means for what is wrong, there may be luminously presented to him, as if celestial eyes visibly beamed upon him, the most solemn ideas that can enforce what is right." Now, let us take the briof description of such an educatino presented by Foster, as an ai)proxiination towards the only true ideal of a jmt education, an education which the State that undertakes to educate, is pledged to provide for its children, and let us ask if there be anything in it that can rightly bo charged as sectarian, or excluded on that ground? Rather is not an educixtion of the conscience, in all knowledge, under the fear of God, and with a onstant reference to Him, the most certain way to prevent sectarianism, and to bring together all the members of such a school, under such a discipline, as children of one common parent, united in him ? " Such is the discipline meditateil," continues Foster, " for preparing the children to pursue th(;ir indi\uUial welfai-e, and act their p:ut as members of the community. Tliey are to bo trained in early life to diligent em})loyment of their faculties, tending to strengthen them, regulate them, and give their possessors the power of eilectually using them. They are to bo exercis 'd to foi'm clear, cori-ect notions, instead of ci'ude, vague, d-.'Li>ive ones. During this progress, and in connection with many of its exercises, their duty is to be inculc;ited on them in the \aiious forms in which tliey will have to make a choice between right and wi'ong in their conduct towards society. There vvill be I'oiteration of lessons on ju^^tice, prudence, inotfensiveoess, love of peace, estrangement from the councils and leagues cf vain and bad men; hatred of disorder and violen.'c, a s-ense of the necessity of authoritative publio institutions to pi event these evils, and respect for them, while honestlv administered to this end. All this is to be taught. 106 in many instances directly, in others by rcferonco to confirmation from tho Holy Scriptures, from which authority, will also bo improisod, all tho while, the principles of religion. And religion while itd grand concern is with tho state of the soul towards God and eternal interests, yet tnkes every principle and rule of morals under its peremptory sanction; making tho primary obligation and responsibility be towards God, of everything that is a duty with respect to men. So that, with the subjects of this education, the sense of propriety shall be conscience; the consideration of how they ought to be refrulated in their conduct, as a part of the community, shall be tho recollection that their Ma.ster in heaven dictates the laws of that conduct, and will judicially hold them amendable for every pait of it." "And is not a discipline thus addressed to the purpose of fixing religious principles in ascendency, as far as that diflicult object is within the power of discipline, and of infusing a salutary tincture of them into whatever else is taught, the right way to bring up citizens faithful to all that deserves fidelity in the social compact ?"* • Foster on Popular Ignorance, c. 3. I ARGUMENT FROM THE NATURE OF MORAL SCIENCE. The simplest elements of Moral Science cannot b© taught without a religious bias. It is impossible to ignore or exclude Christianity, or place it on the same level with false religions, treating all alike, and at the same time instruct the pupil in the truths of moral philosophy. If you would make the subject of morals a subject of study at all in the common schools, you are absolutely compelled to make choice of some system ; and unless you take the remnants of Pagan philosophy for a text- book, you must go upon the ground of Christianity ; and -you ''cannot ad'/AAce a steV' \vitiiout broking that law of impartiality, hj wliich it is asserted, didt the State can have nothing to do \fLii reliicr'cr.s instruction, but \s bound to reject the Bible, and all ^distinctively religious truth. Morality itself, ^^nnot possibly to ta'!gh\ without. (liyimctiv?'^. religious truth, so that this ii'iedged rule of in»pi;riiaiity would exclude morality as well aa '.eiiaion frC':u the common schools. As an illustration of this, we will merely take, from the Course of Instruction in the Central High School, in Philadelphiti, one single section among many, o? questions at a semi-annual examination, the matter of the section t)emg mor^f scienc*. The pupil is required to state what is Conscience, and to prove its supremacy with the effect of habit on moral actions, and the respects in which the moral constitution of man is observed to be imperfect, and how those defects are to be remedied. 108 Division A; Prof. KirJcjpatrich~l. What is meant by ethics, and how is the science divided ?— 2. What is meant by the terms relations and obligations, as used in your text-book ? —3. What are the principal relations existing between God and man ?— 4. Explain the rights and obligations arising from those relations.— 5. Prove the existence of a conscience.— 6. What is meant by natural religion?— 7. Explain the relations existing between natural and revealed religion.— 8. How may we learn our duty from the doctrine of general consequences ? —9, How may we learn our duty from natural religion, or the light of nature?— 10. How may we learn our duty from the Scriptures ? Nov/, unless, for the salie of excluding all religious bias, we teach a false sy^-tem of morals in the public schools, the merest outline of any true system will show that it is absolutely impossible to teach moi-ality, without at the same time teaching a distinctive religion ; and this is impossible, wfthout a direct religious bias, It seems almost superfluous to dwell in detail on this argument. And yet, a plausible sophistry has been so widely spread, and the right of GoverLJient to administer a svstem of education at all, either moral or religious, is so stoutly denied in some quarters, tliat it becomes neces^sary. The objection from the danger of sectarianism is thus presented and disposed of by Dr. lliunphrey, the former President of Amherst Colleo-e, in a lecture before the American Institute of Instruelion: "There is, I am aware, in the minds of some warm and respectable friends of po|nilar education, an objection against incorporating religious instruction into the srstf-m, as one of its essential elements. It cam.ot, they think, be done without . bringing in along with it the evils of sectarianism. If this ■ objccfion could not be obviated, it would, I confess, have o-reat weight in my own mind. It supposes that if any religious I f 109 instruction is given, the distinctive tenets of some particular denomination must be inculcated. But is this at all necessary ? Must we either exclude religion altogether from our common schools, or teach some one of the various creeds which are embraced by as many different sects in the ecclesiastical calendar ? Surely not. There are certain great moral and religious prin- ciples, in which all denominations are agreed, such as the ten commandments, our Saviour's golden rule, everything, in short, which lies within the whole range of duty to God and duty to our fellow-men. I should bo glad to know what sectarianism there can be in a schoohnrster's teaching my children the lii-st and second tables of the moral law — to ' love the Lord their God with all their heart, and their neighbor as themselves' — in teaching them to keep the Sabbath holy, to honor their parents, not to s'.vear, nor drink, nor lie, nor cheat, nor steal, nor covet. Verily, if this is what any mean by sectarianism, then the more we have of it in our common schools, the better. 'It is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation,' that there is so little of it. I have not the least hesitation in saying, that no instructor, whether male or female, ouglit ever to be employed, who is not both able and willinir to teach moralitv and reli-ion, but to be taught residing, and wiitiug, and graintnar, knows not " what manner of spirit he is of." It is very ceitain that such a father will teauh his children anvthin-? but I'elio-ion at home; and is it right that they should be left to grow up as heathens in a Christian land ? If he says to the schoolmaster, I do not wish you to make my son an Episcopalian, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, very well. This is not tho 110 schoolmaster's business. He was not hired to teach sectarianism. But if the parent means to say, I do not send my child to school to have you teach him to fear God, and keep his com- mandments, to be temperate, honest and true, to be a good son and a good man, then the child is to be pitied for having such a father ; and with good reason might we tremble for all that wo hold most dear, if such remonstrances were to be multiplied and to prevail." It is argued by Romanists that there can be no greater fallacy than to suppose that because it is for the interest of tho State that its citizens should be enliglitened and virtuous, therefore it is the duty or business of the State to make them wise and virtuous by education. Romanism would gladly, were it possible, take this right and duty from the State, and vest it only in the Priests; and then, and thus, the children might universaly be kept in darkness, and Romanism might prevail. OBJECTION THAT THE ROMANISTS ARE EXCLUDED, ANSWERED. But here the objector meets us, and assumes that if the Bible be not exckided, the Romanists will, and that the Bible had better be shut out, than the Romanists shut out. To this it ^vould be sufficient to say, that if the Bible be exchided, a vastly greater number who require the Bible, nnd have an unquestion- able rjght to it, will be shut out, and that the Bible had better be admitted, than the friends of the Bible be excluded. Those who demand the Bible are ten to one compared with those who reject it; and those who would bo conscientiously excluded from the schools, if the Bible were excluded, are at least five to one, compared with those who would be driven away by its admission. Yet the insulting demand t^)r its exclusion is a demand that for the sake of gratifying one million, and gathermg m a portion of their children into schools fi-om which religion is driven out, you sliall disregard the I'ights of ten millions, and compel them either to establish other schools, or else to submit to an education for their children, from wh'ich the Bible and religious ti-uths are expelled. Shall the two millions who i-eject the Bible, rule the twenty who require it, and shall the rights of the tvN-enty be sacrificed to meet the prejudice-s of the two, or shall the vast and overwiielmino. majoiity be permitted t(^ retain the Bible, without injury to the rights of any ? Shall a very small minority be admitted to spoil an education for the majority, or shall the vast majority be admitted to vitalize and perfect an education for themselves and for all who will avail themsolvos of it? Shall the conscience 112 of the majority or that of the minority rule? We have already settled that question. There are two false assumptions in the objection ; fii-st, that if the Bibie be not excluded the Romanists will be shut out; and second, that if the Bible be excluded, you can in that way induce them to come in. They will neither be shut out by admitting the Bible, nor will they be drawn in by excluding the Bible. They wish, indeed, to get the Bible out, and so to do the schools all the injury in their power; but those who oppose the Bible have no intention of supporting the free school system at any rate. The Bible of the schools is not the source of their objection to them, but the freedom of the schools, and the intermingling of Romish and Protestant children, in such a manner as to break down these barriers of caste and prejudice, by which a church-despotism is so powerfully sustained. Their effort against the Bible is but a battering-ram or Roman Testudo, under cover of which they advance against the whole system, and mean to break it up. Besides, the Romanists are not shut out, in any case, but have perfect freedom of admission, if they will. If Haman and Mordecai are both invited to the king's feast, and if Haman, coming to the door, finds tliat Mordecai is to be one of the guests, and indeed sees him jusu entering on the other side of the way, and retires in a huff, saying, I will not be |)resent at the same feast with Mordecai, nor eat salt with him, whose tauit is it? V7ho makes the exclusion? Can he justly say that tho kin.r has shut him out, because Mordecai was invited? It is his C!? til' own angry, envious, and inimical feelings that have shut iimi out; and was it the duty of the king to legislate m behalf of those injarious feelings, or to set up new sumptuary regulations to please his malice? Are hatre.l and prejudice proper things to be fostered and protected by legislation, which, at the same moment that it protects and sustains the prejudice, legislates against those who liappen to be its unfortunate obiects. 113 Moreover, let ns next see what use the Ronrianists tliemselves would iiiako of this oxchision. Tliey tloinand tlie Bible to bo shut out, on the pretence ihat it is a bad book, a sectarian book, a Protestant book. Accordingly, you put the excommunicating brand upon it, and shut it out. Wiiat laniruao-e does that prohibition speak to the children? Wiiat will the Romish ])arents and the priests say to the youthful members of their flocks, when they desire to guard them against the Bible? What could they ask, for argument against it, better than this fact, that it is not ])ermitted to be read or taught in schools ? My children, they may say, it stands to reason, that if the Bible were a good book, they who tell you that it is, would permit it to be taught to their children. But the Protestants tliemselves have shut it out: they do not suffer it to be read, and of coui'se it cannot be fit to be read. A book of their own, which even the Protestants excommunicate, must be a bad book indeed ! Never touch it ! Then again, to others they will say. Behold these godless schools! These Protestants have a religion, which they have the impudence to assert is better than ours, and yet they dare not teach it to their children! It can surely not be deemed veiy sacred by those, who on considerations of expediency, consent to keep it from their children, consent to excommunicate it from the public schools. Godless, atheistic, worthless ! We will have nothing to do with such an education ; we cannot, and will not, send our children to such places ! And here they would find not a few of every faith, who would join with them. For what parent, who reverences the Word of God, and believes in the vital impoitance of its religious instructions, would consent to send his children to scliools, from which the Word of God, and all religions instruction, are carefully, zealously, and by legislation excluded ? lU But row as t > the reality. Facts liave already shown, and daily |)r>v(.', both in this country, and in Scotland, anl in Prussia, that many Romish ehillron \vill still go to the schools with the Bible in them; and would not go any more frequently or willingly with the Ijible out of them; and surel^', if wo could get onedialf educated wiLh the Bible, it were better than the whole without. Milton said truly that God cares more for the complete traiuint^anl growth of one virtuous person, than the restraint of ten vicious. Restraint is all that we can ho[)e for wilhout the Scriptures; no religious principle is possible, but with and by tkcm. Tlie theory and legislation that reject them, must, to be consistent, reject al' religious bias, all religious teaching. This would be to act upon the principle of doing 'jvil that good may come : nay, far worse that even that ; it would be doing evil (for certainly the witiiholding of the Bible an i of religious instruction from the young is doing evil : he that withholdeth corn^ tlie people shall curse him ; how much more he that steals the bread of life from the childini,) I say it would be doing evil, that an evil prejudice may not be offended, but gratified ; and in order that a very few, compara- tively, may be kept fn^m contact with the Word of God, who hate that Word, it is doing the evil of keeping vast multitudes from it, who desire and need it. Under pretence of alluring the Romish children into the common schools by excluding the Bible, you are just snatcliing the Bread of Life from the millions or' youthful hands held out ll;r it, in order to gratify the com- parative hw who wish to be without it. But, after all, it is not so much a jealousy against the Yv^ord of God, that instigates this exclusive policy, as it is the unwillingness of Romanists to have theirchild ren mingle freely with the children of Protestants, in the same education, under the same religious light. While all other denominations lay aside their sectarian prejudices at the door of the school-house, 115 and rejoice to mingle as one family under the same light of God's Word, the Roman Catholic sect alone carry their sectarian prejudices into the school-house, and would force all others into a compliance with their rule. The truth is, they are opposed to such a common school education as threatens to break down the barriers of sect, and of priestly and canon law, and to mingle the children of all persuasions in one family, under one common religious light. Our common free school system does this, and therefore they oppose it. But in some cjises the experiment of exorcising the spirit of religion to accommodate the demands of Romanism, has been made on the very plea of being able thus to induce the Romanists to patronize the schools, and has utterly failed ; but other and disastrous consequences have not failed. An Evenino- Free School had been for some yeai-s established in Salem. On the plea that Romanists would not attend if there were any religious influence or instruction connected with the school, such influence was given up and excluded. " The school has been conducted in the same manner as previously, excepting that all religious exercises have been dispensed with, in order that the children of Roman Catholic parents might be free to attend. This change failed of producing the desired effect, our (Rom<'iii) Catholic brethren having providtu instruction for their own children. But, on othei" grounds, it was deemed very proper and advisable. Religious exercises are not underetood by tlie class of youth attending such schools, and if not undei-stood, they are commonly turned to ridicule, and that is infinitely worse than their entire omission." And yet, the class of youth attending such schools, are stated to be " poor neglected boys and giils; whose circumstano s of poverty and work would not allg^w them to attend day schools." And of such persons it is asserted that religious exercises cannot be understood! Two hundred and sixteen 116 boys, from tliliicen to sixteen yeai-s of acre ! and yet not able to uricJei'stand religion! and, thercCore, the conclusion is tliat religion raust not be taught! Instead of arguing i'rom their Ignorance, destitution, and want of all instruction elsewhere, that compassion towards them 8> much the more requires a religious influence, and some reHgious instruction there, the argument is deliberately oiiered, that they cannot imdei-stand religious exercises! And perhai)S, too, they cannot understand arithmetic; but is that a reason for not teaching it? Perhaps they do not even understand reading; but is that sufficient reiison for not teaching them their letters? If they cannot understanl religious exercises, so much the more reason for beginning, in some way, to teach them. But this reasoning and the disastrous result of turning religion out of school, all pro- ceeds from the firet false step of excluding religious exercises, in the vain hope of securing the patronage of Romanists. This is likely to be the result o^ all such efforts. APPROPRIATENESS AND BEAUTY OF THE WORD OF GOD IN OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. The potent energy of God's word as an element of regenera- tion and transfiguration, both for the intellectual and moral nature, as well as the certainty of the Divine Llessing attending its presence, and its constant power, must hiive been forgotten, if not denied, by those who would exclude it from a place in our system of Common School Education. As an element of quiet, but effectual government and order in the schools, it would be invaluable; where its influence is judiciously employed, by a teacher whose heart loves it, punishment is but seldom needed. It is a forcible j)reventing, as well as refoj tning element, yet ever gentle, instructive, and persuasive. \Vhat an agency of power, kitidness and love, is foregone, neglected, rejected, when the Bible is excluded from the system of instruction and disci- pline in school And what a delightful and attractive variety, in both the form and material of thought, feeling and imagina- tion, in history, parable, poetry, argument and pi-ecept, in the lessons prepared by the Great Teacher of mankind, and given to our race under the gracious perpetual sanction of our birth- right from heaven, with the assurance that the things that are revealed belong to iis and to our children forever! That from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, is the most marked and explicit record of an educational j)rocess, as sanctioned of God. Doubtless, it ought to be the process with every immortal being in a Christian State ; and it might be, with nearly every one, if the State performed its full res- 118 ponsibility. And when we think of Uiat responsibility as ex- tending, in the coui-se of a few yeai-s, to the cliildren of more than a hundred niilHons, who will at once, witliin the limits of another generation, be the inhabiUmta of our country, and think of ail those children, daring the whole period of their educa- tion undertaken by the State, as deprived of the Word of God with all its hallowing and sanctifying influences, its wondrous winning and perpetual power of sacred training and restraint, we regard with amazement the heedlessness, not to say reck- lessness of consequences, with which any man can deliberately and earnestly propose and labor for the exclusion of that Di\ine agency from the whole circle of an education so vast and im- jDortant. To think how great and beneficial an influence is exei-ted during the period of one year, in a single district school, hy the falling of the Word of God, as the gentle dew from Heaven, in the hushed stillness of the scfiool, mornino- and even- ing, on so many opening and suscejitible minds and henits; and then to think of the possibility of making that the reverent habit of the schools of twenty millions ; and then to think of that influ- ence can-ied forward from year to yeai-, as uninterrupted as t])e rising and setting of the sun, through a period of thiitv voars, when the children of a population of more than two hundred millions may be thus gathered beneath the same Divine Hand, the same beneficent impression ! How^ imposing, how mn;ostir, how delightful the sight of the children of a whole nation, every day silently listening, at the same hour, to the words of their Father in Heaven, and uniting at the same hour in the petition, Our Father ! To think that this might be, was in likelihood of being, and then to conceive the plan of thwartino- this possibility, and to labor by argument and management for preventing it! Does it seem poasible that such an eflbrt can co-exist with Christian principle.^ Are the two compatible? 119 Tn tins connection how strikingly and solemnly leautiful aro tlie words of John Foster, in rcl'crenoo to the inostiiiuible value of the union of religious truth with Kocnlar instruction, and the security and happiness of the mind advancing forward to tlio responsibilities of life, and the command of thoui^ht and action, under such a discipline. Ho imagines a visitor gazing on tho busy operations of such a school, and watching the multitude of youthful spirits. "They are thus treading in the precincts of an intellectual economy; the economy of thought and truth, in which they are to live forever; and never, to eternity, will they have to regret this period and ])art of their emj)loyments. The visitor will be delighted to think how many disciplined actions of the mind, how n)any just ideas, dir^tinctly admitted that wei'e strangers at the beginnin.g of the day's exeicise, — and among these ideas, some to reujind them of Cod and their highest interest, — there will have been, by the time the busy and well-ordered company breaks np in the evening, and leaves silence within these walls. He will not, indeed, grow romantic in hope; he knows too much of the natuie to which these beings belong; knows, therefore, that the desired results of this discipline will but partially follow; but still I'ejoices to think that partial result, which will most certainly foilow, will be worth incomparably more than all it will have cost." " The friends of these designs for a genei'al and highly-im- proved education, may pYoceed further in this course of vei-ify- ing to themselves the grounds of their assurance of happy results. A number of ideas decidedly the most important that were ever formed in human thought, or imparted from the Su- preme Mind, will be so taught in these institutions, that it is absolutely ceitain they will be fixed irrevocably and foi'ever in the minds of many of the pupils. It will be as impossible to erase these ideas from their memories, as to extinguisii th(! stars. And in the case of many, perhaps the majority, of these youth- V20 M beings, advancing into the temptations of life, those grand Meas thus fixed deej) in tlieir aonls, will distinctly i)msent them- selves txj the judgment and consc^icnce an incalculable number of times. What ri nunibor, if the sum of all these reminiscen- ces of those ideas, in all the minds now assembled in a numerous scliool, could be conjectured ! But if one in a hundred of these recollections, if one in a thou&md, shall have the elHcacy that it ought to have, who can coinpute the amount of the good resulting from the tuition which shall have so enforced and fixed thaso ideas, that they shall be infallibly thus recollected ? And is it altogether out of resison to hope that the desired efficacy will, as often as once in a thousand times, attend the luminous rising again of a solemn idea to the view of the mind ? Is still less than this to be hoped for our unliappy nature, and that, too, while a beneficent God has the superintendence of it ?"* But if this cannot be expected even under the best of means, what can be anticipated without them ? What from a school where religion is disowned, and the Bible rejected ? Can the Divine blessing be upon that." The same Divine bounty that has given the whole of revelation as belonging to us and to our children forever, has connected the assurance of a beneficent influence and power to accompany the teaching of God's Word and that it never shall be separated from it. It is conveyed in language like the following:—" This is my covenant with them, saith the Lord ; my Spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy' seed's seed, saith the Lord, from hencefortli and forever."! But those who argue for the banishment of the Bible from our schools, would take away this pledge and assurance of a bleseing from heiv: d, and would leave the youthful race of im- • Foster oii Pyp' lu* !i,i,(jrance, ch. 2. i Is. Ik. 21. 121 mortal beings, defrauded of their inheritance, their biith-right, not indeed to the uncovcnanted ineBcjefl of God, but to the power and providence of a system that ])ermit.s no reference to his mercies, and no knowledge of them. These won would shut up the 3outhful mind in its pursuit of knowledge, and it« disciplinary development, within a narrower way, In^unded by high blank walK over which it is forbidden to look, even were that poasible; beyond which stretches an infinite reach of thought and knowledge, a region of bright celestial light, nono 01 which must be let in upon the secular-beaten lane, which alone the young scholar is commissioned to travel. No teacher must presume to communicate an intimation to his pupils con- cerning that bright land, nor by any conveyance to let in that celestial radiance, lest sectarianism should rush in with it. IMPORTANCE OF THE BIBLE AND OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE FEMALE SCHOOLS. ITS INTERDICTION ODIOUS. It is ever to be remembered how large a proportion of the children attending our common schools are girls, and the teaoh- ei-s, females; and how peculiarly appropriate and essential for them, both for instruction and government, the lessons of the Sacred Scriptures. What agency is so powerful for training the sensibilities, for refining the manners, for purifying the heart, for directing and establishing the principles, the feelings the sentiments, the habits of thought, ni that gentle, and yet elevated and impressive character, which we wish to see pos- sessed by every woman, and especially every mother of our Republic ? Of all motives, those of religion are best adapted and most effectual in the disci] )line and government of the schools; but especially are religious sanctions and instructions important in female schools. The idea of educating the female mind of our country, in the proposed exclusion of the Bible and of all religious instruction, is really an insult to the common convictions of humanity in a Christian State. Just think of the absurdity, the tyranny, of placing the children and their teacher under such a regimen, because of the fear of the chai'ge of sectarianism, that the teacher shall not dare to comment even on the sim.plest, ^Aveetest, most com- prehen3i^'e saying-s, invitations, parables, or actions, of the 123 Saviour of the world ! Think of such an espionage and inter- diction, that in a lesson, for example, from the Gospel of John, "I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever livcth and believeth in me, shall never die," the trembling teacher shall not dare so much as tell the listening girls the duty of trusting in such a Saviour, and loving him, and following his example, and resting upon him to life eternal! Shall not'daie . impress the sweetest, most common, most essential principles of Christianity upon those tender hearts and awakening conscien- ces, for their guidance, their character, their welfare, in this world and in that which is to come! Think of classes and teachers under this fear, lest some inquisitorial commissioner should enter, and mark this process of celestial light as endan- gering the entrance of sectarianism, and therefore not to be per- mitted, out of respect to the conscientious rights of those who require the exclusion of the Bible and of all religious instruc- tion. And yet, this jealousy, espionage, and trembling fear, is ine- vitable the moment you admit that the simplest religious instruc- tion is sectarian, and that the government have no right to o-ive religious instruction to the children of the State. But such a Aile and such an admission is directly contrary to the principles laid down under sanction of the State itself in the foundation of our common school system ; nay, contrary to the very defi- nition of education, as given, again and again, by our govern- ors and legislative bodies. It is a monstrous wrong, an oppres- sion and a fraud incalculable, to confound religion and sectarian- ism, and to assert that because the latter is forbidden, and most justly forbidden, therefore the former shall not be taught, for fear of opening the door for the latter. What a triumph for the Tempter of mankind, if politicians, at tlie instigation of those who slander the Bible itself as sectarian, can be authorized 124 to exclude religion from our schools, to banish all the lessons of Christianity from the knowledge and affection of the open- ing minds of those millions of our children who receive no education whatever but that which the State gives them ! The exclusion of the Bible and of all reliirious bias would be followed inevitably by a fear and jealousy of all religious teaching, and by-and-by, when any allusion should be made by the teacher to God, Christ, and relii^-ious motives and sanctions, there would be an instinctive repulsion, as if this were trench- ing on forbidden ground. The threat of banishing the teachers? if they do not banish all religious bicis from their instruction, would be more and more fre(|uent, and the common schools would come, '^y common law of practice and exclusion, to be fearful inquisitorial domiciles of jealousy against Divine truth. Scarcely anything can be conceived more intolerably odious than such a tyrannical interdiction operating on the mind and conscience of the teacher. And yet, this is the very result to which this extreme dread of sectarianism, and the exclusion of all positive religious influence in consequence of that dread, would soon come, if not prevented ; and would no more dare to instruct a youthful pupil as to the cliaracter of the Saviour and the duty of faith in him, than under the Austrian despot- ism a teacher would dare instruct his pupils in the nature of civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man. There, every thing is free to be taught hut freedom ; and here, it is proposed that everything shall be ivaa to be taught hut the Bible and religion; the moment you trench upon the province of reli- gious truth, some political informer shall denounce you as a teacher of sectarianism in the public schools. On that subject of religion you must keep your mouth shut ; not one word of instruction must you drop, or the inquisitor shall be upon you. You shall not be permitted even to explain a passage of Scrip- ture. If the Bible is read at all in school, or usod as a class- 125 ire book, not a comment must bo made upon its instructions, leet you open the door to the horrid monster of sectarianism. Now, this is any thing but compatible with a free scliool system. Yet this veiy tlu-ottJing and suttbcation of all religious inquiry and comnmnication is contended for, on the plea that if religion is introduced at all, it opens the door for sectarianism, and none can tell where it would stop. By the very sr.me argument, liberty must be choked and silenced ; for any dis- cussion of the principles of that, opens the door to anarchy and rebellion ; and so the freedom of the press must be ^topped, for otherwise it runs into libels and licentiousness. ]jut the answer in all these cases is just this: that ^^•hen the oflence comes, then it is time enough to stop it, and that you have no light to prevent liberty itself for the purpose of preventing the abuse of liberty. Let the press go free, and when any man abuses that freedom, bring him up for it, to trial and punish- ment. And just so, let religion go free in the schools, and wait till some sectarian abuses the privilege, and stop the abuse, but not the privilege. Do not put a ban befoie hand upon religion and religious instruction, under pretence of preventing sectarianism. For religious instruction is one thing, and a thing entirely proper and necessary for the schools; but sectarianism is another thing, and entirely improper. And it is not tiue that you cannot have religious influence and instruction without sectarianism. "Will any one dare to call our Saviour's parables sectarian ? Yet under the rule of exclusion contended for, no teacher in the schools might dare explain the least of those parables, not even so much as to tell an energetic child what is the meaning of the pearl of great price. If anything of that kind comes lip, some are ready to say, let the child be referred to its parejits or its pastor. But su])pose it has neither parents nor pastor; or suppose that the pastor is a ])iiest, who hates the Bible, and the parents keep a grog shop. Where, in that case, shall the child be referred to, for a knowledge of the pearl of great price ? 126 One object of a good education is to make the children in- quisitive, and the teachers who know their business, will always encourage the asking of questions, and the utmost kindness and freedom in answering thorn. What is a school worth, that re- presses all this freedom instead of stimulating it? But shall there be this freedom only on secular, and ne\er on religious things ? Suppose you have a class reading in the New Testa- ment. That sweet and blessed passage happens to be in the reading lesson, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Have you got to stop all your faculties of suggestion, of inquiry, of instruction there, and put a hermetical seal on the minds and lips of your pupils, because it is a religious lesson, and on that there must be no comment? If not, how will you get along ? Suppose that you ask, (as a good teacher will certainly encourage the art and habit of ques- tioning,) Has any one any questions on the lesson? and suppose that one bright little boy inquires if that verse means the young as well as the old, or who it is that he must come to, or how he must come ? Oh, you say, hush, my boy, there must be nothing of religious instruction here ; but you may ask your father and mother when you go home. Father and mother! What if the child comes from the Five Points ? And why not also send him to fether and mother for the solution of his knots and difficulties in questions of grammar and arithmetic? Perhaps in nine cases out of ten, he might be more likely to obtain that knowledge at home, than he would to gain any salutary in- structions or ideas on the subject of i-eligion. The foundation of Normal schools, or institutions of educa- tion for teachers, to prepare them for their work, is referred by Lord Brougham to Fellenberg, the philosopher of Hofwyl, of whom he thus speaks :— " Tiiis happy idea originated with my old and venerable friend, Emanuel Fellenberg, a name not more kaovr'n than lionored, nor more honored than his virtuous and € r f & c ( 127 enliglitciiod efforts in the cause of education and for the happi- ness of mankind, deserve." And now let us niaik Fellenbevo-'s own expression of his feehngs to the lamented President Fisk, si)eaking on the exclu- sion of th(3 Bible and religion from a conmion school system of education. Ho had received a somewhat exaggerated ac- count of the matter in America, and Dr. Fisk gi^■es the conver- sation as foh.Avs:— "Mr. Fellenberg expressed his very great surprise at the neglect of religious instruction in our schools iu America; that the Bible wiis excluded as a regular text- book; in short, that in the United States, among a religious, a Pro- testant^ an enlightened, a free people, man should be educated so much in view of his physical wants, and his temporal exist- ence, while the moral feelings of the heart, and our religious relations to God and eternity, should be left so much out of our schools. But, he said, the great principles of our religion would come into collision with no man's views who believed in Christianity ; and that, at any rate, party views were nothin<^ in comparison ^\dth the importance of religious training; and therefore every good man ought to be willing to make some sacritices of party views for the great bonelits of an early reli- gious education." Nothino- could be more just and appropriate than these sen- timents." They may be conjoined with Professor Stowe'8 remarks on the moial training in the common schools of Prus- sia, from his report on the course of education in those schools, "Another striking feature of the system," say he, "is its moral and religious cliaracter. Its morality is puie and elevated, its religion entirely removed from the narrowness of sectarian bigotry. What parent is there, loving his children, and wishing to have them respected and happy, who would not desire that they should be educated under such a luoral and religious influ- ence? ^Yhethcr a believer in revelation or not, does he not 128 Icnow that without sound morals there can be no happiness, and that there is no morahty like the movahty of the New Testa-, ment? Does he not know that, without rdigion, the human lieart can never be at rest, and that there is no relijrion like the religion of the Bible? Every well-informed man knows that, as a general fact, it is impossible to impress the obligations of morality with any efficiency on the heart of a child, or even on that of an adult, without an appeal to some code, which is sustained by the authority of God ; and for what code will it be possible to claim this authority, if not for the code of tho Bible?" Professor Stowe*s able Report should be studied by tliose who imagine that religious instruction must of necessity be sec- tarian. Few things can be more instructive and impressive than his account of the manner in which religious aud moial instruction is communicated in select Bible narratives, in friendly and familiar conversation between the teacher and the class. At a somewhat more advanced age, the whole of the histoi'ical part of the Bible is studied thoroughly and systematically, without the least sectarian bias, and without a moment being spent on a single idea that will not be of the highest use to the scholar during all his future life. NECESSITY OF A CHRISTIAN COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION FOE A LIVING AND PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION It was a very profound remark of the great German Poet and Historian, Schiller, that " it is not enough that all intellec- tual improvement deserves our regard only so far as it flows back upon the character ; it must in a manner j^roceed from the character ; since the way to the head must he opaned through the heartr The world, therefore, is wholly wrong in this matter of edu- cation, wiien it administers its own medicaments only, its own elements, its own food, and nothing higher, its own knowledge without the celestial life of knowledge. Power it gives, witn- out guidance, without principles. It is just as if the art of ship- building should be conducted witnout helms, and all ships set afloat to be guided by the winds only. For such are the im- mortal i^hips on the sea of human life without the Bible; its knowledge, its principles, ought from tlie first to be as much a l)art of the educated, intelligent constitution, as the keel or rud- der is part and parcel of a well-built ship. Religious instruc- tion, therefore, and the breath of the sacred Scriptures, oujrht to be breathed into the child's daily life of knowledge, and not put off to the Sabbath, when your children are addressed from the pulpit, or a small portion of the young are gathered into Sabbath Schools. Above all the elements of knowledge, that 130 of religion is for all. If in their daily schools, children were educated for eternity, as well as time, there would be nioi-e good citizens, a deeper piety in life, a inoi'o sacred order and heaven- like beauty in the republic, a better understanding of law, a luoi-e patient obedience of it. If our education would be one that States can live by, and flourish, it must be ordered in the Scriptures. Komanism, in its attacks against the Word of God, forms a rallying point for all the infidelity and atheism of the countiy. Whoever and whatever hates the light of the Bible, wHl shout encouragement to the sect that dares make a crusade against it All elements of darkness and of evil will come trooping to its a&sistance. The time for prayer and vigilance therefore, against its advances, is now. By-and-by, the genius of a protective piety that has slumbered, may awake when it is too late to avoid great disaster. Some ei'rors are so subtle and dangerous in their nature, that if you do not take them in their infancy, but allow them to accumulate, you afterwards dare not approach them. You must have a Safety Lamp, or you cannot securely examine them. If you carry the open toi-ch of Truth, they will explode, like the pestiferous mine-gas, and blow you up. If men do not take care, this will be the case with Komanism in its inveterate and deadly antagonism against the Scriptures; there will be such an accumulation of this despotic element, that loves the darkness and hates the light, that it will be as much as a man's life is worth, even to examine it; it has been so in other coun- tries, and some day, if we let it work successfully against the Bible in our schools, it will make an explosion that will shatter our whole system. Meanwhile, let us beware of the false confidence, that because in a past generation we have had the Bible at the foundation, we can now afford to dispense with it. Let us beware of the 131 delusion that a civilization which began in Christianity, can be progressive without Christianity, or that a freedom, which was the gift of heaven and heavenly truth, can be permanent, sepa- rated from heaven. " When in the seventeenth century," says the Chevalier Bun- sen, « Europe emerged out of the blood and destruction into which the Pope and the Romish or Romanizing dynasties had plunged it, the world, which l>ad seen its double hope blighted wjis almost in despair both of religious and of civil lil)e]ty! The eigliteenth century, not satisQed with the conventional theodicea of that genius of compromise, Leibnitz, found no univei-sal organ for the pliilosophy of history, except the French P:ncyclopedic School; and this school had no regenerating and reconstructive idea, save tliat of perfectibility and progress. But what is humanity without God ? What is natural religion ? Wliat is progress without its goal ? These philosophers ^vere not witnout belief in the sublime mission of mankind, but they wanted ethical earnestness as much as real learning and depth of thought. They pointed to civilization as to the goal of the race which mankind had to run. But civilization is an empty word, and may be, as China and Byzantium show, a caput mor- iuum of real life, a mummy dressed up in the semblance of living i-eality."* * Ilyppolitua and his Age. Vol. 2, p. 8. ARGUMENT FROM THE HISTORY OF COMMON SCHOOLS AND THE SCHOOL STATUTES, IN NEW YORK. The whole history of tlie system of common soliools in our country is the history of tlie eiforts of men who desired to place the Bible and religious truth in them, and as the foundation of them. Our towns were little republics with the Bible for their foundation. Our scliools were little republics also, with the Bible there. The idea of divorcing the Bible from common schools, and common schools from the Bible and its i-elimous instructions, would have b^en repugnant to the whole feeling, conviction, and deterniination of their foundei-s. It w(nild have been the wreck of any system of education, to propose that the Scriptures, and all religious bias, should be excluded from them ; and it will oe so still; the countiy will not bear it. More and more the affections of the people will be alienated from the common schools, if we take theBible out from them. Respecta- ble, and religious, and well-informed parents, will cease to send their children to them; and they will become the resort only of the careless, the reckle.^s, the utteily poor and destitute, and of those who never at home receive the light of di\ine truth or enjoy the fostering and restraining influence of a religious edu- cation. And when tnere comes to be such a division, as come there must, if the Bible and religion be excluded from the schools, then will our common schools 2:0 down ; the most lavish munificence on the part of the State could not keep them up ; the most patronizing, or even compulsory legislation would be li 133 in vain to suppoil them. Thoy depond upon the affection and respect of the moral, tlje religions, and the better instructed part of the community; and wlien that ceases, the schools must go into contempt. The conscience of the church in this country cannot long be blinded or stupefied on this subject; it will awake ; but it may awake when it is too late to restore to the Word of God the place which it rightfully claims; and then, conscience itself would destroy the school system. It claims that place, not only rightfully, and from its very authority as the Word of God, but also historically, by long- established law and custom. And we are now to show, by historical survey, and a]:)poals to the Statute Book, as well as to the habit and usage of the States and towns foremost in the work of education, that the plan of excluding the liible, and all positive religious instruction and influence, is aneio and modern scheme concocted for a particular political emergency or pur- pose; an innovation, contrary in every case to the views and principles of the foundei-s of the school system, the convictions of the wisest men in our country, the custom of our towns and villages, and tlie explicit provisions of our school laws. The history of the Counnon School system of the State ot New York, is full of insti-uction and wai-ningr. It begins with the fli'st meeting of the State Legislature, after the adoiitiou of the Constitution, when the Governor, George Clinton, intro- duced the great subject in liis speech, as follows: "Neglect of the education of youth, is one of the evils con- sequent upon war. Pei'haps there is scarce any thing more worthy your attention, than the revival and encouragement of seminaries of learning; and nothing by which we can more satisfactorily express our gratitude to the Supreme Being for his past favoi's, since piety and virtue are generally the offspring of an enhghtened undorrtanding." From 1795 to 1802, various measures were adopted, and re- venues appropriated for this object. In 1802 and 1803, Gov. 134 Clinton rcnewedly and energetically recommended tbo establish- ment of Common Schools, putting morals and religion as their foremost objects. " The advantage to morals, religion, liberty and gou'' government, arising from the general diliusion of knowledge, being univereally admitted, permit me to recom- mend this subject to your deliberate attention." In 1804, (jlovernor Lewis remarked, with reference to the subject of education, and the establishment of Common Schools, as follows : " In a government resting on public opinion, and deriving its chief support from the aliections of the people* RELIGION AND MORALITY CanUOt be tOO SCduloUsly INCULCATED. Common Schools, under the guidance of respectable teachers, should be established in every Tillage, and the indigent be edu- cate^! at the public expense." In 1810, Governor Tompkins called the attention of the Legislature to the subject, in the following language : "I can- not omit this occasion of inviting your attention to the means of instruction for the rising generation. To enable them to perceive and duly estimate their rights, to inculcate correct PRINCIPLES, and habits OF MORALITY AND RELIGION, and tO render them useful citizens, a competent provision for their edu- cation is all essential." In 1811, Governor Tompkins again called the attention of the Legislature to this subject, and a law was passed for ap- pointing five Conmiissionei's, to report a system for the organi- zation and establisliment of Common Schools. The Commis- sioners were men well fitted foi" this trust, and proved fiuthful to it. Their masterly document is quoted at large in the official history of the Common School system, with these remarks: " We cannot deem any apology necessary for the space occupied by these extracts fi-oni this admirable report; shadowing forth as it does the great features of that system of public instruction subsequently adopted, and successfully carried into 135 execution; and laying down in lannruage at once eloquent and impressive, those fundamental principles, upon which alone, any system of popular education, in a republic like ours, must be based." REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS, AND FOUNDATION OF THE SYSTEM BY THE STATE. Let us then see what, in the view of the founders of our Bvstem, were some of those fundamental piinciples. " Perhaps," say they, " there never will be presented to the Leo-islature a subject of more importance than the establishment of Common Schools. Education, as the means of improving the moral and intellectual feculties, is, under all circumstances, a subject of the most imposing consideration. To rescue man from that state of degradation to which he is doomed, unless redeemed by education ; to unfold his physical, intellectual, and moral powers; and to fit him for those high destinies which his Creator has prepared for him cannot fail to excite the most ardent sensibility of the philosopher and the philanthropist." "The people must possess both intelligence and viitue; intelligence to perceive what is right, and virtue to do what is right. Our republic, therefore, may justly be said to be foundsd on the intelligence and virtue of tho peoi)le. For this reason, i; is with much propriety that Montesquieu has said, In a republic, tiie ^^hole force of education is required." "The Commissioners think it necessary to present in the strongest point of view, the importance and absolute necessity of education, either a« connected with the cause of religion and morality, or with the prosperity and existence of our political institutions. The expedient devised by the Legislature is the establishment of Common Schools; which being spread through- out the State, and aided by its bounty, will bring improvement within the reach and po.Ter of the humblest citizen. This •'I 137 'S'^ , appeai-s to be the best plan that can be devised to disseminate RELIGION, MORALITY, AND LEARNING throughout a wholo country." It is clear that in the view of these gentlemen, and of the legislature under whom they acted, religion as well as knowledge was a legitimate subject of teaching and dissemination by the government through the public schools. They did not deem the introduction of religious principles an intrusion on the rights of any conscience. But still further, speaking of the coui-se of instruction appropriate and eysential in common schools, under direction and patronage of the State, the commissionei-s say, " In these schools should be taught at least those branches of education which are indispensably necessary to every person in his inter- course with the woi-ld, and to the performance of his duty as a useful citizen. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of morality, are essential to every person, however humble his situation in life. Without the first, it is impossible to receive those lessons of morality which are inculcated in the writintrs of the learned and pious; nor is it possible to become acquaint- ed with our ])olitical constitutions and laws; nor to decide those great political questions which ultimately are referred to the intelligence of the people. Writing and aiithmetic are indis- ])ensable in the management of one's private aftaiis, and to facilitate one's commerce witli the world. Morality and leligion are the foundation of all that is truly great and good, and^'are consequently of piimary importance." The vvriteivs of this repoit might be sup])osed to have come to their task fresh fiom the perusal of Wasliingtou's Farewell Address. In i-egard to school-masters, tliey say, " When we consider the tender age at which children are sent to school; the length of time tliey pass under the dilution of their teachers; when we consider that their little minds are to be diverted from their 188 natural propensities to the artificial acquisition of knowledge; that they are to be prepared for the reception of great moral and rehgious truths, to be inspired with a love of viitue and detestation of vice; we shall forcibly perceive the absohite necessity of suitable qualifications on the part of the master." Further still, on the subject of proper books, the commission- ers declare, that " much good is to be deri\'ed from a judicious selection of books, calculated to enlighten the understanding not only but to improve the heart. Ana as it is of incalculable consequence to guard the young and tender mind from receiv- ing fallacious impressions, the commissioners cannot omit mentioning this subject as a part of the weighty trust repose I in them. Connected with the introduction of suitable books, the commissioners take the liberty of suggesting that some observations and advice touching the reading of the Uible in the schools might be salutary. In order to render the sacred volume productive of the greatest advantage, it should be held in a very different light from that of a common school book. It should be regarded as a book intended for literary improv * ment not merely, but as inculcating great and indispensable moral truths also. With these impressions, the commissioners are induced to recommend the practice introduced into the New York Free School, of having select chapters read at the opening ■of the scho »1 in the morning, and the like at the close in the afternoon. This is deemed the best mode of preserving the religious regard which is due to the sacred Avritings " What could be better than these principles accepted and sanctioned by the State as the foundation of a noble system of Free Common School Education ? In closing their remarks^ the commissioners affirmed that thev '* could not conclude their report without expressing once more their deep sense of the momentous subject committed to them. If we regard it as connected with the cause of religion and morality merely, its 139 aspect is awfully solemn. But the other xkvie of it already alluded to are sufficient to excite the keenest solicitude in the legislative body. It is a subject, let it be repeated, intimately connected with the permanent prosperity of our political insti- tutions. The American empire is founded on the virtue and intelligence of the people. ... And the commis-sionera cannot but hope that that Being who rules the universe iu justice and in mercy, who rewards viilue and punishes vice, wilj most graciously deign to smile benignly on the humble efforts of a people in a cause purely his own, and that he will manifest this pleasure in the lasting prosperity of our country." If the names of those commissioners under whose direction the Croton Reservoir was built, to supply this city with pure water, deserved to be engraved in the massive work, much more do the names of these commissioners, at the foundation of our system of Common Free School Education, with the Bible as its corner stone, deserve a grateful and lasting remembrance. They were Jedediah Peck, John Murray, Jr., Samuel Russell Roger Skinner, and Samuel Macomb. The leading features of the system by them proposed were adopted and passed into a law by the legislature in 1812. From that time for many years, up to the administration of Governor De Witt Clinton, the system went on improving, and becoming more and more established in the affections of the people. Governor Clinton, in his first message or speech at the opening of the session of 1822, dwelt upon the condition of pubHc instruction, and remarked that "the first duty of a State is to render its citizens virtuous, by int<^l]ectual instruction and moral discipline, by enlightening their minds, purifying their hearts, and teaching them their rights and their obligations." Governor Clinton repeatedly wrote upon this subject, and insisted on the duty of elevating the standaid of education, mental and moral. He suggested the system of monitorial schools, and we believe also, schools for the training of teachers. 140 In 1830, Mr Flayer, the State Superintendent, observed: "The imraence impuitance of elevating the standard of ediica- cation in the ccrainon schools is strongly enforced by the fact, that to every ten pei-sons receiving instruction in the higher schools, there are at least live hundred dependent upon the common schools for their education." And it may be added^ how powerful an argunK3nt is this for the necessity of having the Bible and religious instruction in these schools, and llie absurdity, or rather impossibility, of reftrring the children to other schools or places of instruction for the Word of God, if not ten children in a hundred were likely ever to obtain such advantages. In 1838, the Superintendent for the first time began to confound the question of religious instruction with that of sectarianism. From Washington downwards, men of all classes had acknowledged the necessity of religion as well as morality and knowledge, nor had there ever been any jealousy against insti'uctjon on the subject of religion as sectarian. But the clement of Romanism was now beginning to make itself felt. Yet still the Bible was recommended as a class-book, and the Superintendent justly remarked that " there can be no ground to apprehend that the schools will be used for the pur])ose of favoring any particular sect or tenet, if these sacred writings, which are their own safest interpretei-s, are read without any other comment, than such as may be necessary to explain and enforce by familiar illustration, the lessons of duty which they teach." In 1840, the Superintendent, eTohn C. Spencer, remarked, that "no plan of education can now be considered complete, which does not embrace a full development of the intellectual faculties, a systematic and careful discipline of the moral feelings, and a preparation of the pupil for the social and political rela- tions which he is destined to sustain in manliood. It must be 141 conceded that the standard of common school education in this State falls far short of the attainment of these objects." Now it is obvious that a systematic and careful discipline of the moi-al feelings is not possible, without a religious training of the conscience, and the guidance of the Woid of God. If this weie excluded from a common school education, it would be found miserably lame and defective. In the "social and political relations," indeed, in every way, the most direct and certain mode of making good citizens is to educate them under the power of religious truth. It is by celestial observations only, Mr. Coleridge once beautifuly remarked, that terrestrial charts can be constructed. You are sure to make the young man a good citizen if you make him a virtuous man; you are not sure to make him a good citizen, if you merely instruct him in secular knowledge. BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST THE SCRIPTURES. Soon after this period a severe coiifli ■■ waged between those wlio maintained the natural and le^^ right and moral necessity of the Scriptures in the schools, and those who en- deavored at the instigation of the Roman Catholic party, to exclude them. During the superintendence of the lamented Col. Stone, and of his successor, Dr. Reese, these gentlemen labored to restore the Bible to its just place and authority, and exposed themselves to much political abuse and obloquy for so doing. Previous to the adminimration of Col. Stone, laws were passed in 1842 and 1843, containing th ^ section forbidding sectariMn teaching and books. Under cover of these laws, the effort was driven on to banish the Bible, as being itself a se .tarian book, no statute having then been passed to prevent its banishment, because it had never been dreamed that the time would come when such a statute would be necessary ; the Scriptures iiaving been read daily in all the public schools for forty years, witheut complaint or opposition. Col. Stone "advised, counselled, recommended, and remon- strated, terminating his ofiicial labors by invoking the interposi- tion of the Legislature," to protect and preserve the schools from having the Bible turned out of them. It was in answer to his eloquent appeals that an amendment to the School Law was enacted in 1844, prohibiting the Board of Education from excluding the Holy Scriptures from any school. Notwithstand- ing this, the ward officcre of different schools still maintained 143 Iho exclusion, and forbade tlio teachers the privileo-e of usin^r the Bil)Ie. " Many of tho toachor.V tlm Supunntenlent declar- ed, " were thus intimidated, from an apprehen.sion lea.sl they should lose their places, which indeed was iuiiujated in some cases, and distinctly threatened in cithers. Valuable teachers, in several cases, for reading the Bible in their schools, have been actually either dismissed or ompelled to resign." As an illustration of the influences and the men by whom the exclusion of the Bible was accomplished, a writfen order wa^ produced by the teacher of a school, in one of the wards where the Bible was prohibited, which order w^is served upon liim by the tj'ustees of the school, in the words and manner foUovvino-: — " Sir By a iiuanimos vote of the trustees Lust Meetinir all Secteriaii Books is Requhted to Bee Removed fi-om the School as it is ihaught the Bibl one it is Requhted to Bee Removed." The Superintendent justly remarke5 in his hand, is instructed to read, and thuak, and act independently, our institutions will be safe ; but such a system will lay Popery in the dust, wherever it prevails. The common people, hi all Catholic countries, are ignorant of the rudiments of education. Those who come here can, in general, sign their names only with a mark. The persons who can neither read nor write, whoso numbers disfigure the census return.^ of our towns, are most of thorn CuthoUcs. Under all tbese circumstances, gentlemen, your claim that a port of om- Pul>iio School money should be put into the hands of Cu- tholio priesta to manage, strikes ns es exhibiting a wonderful degree of assnranca. .145 Your demand 11)1011 \m fir pronf, hm drivon us to a nioro tlionnigh inqniry iutS your dootiincs ic d pnietii'e.s thixn wo Imd over nuido boforo. Wo ]uivn bvcii muoli jnstrudtcd liy U" labor. "Wo beliovo tho assortioiis wliich wc iimdo, witli a widor and doopor leeliDg of (Usapprobiifion now, than whun wo nuulo tliom. ^IVo fiud iu tho sysi.mi a more (Lirliij,' iujpioty towards Clod, and a inoro coiiHdont trust iii tlie credulity of lueii, and loss of cvun si)oi-iousnos3 of uca-ijitiiral support, tliun wo luud Bupposod. The examination has mmlo ua foel more tbaukful to tho Kroat iiieu who dared to face your syatem in its strength, and nion^ tliaiikl'ul to God that ho guvu 6UCUOS8 to their olfbrts, so tliat the chains of Popery wero broken, and n spirit of freedom lot loose w.:ic)i has Ijlossed our land, and will blens all tho nations. Your wJiolu system is aiiti-Auiorican. Tho powers of your oeclesiastical ofijccrs are derived from a foroi^jn princo, and dependent on him. Evorj-tliiiiK concentrat^ja in him tw iho head of your system. By authority received from him it ia that Bishop Dubois shuts up ono American clmrch, and iraintjuns a man, publicly char^jjed by numerous atKdavits with boins ofhm uIan of lilwrty : to (iiscard tho timorous ftiar of error, and trust to tho mighty • -ver of truth. Cast oil", for yoursolvoa, and your peoplo1 system, the excellence and success of which were declared, by its founders and our fathers, to be in- dissolubly connecti^l with, and vitally dej)endent uj)on, tlie Bible and religious truth ! And the appeal to men's prejudices, and to their dread of ecclesiastical domination, has been artfully made, for the exclusion of the Bible and prayer, on the ground that any thing positi\ely religious in the schools would be "the first step, and a decided one, towards jihicing them under eccle- siastical guardia!i'diip and sui)remaey." Atid yet this very ap- peal, with all the sophistry of the demagogue, is made at the instigation jof a sect, and foi' tho \ery pui'pose of having the conscientious right of all other sects to the Bible cut down, trampled on, destroyed, at the wil of that one despotic sect 15J demanding the exclusion of the Bible, and demanding it on the express grounds of their own ecclesiastical prejudices and canons! And the very first complaint against the Bible has come fi-oni that sect, and the very first occasion of the appear- ance of sectarijinism in the schools, from their foundation, has been the intrusion of the sectarianism of that one sect ao-ainst the Bible. The complaint has never even been made, from any quarter whatever, that sectarian tenets have been taught in any of the schools, but the complaint, the efibrt, and the enmity, aie against the Bible and religion itself in the schools, and men are not found wanting to join with the sect of the Ilomanists in tlie sectarian cry. Now, in point of fact, the perfect freedom of the Bible and its religious lessons, universall}', for all, without any distinction of sect whatever, in the schools, is the only complete security for them against "ecclesiastical guardianship and supremacy." But the exclusion of the Bible, the imprisonment and excom- munication of its lessons, would be the complete and absolute triumpli and authority of that form of ecclesiastical guardian- ship and supremacy, which a.ssorts its suj)eriority to the Bible, an 1 bases its power, its despotism, on the banishment of the Bible from the use and knowledge of tlie people. And yet, the President of the Beard of Education of New Yoi'lc, no longer ago than last August, at a meeting of the American Educational Convent'on, denounced the rending of the Bibl.', and all religious instruction, and even the use of the Lord's Prayer, as sectarian, oppressive, and even ridiculous and irrational. He has even asserted that " the State has no means of ascertain- ing the true religion." "The reading of the Bible in school," said he, "and the repeating of the Lord's Prayer, is litualistic and not educational. It is not for improvement in secular learning nor in sacred learning." He puts it on the same foot- ing with the reading from the Piomish Missal, or the repetition ib'J of tlio name of tlic Virgin Mary as the Holy Motliec. of God; and lio argues that if wo would not bo willing to liave the the latter in the schools, we have no more right to the former, no more right to repeat the Lord's Prayer than the Ilomish Missal. The statements of such sontimentti is enough ; they do not need to be refuted. Wliat would Washington have said to such assertions? They cannot but fill e\eiy sound and Chribt- ian mind with indii^nation. But we are compelled to ask, What does this gentleman rneati? Is he wbolly ignorant of the histoiy and pro\isions of the school system ? And wli^n he avers that religious instruc- tion in the schools would be "the first step towards placing them under ecclesiastical guardianship and supremacy," has he forgotten that the very ibunders and fiamers of the school system did themselves, and the legislature at their suggestion, provide a place for such instructiori, and for the Bible, in the schools, and so took that first stop ? Is he ready to denounce such men as Governor Clinton, Governor Lewis, Governor' Tom[)kins, and the illusti'ious Commissioneis, whose lloport sU-Uids sanctioned by law and public approbation, as religious sectarians, and the authors of a system of " sectarian propagand- ism" ? Wouid be the finst slej) ! And yet it has boon the custom and law in our sc!. k)1 system, ever since we came out fi'om the war of the lloNolution ! And the \ cry first step, and a dariu'^ step it is, too, towards an ecclesaistical de.-potism iu our Common Schools, is this cur;:e and exconnuunication upon the Scriptures and religious instruction, as sectarian, at the out- cry of the Priests and politicians of a religions ijerarchy. And this is a deliberate argument, (if sucli incongruous and contra- dictory assertions can bo called argument,) presented by the President of the Board of Education in Now York, to an American Educational Convention in Pitisbuigh! And al- thouo-li the author must be perfectly well aware that never in 153 any case, has any creed been introauced or sanctioned in tlio public scliools, yet lie artfully joins the reading of the iiible, and the use of the Lord's Prayer, with the mention of the Catechism, and the repetition of the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments; and as if "there could be no such thin^ as religion in our schools without sectarianism, denounces the ^^■hole as oft'ensive, and demands the entire divorce of secular learning from religion, which he argues should be restricted to the Sabbath Schools. That it may be seen that nothing is exaggerated, we present the following extract from the address by E. C. Benedict, Esq., President of the Board of Education of New York, delivered before the American Educational Convention in Pittsbur-di August 11, 1853. The despotic style in which llr. BenetHct i-efers to the conscientious "fc\v," who might comp'ain of the exclusion of the Bible, is to be note..!. He assunies that tlio riff/a way of education would be to exclude the Bible and i-eli- gious instruction, and then says, in ellect, that if we take that way, we can aftbrd to despise and disregard tho complainants against it, because of their locaknessf >U)t an intimation is breathed, or hinted at, that those who demand tho continuance of the Bible in bur public schools, have any conscioneo, or any rights in tho matter; but they can be despkd and trampeled on, because they are few and W(!ak ! " We can da right— we can do wliat ouglit to satisfv all, and tlie unfoun;led complaints of a few will be but tlie Jxpre^siuu of their we;dvue,ss. Y/hat should be our rational rule of con- duct? Whenever we can lhi>l a few children together shall we compel them to lay aside their occu|>ation tor the^tinie and i-ead the Bible, or say their pi-ayers, or perform some other i-ellgi„us duty? Y/ill it be sure to make them better? Y'ill it be'suro to give them religious instruction— to re.piiro it at Ihe dancing- school, the riding-scho.)l, the nmsic-school, tho visiting-party, and 154 the play-p^ronnd — shall studies, and sports, and plays, and prayers, «nd Bible, and catechisn], bo all placed ou the same level ? Shall we insist that secular learning cannot be well taught unless it is mixed with sacred ? Shall algebra and geonielry be always inteispei'sed with r(;ligion instead of quod erut dernousiranduin^ Shall we sa.y sclali and ainen'l Shall we bow at the sign plus? Can we not leain the nuilti})lication table without sa} ing grace over it? So of religious instruction, will it be improved by a mixture of profane learning ? Shall the child be taught to njix his spelling lessons with his prayers, and his table-hook with his caiechism ? If there were any necessary relation between reli- gious and secular instruction, which re(piired that they should be kept together, the subject would liave another aspect. IJut no one has ev(jr maintained that the religious teacher, the min- ister of religion and the oihcebeai'ers in the church, should n)ix Becular instruction with their more solejnn and sacred inculca- tions. I should be almost charged with prt>fanity, if I should attempt to exliibit the sacrilegious fc^lly of mixing these earthly alloys with the ])recious aiid virgin gold of divine truth; if I should exhibit the preacher as pointing to the granunatical construction, tne rhetorical fini^h, the or;itorical display of his discourses as a necessary part of his teaching in the sr.cred desk: if I should sliow you the riturJ oF the church pieseribing ma- thematies and metaplnsics fur last days^ and Eellc I^eltres for festivals, and suljecting the mysterious and lite-giving elements of the holy eueharist to the annal} sis of 'a ehemical kvtnre. No, no, these saeied m.atteis are set apart; tluy are tlienii^(!l\es alone; they are by divine ajipointnieiit inliusted to approj-nate keeping, ;aid let us b-oware that we are not struck down, ii' by extending our jn'ol'ane aid to the aik of (.lod, we doubt ihe suHiciency of the ilivine pi'otection. "Now, the rea-ling of the Bible, the i ^ iting of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Ci'ceil, and the Ten Couuuandments in 155 school, is ritualistic and not educatioual. It is not for improve- ment in secular learning, nor in sacred learning. It is intended merely as a religious ceremony, and,. if it give offence, is it not an unnecessary offence ? What if we say no one has a i-ight to be off-ended, still we have no light to offend them, and depHvo them of an inestimable blessing by mixing with it what to them is not only unpleasant and repulsive, but, in their opinion, un- wholesome. Turn the tables— substitute for the reading of the Scriptures at the opening of the schools the simplest and least offensive of the religious ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church— reading from the mi^isal some portions of it to which in itself there would be no objection; insist that the school shall bow at the name of Jesus; shall always speak of the Vn-gin Mary a.s the Blessed Virgin, or the Holy Mother of God, and see if all of us would be willing to send our children there day by day. See if the pulpits and the ecclesiastical conventions throughout the land would not re-echo the word of alarm; and why should we compel the Jews, who'are numeious in our cities, to listen to the New Testament; to repeat the Lord's Praver,or the Apostle.' Creed, or be taught the mysteries of redenmtion, or leave the schools ?" Mr. J3enedict speaks of "overthrowing the great question of Common Schools by a mere form or ceremony." ^Vhat k meant by overthrowing a question, it would be difficult to say • what IS meant by the declaration, " That the reading of the Bible IS not for improvement, but is a me.-e ceremony, and a protane aid to the ark of God," may be more dear; ^ind the assertion, " That there is not only no necessarv relation between religious and secular instruction, but that themin-li.K. of them IS cacnlegious folly," seems an gxtreme of combined shallowness '^-"<1 hnrdihood, upon which no mati iu his sens.s could have ^fiunbled. Yet hero, i„ this ]>roduction, it is deliberatelv pr^- ^*-ii(o<. tu a ChvlAUn o.Hinumify ! Lot this address be pluced 15G alongside ilio Report of the State Commissioners above quoted, and the various provisions, recommendations, and laws in the School System, for tifty years; and also let it be compared with the sentiments and recommendations of Washington, Story, Webster, Clinton, Tompkins, Lewis, Chancellor Kent, and other eminent civil as well as religious writers on this subject still livini^. Especially let us now set it in comparison and contrast witlfa portion of Mr. Webster's celebrated argument, of such incomparable beauty and power, in regard to the inevitable infidel tendency of any scheme of education that excludes religion, and the necessity of constantly mingling, with all other knowledge, instruction in religious truth. ARGUMENT OF DANIEL WEBSTER AGAINST THE PLAN OF EDUCATION WITHOU'^ THE BIBLE.* « The cliildreii," said Mr. Webster, « are taken before they kiK.w the alphabet. They are kept till the period of early TTiaiihood, and then sent out into the world to enter upon i\^ busiii.ibs and aii'airs. By this time the character will have been stamped. For if there is any truth in the Bible, if there is any truth in those oracles which soar above all human authority, or if anything- be established as a general fact by the experience of mankind, in this first third of human life the character is formed. And what sort of a character is likely to be made by this process, this experiinental system of instruction ? What is likely to be the ellect of this system on the minds of those children, thus left solely to its pernicious inlluence, with no one to care for their spiritual welfare in this world or in the next? They are to be left entirely to the tender mercies of those who will try upon them this experiment of moral philosopliy or philosophical morality. Morality without sentiment; benev- olence towards man, without a sense of responsibility towards God ; the duties of this life performed without any reference to the life which is to come; such is this theory of useful education. " Tiie scheme is derogatory to Christianity, because it rejects Cdiri^tianity from the education of youth, by rejocting its teachers, by rejecting the ordinary agencies of instilling the • Bpforc tlie Supreme Court of Hio Uiiitoil Slates, in tLo case of Glr«rd. 158 Christian religion into the minds of the young. It is deroga- tory, because there is a positive rejection of Christianity ; because it rejects the ordinary means and agencies of Christianity. " There is notliing origiiial in this plan. It has its origin in a deistical source, but not from the liigliest scliool of iniidclity. It is all idle, it is a mockery, and an insult to common sense, to maintain that a school for the instruction of youth, from which Christian instruction by Christian teachers is sedulously and vigorously shut out, is not deistical and infidel both in its pur- pose and in its tendency. I insist, therefore, that this plan of education is, in this respect, derogatory to Christianitj^, in 6])po- sition to it, and calculated either to subvert or to supersede it. " In the next place, this scheme of education is degoi-atory to Christianity, because it proceeds upon the presumption that the Christian religion is not the only true foundation, or any necessr.iy foundation of morals. The ground taken is, that rel'gion is not necessary to morality; that benevolence may be insured by habit, and that all the virtues may liourish, and be safely left to the chance of flourishing, without touching [lie waters of the living spring of religious res])unsibility. With him who thinks thus, what can be the value of the Christian i-evelation ? So the Christian world has not thought; for by that Christian vvoild, throughout its broadest extent, it has been and" is, held as a fundamental truth, that reh'gion is the only solid basis of moi'als, and that moral iiistruetiou, i!ot restiiiu" on this basis, is only a building upon sand. And at what :ige of the Chiistian era have those who professed to teach the Christian religion, or to believe in its authority anvl inipoilanee, not insisted ou tiie absolute necessity of incultaling its principles and its precepts upon the minds of the young? In wliat age, and by what sect, where, wIkmi, l)y whoin, lias ieli;j;ious truth been excluded fp-ni t!ie education of youth? Nowhei'; never. Everywhere, juid at all tiuKis. it has been an; of his end. And when the Decalogue was delivei'cd to the Jews, witli this great announcement and command at its head, wliat said the inspii'cd law-giver? that it should be kept from children? that it should be reserved iis a conmiunieation fit only fur mature age? Far, far otherwise. 'And these words, which I command tb.ee this day, ^hail be in thy heart. AinD thou sh*lt tkach tiikm DILIGENTLY UNTO TiiY ciiiLDiiKN; and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and wlien thou lisest up.' " There is an authority still moie imposing and awtul. When httle children were brought into the presence of the Son of God, IGO Lis disciples proposed to send them away; l>iit lie said, Sufil'r little eliiklren to conio unto nie. Unto me; lie did not send them iirst for lessons in morals to the schools of the l^hariseoa or to the unbeii^^ving" Sadducees, nor to read the precepts and le>ssons phylactericd on the ga/ments of the Jewish Priesthood; lie said nothing ol' dilFerent creeds or clashing doctrines; but ho opened at once to the joulhfiil mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source of eternal truths: Sutler httlo children to come unto me. -And that injunction is of perpetual obligation. It addresses itself to day Avith the same earnestness and the same authority which attended its first utterance to tho Christian woild. It is of force every where, and at all times. It extends to the ends of tho earth, it will reach to the end of time, always and everywhere sounding ki the ears of men, with an emphasis which no repetition can weaken, and witii an authority which nothing can supersede, Sutler little children to come unto me. " Before man knows his origin and destiny, he knows llmt he is to die. Then comes tliat most urgent and solemn demand for liii'ht that e^•er proceeded, or can proceed, from t])e j^rofound and anxious broodings of tlie human soul. //' a Titan die, shall he live again ? And that question, nothing but (iod, and thft religion of God, can so!\e. Religion does solve it, and teaclies every man that he is to live again, and that tlie duties of this life have reference to the life whicli is to come. And hence, since the introduction of Christianity, it lias been the dutv as it has been the effort of the great and good, to sanctify hnnian knowledge, to bring it to the f mnt, and to baptize learning into Chiistianity; to gather up all its productions, its earliest and its latest, its blossoms and its fruits, and lay them all upon the altar of religion and virtue." Mr. Webster tlien again exposes, as nothing better than infidelity, the pretence that religious instruction is sectarianism, 1 (•» 1 niul Iho policy of bniiMiirsr it on tlmt {^''''''ind. Hfl tnkcs up tlie objection commonly urged by tho opponent of religion, as follows : "There in such ft muUitudo of sects, and .-ncli diversity of opinion, th.'it he will excludn all reliL;-i()ii ! Thai i-^ tho oltjection urged by all tho lower and vulgar schools of inlid< lily through- out the world. In all these schoolr^, called schools of Rational- ism in Germany, Socialism in Engl.-nid, and by various other names in various countries v, hich they infest, this is th<.' universal cant. The first step of all these jihilosojihicid moralists and reGjenatoi-s of the human race is to attact tho airency throuo;h which relin;ion and Christianitv are administered to man. But in this there is nothing new or original. We find the same mode of attack and remai-k in Paine's Aji'e of Reason. "But this objection to the nndtitude and ditlerences of scctc is but the old >stoiy, the old inlidel argument. It is notorious tliat there are certain great religious truths which are adnjitted and believed by all Christians. All believe in the existence of a God. All believe in the immortality of the soul. All be- lieve in the responsibility, in another world, for our conduct in ibis. All believe in the divine authority of the New Testament. And cannot all these great truths be taught to children, without their minds being perplexed with clashing doctrines and sectarian controversies? Most cei'tainly thev can. Mr. Webster then takes the sujiposition of a youtli e;l!c:'.t"d, sav from six to cin'hteen, in secular Icai'uiiK'- merelv, without religious teaching which is the very propositi<»n olfered to a Christian community, in tlie demand that from our conmnn schools the Bible and all religious instruction sliall be banished, and carries such a youth into the business of l.fe, and shows what would be the consequence of such a scheme, in the sub- version of all morality, Christianity, and goverrmient. "The Christian reli<;-ion. its genei-id princi]>!os, nnist ever be 162 roi^nrJctl nmoni^ us as tlio foumlntinn of civil soi-it^ty. But tliis system, in its ten(»«o it will b« generally conceded, mean religious ()j)inii»ns; and if a youth Ljia arrived at the age of eighteen, and has no religious tenets, it is very plain that he lu'is no religion. Wo will suppose the case of a youth of eighteen, who has just left school, and lias gone through an education of })hilosophical morality. He cornea then into the world to choose his reliiiious tenets. Ihe next day, perhaps, after leaving school, he comes into a court of law> to give testimony as a witness. Sir, 1 [)rotcst that by such a system he would be disfranchised. lie is asked, ' What is your religion?' His reply is, '0, I have not yet chosen any; 1 .im going to look round, and see whicli suits me best.' He is asked, ' Are you a Chiistian?' Ho replies, 'That involves leligions tenets, and as yet I liave not been allowed to entertain any.' Again, ' Do you believe in a future state of rewards and punish- ments V And he answers, ' That involves sectarian controveraius, which have carefully been kept from me.' ' Do you believe in the existence of a God.' He answers that there are ckushing doctrines involved in tlieso things, which he has been taught to liave nothino; to do with ; that the belief in the existence of a God, being one of the first cpiestions of religion, he is shortly about to think of that proimsition. Why, sir, it is \ain to talk about the destructive tendency of such a system ; to argue upon it, is to insult the understanding of every man ; it is mere, mevr^ low, rihald, vulgar deism and infidelity! It opposes all that is in heaven, and all on earth that is worth being on eaith. It destroys the connecting link between the creature and the Crea- tor; it opposes that great system of universal benevolence and goodness that binds ma-n to his maker. "iYo rcU(jion till he is eighteen/ What would be the con- dition of ail our families, of all our children, if religious fatliera '{ 31 163 ♦ '» i and rciligioufl mothere were to tpn<'li tlioir sons and dauj^litera no roliiyious tonets till they were eigliteen ? WImt wouM Ik-oojiio o\' tlieir morals, their character, their purity of lieart and life, their hope lor time and eternity ? Wliat would becomo of all thoio thousand ties of sweetness, benevolonco, lo\o, and Christ- ian feelini:^, that now render our young men and young maidena hko comely i)Iants growing up by a stieamlet-sido; the graces and the grace of opening manhood, of blossoming womanhood? What would become of all that now renders the social circle ]«)vely and beloved? What would bccotne of society itself? How could it exist? And is that to bo considered a charity which strikes at the root of all this; which subverts all the ex- cellence and the cliju-ras of social life, which tends to destroy the N'ery foundation and frame-work of society, both in its l)ractices and in its opinions: which subverts the whole decency, the whole morality, as well as the whole CLristiauity and gov- ernment of society ? No, sir ! no, sir ! ♦' It has been said, on the other sirle, that there was no teach- ing against religion or Christianity in this system. I deny it The whole is one bold proclamation against Christianity and i-eli'i"ion of every creed. The children are to learn to be suspicious of Christianity and religion; to keep clear of it, that their youthful hearts may not become susceptible of the influences of Christianity or religion in the slightest degree. They are to bo told and taught that religion is not a matter for the heart or conscience, but for the decision of the cool judgement of maturer years; that at that period when the whole Christian world deem it most desirable to instil the chastening influences of Christianity into the tender and comparatively pure mind and heart of the child, ere the cares and corruptions of the world have reached and seared it, at that period the child is to be carefully excluded therefrom, and to be told that its influence is jjernieious and dangerous in the extreme. Wl)y, the whole 1()4: system is a cons^tant pre:ic]m>g against Christianity and against religion, and 1 insist that there is no charity, and can be no charity, in that system of instruction liv-ni v.hicli Chnstuinity is exchided." , And iiwv,- wo ask, in connection Avith this reN iew of our his- tory in the matter of ti connnun sch.H)! cdnc-ition, Who have the rio'ht to judge and to have tlioir judgment respected, as to the nature of the school system that ano need, if not those men of sagacity, pati'iotism, piety, and compi'ehensive statesmanslnp, ^vho founded it for Angelica, tor our own country, in view oi our own peculiar responsibilities? The men Avho founded it for America, and not for Kome; for aie wants of our own country, and of those Nvhose whole dependence is on God and the tiulh, and lieedom of the truth everywhe-e, and not for those uho depend upon the djukness, nor with reference to that system which can llourish only in exclusion of the light. It is an American s}-stem, not Austrian. nor Rom^m, nor European, that we are to support, and therefoi-e an education under Divine Truth is needed. A merely secular education may he sutticient in Em ope, where goA-ernments rule bv bayonets, but not here, wliere government depends on the intellio-ence, morality, and religion of the people. Where another nation might flourish upon mere secularism, we should jro down. We cannot divorce education from religion, and sustain the iiepublic. A deliberate argument for the divorce of education from rel'o-ion is so astounding an occurrence among a Christian poo- ple,''that we do not wonder that those abroad, in whose way sucli an argument may have luippeaed to fall, should assert, as they have done, that the element of religion is absolutely not introductable into our educational sAstem, on account of peculi- arities in our habits and in the theory and practice of our iwtional and State govei'iiments. And then they base upon 1G5 jxranst be no nit.v is iv liis- ) have :, as to se men ansliip, icw of Ptomc ; 1 whole le truth arkncss, only in Lnstrian lierefore • secular ?iits rule is on the Whore e should ion, and this pi'odigious misconception or falsehood, their conclusion, that after all, the •\\clu.siua of i-cligion from a system of public edu- cation cannot he so very dreadful or dangerous a thing, if in a country like the United {"'tates the people can grow up without it, so religious and so }>rosperous. Now, oven our limited historical surveys will have shown tliat our educational system, so far from excluding religious principle, n-ligious ins(iKcti('n, and a religious bias, lias been for a longer time and to a greater extent, based upon the Bible, and carried forward with religious truth as its vital element, than any other educational system in the Avorld. Our leligion and prosjierity as a ])eople are owing to this reality, this religious educational training, and have not been gained or maintained in the neglect or exclusion of religious truth. The rejection o^' the Bible and of ;ijl religious bias, from our system of education, wherever at- teini)ted, or ])artially successful, is a very daring and dangerous innovation, for the most part attempted and accomplished at the instigation of political demagogues catering for Romish votes. We wish the people of England to understand this. We wish them to understand that till within a very few yeai-s the Bible and religion have been free in all our schools, and are so still by law, and in most places by custom ; and that it is only by infidel, Romish, and political intrigue and management, that anywhere religious truth is shut out on from tian peo- hose way assert, as utely not of peculi- ce of our ^ase upon SINGULAR EXAMPLE OF SECTARIAN LEGISLATION AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. In their eager zeal against sectarianism, the history of the school system shows that our school authciitics and legislators have sometimes run into the very evil they were so anxious to avoid. This is painfully manifest in a decision incorporated into the body of School Laws, and published in chapter YIIL, having therefore the sanction of the State; a decision disposing of the Christian Sabbath as follows :—« Schools may be kept on Sunday for the benefit of those persons who observe Satur- day as holy time, and the teacher must be paid for that day by those who send to School." The inconsideratencss and impropriety of this legislation, and its inconsistency with all the provisions of the school laws against sectarianism, will appear manifest on a moment's consideration. Indeed, if there ever was sectarian legislation, this is such. It singles out the Jews, and legislates m their behalf, constituting in reality for them a sectional and sectarian school, on the very ground of their sectarianism, and because of it. It takes them into a peculiar uoion with the State, and that, too, in' defiance of the conscientious scruples of nearly all other denominations united. It is not only a profanation of the Christian Sabbath by law, but it goes the whole length of declaring that the Christian Sabbath has no divine sanction, is not a divinely- appointed day to be kept holy, but may properly be spent in a I 167 secular employment. It singles out tLo JowiHli Sabbath as move Loly than the ChiLstian Sabbath, because it is a distinct provision for the profanation of the Christian Sabbath, by an employment for Avhich the Jewish Sabbath is considered as too lioly. It is not satisfied with leaving the Jews at liberty to do ■what they please, either on their Sabbath, or the Christian Sabbath, but it takes hold with them, and niakes itself |)art and pai'ccl with then], in their profanation of the Christian Sabbath. It o'ives them the advantan;e of the free counn(.)ii school svstem, for the profanation of the Lord's Day, by l*he same employment which they would consider a profanation of the Jewish Sabb;t!h, but which, by a legislation in behalf of their particular conscience, is declared to be no profanation of the Cini.-tian Sabbath. An institution, sup])oi'ted by the people, is used in this case for the profanation of the Christian Sabbath. If it were no profanation to keep the common schools on hoi}- time, then no I'eason why the Jews should not, as all others, use the Saturday for that purpose, and no need of any law for them, permitting tliem to take the Christian Sabbath; but if it were a profan- ation to keep the common schools on holy time, then as much a profanation of the Christiiin as of the Jewish; but the State, in making this law, does really declare that it is a in-ofanation of the Jewish, but no profanation of the Christian. The State deliberately cliooses the conscience of the Jew, and allies itself with that, in pi-eference to the conscience of the Christian, and our institution, which Christians are taxed to support, is, by law, appb'ed to enable the Jews to profane the Christian's holy- day. This is verily an outrage, not only on Christianity, but upon the conscientious rights of the Christian. The State is not content with leaving Jews and Christians to do as they please on their respective Sabbaths, the Jews having the right of teaching their children or not, and the Christians the right 1G8 of teiohin- their's or not; but it compels the Christians to sustain and sanction the Jews, in the work of profaning the Christian Sabbath. It takes the school-houses of the people, nn.l applies them to that purpose, and it takes the money ot the peopU; to support those schools. But this is not all. There must bo teachers on Sunday, and f ,. all branrhes tau-ht on any day of the week, and if a corps of .Jewish teachers be nuirshalled and appomted ior tliat day, this makes a double sectarianism adopted by the State. But if not the Jewish teachers, and others should refuse, then might you see the anomaly of the ordinary Christian teachers of our common schools dismissed from their enn^lojment, for refusmg to servo the Jews on the Christian Sabbath. There is no alter- native if this provision be carried out. Either Jewish teachers mw^t ho hired for that particular day, under the authority and care of the Stat", or the ordinary teachers must continue then- service'^ and so be deprived of their Sabbafli, and made to 1-tbor iti their emphn-ment incessantl3', seven days m the week. Some persons must do the teaching thus provided tor, thus authorized by the State on the Christian Sabbath. Shall it be Jewish teachers, employed because of their sectarianism, and ^vith direct reference to that? This makes a sectarian school. Shall it be other teachers, compelled or hired to continue then ordhiary week-teaching through the Christian babbatl^ for the accommodation of Jewish prejudices? This makes it doubly sectarian and oppressive. ^ a i ; io Now -f any superintendent, or any member of the legisla- lature, had pix^posed a bill for the establishment of a Sabbath School, technically so-called, that is, a school for doctrmal reli- gious i;struction, \n connection with, and as part of the common school system, a scdiool for children in religion on the Sabbath, in the nubli<', sdiool rooms, to be used for that purpose, un- doubtedly there would luive been a great cry made against 4 aiKl 1G9 this measure, as sectarian. But provision under law cannot only be proposed, but established for the profanation of tha Christian Sabbath by secular instniction as on all other daysy for the convenience and accommodation of the Jews, or other like serts, and that measui-e is not regarded as sectarian, or partial, or improper! Could there be a more glaring anomaly and inconsistency ? The eager desire to be extremely liberal and to have the school system rerao\ed to the farthest opposite* point from the iniquity of sectarianism, has caused our legislators or Superintendents to over-vault themselves, and fall on the other side. The effort to make the system of education a political stalking-hoise, produced the same result, when the school-books were managed and mutilated at the command of the sect of Romanists. But this intrusion on the Sabbath is worse in some respects than that sectarian foray upon the school-books. It is ^ deliberate legalized profanation of the Lord's Day. But some will answer, Do you call instructing the poor, or the rich, or any children, in readmg^ writing, and arithmetic on the Sabbath, a profanation of the Sabbath ? Nay, not we have done this, but the State. The appointed School authorities take the opinion and conscience of the Jews, that such employ- ment, such secular instruction, is a profanation of holy time^ and by law protect that conscience, and provide for their pro- faning the holy ti.-ie of the Christian Sabbath instead of the Jewish, by precisely the same employment. If it be a profan- ation of the Jews' Sabbath, on the plea that that is holy time, it is just as much a profanation of the Christian Sabbath, if that is holy time. The State authorities have declared that it is a profanation of the Jews' Sabbath, and on that account have given them the Christian Sabbath to profane instead. If it is a profanation of the Jews' Sabbath, then also a pro- fanation of the Christian; but if not a profanation of the Jews* lYO Sabbath, then no need of giving them the Christian Sabbath for such profanation instead of their own. But by this peculiar legislation the State has in effect declared that common school instruction is a profanation of holy time, and therefore a pro- fanation of the Christian Sabbath if that be holy time. But the Christian religion establishes it as holy time, as unquestion- ably as the Jewish religion establishes the Jewish Sabbath as holy time; and therefore the legislature, (for it is under their sanction that this law is engrossed and published,) in ordaining that the Christian Sabbath shall be given up to the Jews for common school instruction, instead of the Jewish Sabbath, have elected and inaugurated the Jewish religion as more sacred than the Christian, And yet, they seem not to have dreamed of there being anything sectarian in such Jewish and unchristian legislation. The dilemma is as ioliows: We take first the supposition that the legislature believe in a Sabbath. Then it follows that the legislature either believe the Christian Sabbath to be hnlij time or not. If not, (if the character of such sacredness do not belong to ihe idea and nature of the Sabbath,) then neither is theJeiDish Sabbath holy time; so the instruction of the Jews might as well go on upon that day, as any other. Bui if it be holy time, then common school instruction of the Jews is a profanation of the Christian, as well as of the Jews' fc^abbath. But again, on the supposition that such sacredness does be- long to the nature of the true Sabbath, either the legislature beheve that the Jewi Sabbath is holy time, or not. If not, then the Christian Sabbath is; and they have no right to provide for the violation of the Christian Sabbath by those ^ho disregai-d it. Disregard it they may, for themselves but the legifllature haw ?jo right to provide for euoh diaregaid by 171 On the other hand, if they believe the Jewish Sabbath to be holy time, the true Sabbath, then they have no right, in direct contravention of that belief, to profane that day, Saturday^ by tne secular instruction of any of the children in any of the schools. They should shut the scliools, jind keep the holy time holy, after the example of the Jews; unless, indeed, they will institute Sabbath schools of a Saturday, which again would be violently opposed as sectarian. But once more. The legislature and the people either believe one day or the other, to be holy time, or neither. If neither be holv time, then they have no right to legislate for the keep- ing of either in preference of the other. But here, perhaps, some one is ready to say that the legisla- ture, or the superintendents under sanction of the legislature, though believing or admitting that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, yet legislated for its profanation to ease the conscience of the Jews, and supply their loss of Saturday by a sacrifice to them of our Sunday. But this, again, is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Or rather, it is robbing God, to make way for human opinion and convenience. It is the scene of Christian legis ators violating their own consciences, and the conscience of all the people who believe in the holiness of the Christian Sabbath, to enable the Jews to pursue their worldly avocations on the Lord's Day. If the case were, to enable the Jews to avoid violating their conscience in profaning their Sabbath, it would be quite different. But there is no comp^ilsion either way. If there were, and one party or the other were under necessity of such profanation, the question then might be, whether the legislature and all Christian sects should violate their conscience for the ease of the Jews, or the Jews their's for the ease of all the rest. But this is not the case, and cannot be. No Jaw, nor any person that keeps Saturday as holy time k compelted to violate 172 if and, at the uttermost, in the case before us, the cost, of keep- ing it can be only the loss of a half-day's secular instruction, since none of the schools are kept more than half the day on Saturday. But, on the contrary, it is the case of a Christian leoislature giving up the whole Christian Sabbath for profan- ation, in order to supply the loss of half the Jewish Sabbath, considered too sacrod\o he profaned. The idea and acknow- ledcrement of profanntioa lies inevitably embraced in the veiy exemption of the Jews from secular instruction in hohj time, and their compensation by giving ^^^m the Christian Sabbath instead of their own for such acknowledged pronmation. The bare insertion of the condition that those who send that day shall pay the teacher, makes little difference, since the school- houses, and the whole prerogative, provision, and advantage of the system, are bestowed for their use. 1 1 COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM OF CONNECTICUT. Tho historical example of Connecticut is interesting and instructive. As early as 1656, explicit laws were added to the general law by which the schools were first instituted, and the deputies, constables, and other officers in public trust, were re- quired to take care » that all their children and apprentices as they grow capable, may, through God's blessing, attain at least so much as to be able duly to read tho Scriptures, and other good and profitable printed books in the English tongue, and in some competent measure to understand the njain grounds and principles of tho Christian religion necessary to salvation." By repeated legislation, and patient effort, the school system was brought to such a degree of efficacy, that, as Pi-esident Kingsley remarked, " for nearly a century and a half, a native of Connecticut, of mature age, unable to read the English tongue, has been looked upon as a prodigy. The source of the wide-spread and incalculable benefit of popular education in America," President Kingsley continues, " may be traced, with- out danger of error, to a few of the leadings Puritans. If the early Pilgrims, more particularly of Massachusetts and Connec- ticut, had not struggled and toiled for this gi-eat object, and if they had not been immediately succeeded by men who had imbibed a large portion of the same spirit, the school-system of New England would not now exist." "Tbe Schools of this State," says the Connecticut Common School Journal, «wew» founded and supported chiefly for the purpose of perpetuating civil and religioiw 174 knowledge and liberty, m the early laws of the colony explicitly declare Those laws 8omo of which were published in the first number of this Journal, as cloaily declure, that tlio liiof muuns to he used to attuiu those objocLs, was the reading of the Holy Scriptures. "In many schools, in later years, th* Bible has not been used; though there is reason to believe that thu oiic-Oul c Vu.i 'n our voneiablo ancestors has recently been gradually reviving. Circunatance* have favored its rcHtoratiou; and hicreoa- iug li«hr. on the principles of sound education cannot fuU to establish It every- where. " Certificates are in our hands, from experienced instructors out of this tjtato, which bear strong testimony to the happy inlluouces exerted in their schoolJ, by the daily use of the Scriptures. "DiHereut teachers we have seen, who used thu Bibli. in different ways : some us a class-book, some us a text-book; and it is interesting to see in how many forms it may be brought into use. Some teachers, with a map of Palestine bel'oro them, will give most interesting lessons on jduuHt any book iu the Biblj, by mhigling geography, history, ancient manners and customs, wi(h moral and religious ood- Biderations. Others make the Bible the law-book of the school; and by showing that they consider themselves and their pupils equally bound to conform their lives and thoughts to its socred dictates, exercise a species ot discipline of the happiest kind. Others still, by the aid of pruitod questions, or some systematic plan of study, employ the Bible iu training the intellect, storing the memory, and furnishing the fancy with the richest treasures of Uterature. Others think that the various Btyles found in the sacred volimie, offer the very best exercises for practice in reading ■with propriety and effect ; while c ?ritical attention to the character, situation, and feelings of the speakers, which such exercises require, has favorable moral ii.ilu- ences. Finally, other teachers beUevo tJiat the daily reading of the Bible in schools, is of essential benefit to the pupils in various ways ; and that the frequent repetition of the Word of God in the hearing even of those too young to read, is an inestima- ble blessing— a part of the birth right of every chUd in a Christian haxd, which cannot be rightfully withholden. " To these views our readers may add their o^vn as they oflen and seriously con- eider the subject. It is one which will probably be e> tir esteemed a vital one in Connecticut; and if Monsieur Cousin so warmly urged upon the government of France, to make religious instruction the corner-stone of their national system of education, and urged with success the example of Prvissia, we may with greater confidence invite the peoKle of our State to supply their schools with the scriptures^ and point to the laws passed by their fathers for this very end^ nearly two centuries ago, and (so far as we have the abihty to comprehend so vast a subject) to the noble effects produced even by their imperfect observance," « The interests of edi^tion," says ChanceUor K>nt, speaking particularly of the State of Connecticut, "had engaged the attention of the New Euglaiul colonists from theearhestsettlementof the country; and the system of common and grammar schools and of academical and coUogiate instruction, wis interwoven with the prim- itive views and institutions of the puri>;ans. Everv.hing in their genius and disposition was favorable to the growth of freedom and learninig, but with a tendency to stern regulatioua for the n^aintenanco of civU and religious order. They were 175 a fn-ave ftiid thinking people, of much energy of character, and of lofty and deter- mined parposo. Religion vmn with th.rn a deep and powerful eentiraont, and of abHoi hioK interest. The tirst emigranth had studied the oracles of truth as b text boolt, and they were profoundly iiflected by the uiuiualifled coininandH, the awftil sanctions, and the PubUnie views and cniinatinR hopes and coiisululionB which accompanied the revelation of life and : nmortttlity The avowed object of their emi«rHlion to New EuKland was to enjoy and propagate the reformed Protestant fkith in the purity of its disclpUao and worship. They intended to found repubh' 9 on the basis of Christianity, and to secure r.ligious' liberty under the auspices of a conmionwealth. With this primary view they were early led to make strict provision for common 8<;iiool education, and the religious Instruction of the P«°Pl« The Word of God was at that thne almost the sole object of their solicitude and studies, and the principal design in planting theniselrea on the banks of the Connecti. nt was to preserve the liberty and puny of the gospel, . . ... We meet with tiie system of common schools In the earlicrt of the colonial records. Strict and accurate provision was made by law for the support of schools In each town, an. I a grammar school in each county; and even family instruction was placed under the vigilaiif supervision of the selectmen of the town. This sys- tem of free stihools, sustained and enforced by law, has been attended with momen- toufl results, and it has communicated to the people of this State, and to every oth«r part of New Enr nd hi which the system has jirevailed, the blessinga of order aod sacurity to an extent never before sarpaamd in the annals of mankind." 170 COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM OF MASSACHUSETTS. As early as 1647, less tlian twenty y«.'ars from the date of their first charter, the Colony of Massachusetts ]]ay iiiaublican countiy, is the acknow- ledged birth-right of exciy human being." If now we should take at random the various exi)ressions of opinion, from ditterent towns and districts, we should find these sentiments sustained. The conviction is all but universal that a just training of the child in a common school education is inipossible in the exclusion of religious instruction. A Report of the School Committee of the city of Salem, Mass, declares that "the sentiment of all parties is that moral instruction and moral consideration ought to have precedence of everything else." In the regulations of the public schools in the town of Swampscot, the following is the fourth section: "The morning exercises of the school shall commence with the reading of the Bible; and it is recommended that the reading be followed with some devotional service." And so in cases without num- ber, the idea of baaishing the Bible and religious instruction as sectarian, would be deemed heathenish. The Annual Report of the Su])eiintendent of the Public Schools in the city of Boston, remarks, that "the moial feelings, in their early manifestations, appear first to the mother's eve' whose light should, like that of the sun falling upon opening flowers, give them the hues of imperishable beauty. Rut un- fortunately for the rising generation, this high i:...-ental duty is now so often neglected at home, that many a child mu.st i-eceive at school his first notions of his various duties as a social and an immortal being. True education, in the broad and liberal meaning of the term, include.; .... such a mouldino- 186 of the youthful afF«?ctions and hnpulses, as will bring thenn into ready obedience to the voice of conscience, and above all, such RELioicus CULTURE as will aim at imbuing the mind with that Christian spirit which teaches us to love God witli all the heart, and our neighbor as oui'selves." This would be impossible, were the Bible and religious in- struction excluded from the schools. If the proposed divorce of a common school education from religious tnith should be accomplished, where is the "religious culture" that constitutes a primary part of "true education" to be provided or introduced ? The affections cannot be rightly moulded, the conscience cannot be trained, without religious instruction. Mr. Mann applies the same principles to the formation of District Common School libraries, and contends that one grand object of them should be, by the substitution of useful books instead of idle and immoral trash, to protect the children from those temptations and exposures which come from the flood of pernicious reading. " Much can be done by the substitutioa of books and studies which expound human life and human duty as God has made them to be." " To rear the amaranth of virtue for a celestial soil ; to pencil as with living flame, a rainbow of holy promise and peace upon the Liackness and despair of a guilty life ; to fit the spirits of weak and erring mortds to shine forever as stars amid the host of heaven ; for these diviner and more glorious works, God asks our aid ; and He points to children who have been evoked into life as the objects of our labor and care." " For this purpose, I know of no plan as yet conceived by philanthropy, which promises to be so comprehensive and effi- cacious as the establishment of good libraries in all our school districts, open respectively to all the children in the State, and within half an hour's walk of any spot upon its surface." But how is it possible to accomplish this object^ if all peculiarly 187 religious truth is first to be expunged fiom the volumes ? How, if at the door of the school district library, a winnowing Index Expurgatorius is to be set up, that shall drive away every reli- gious volume, and blot out from other volumes any pages that may possibly be tinged with a religious bias ? OPINION AND PRACTICE IN PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. At the session of the National Convention of tlie frionds of public education, held in Philadeli)iiia in 1850, a Report wjis presented on the subject of moral and relijrious instruction in common schools, by the committee appointed 1 >r this purpose. They remark that "in the common schools, which are, or ought to be, open for the instruction of the children of all denominations, there are many whose religious education is neglected by their parents, and who will grow up in vice and irrehgion, unless they receive it from the common school teach er. It seems to us to be the duty of the State to provide for the education of the children, morally as well as intellectually, and to require all teachers of youth to train the cJiildren up in the knowledge and practice of the principles of virtue and piety." After insisting on the importance, first of all, of teaching by example, they say: « In the next place the Bible should be in- troduced and read in all the schools in our land. It should be read as a devotional exercise, and be reirarded by teachers and scholars a.s the text-book of morals and religion. The children should early be impessed with the conviction that it was wiitten by mspiration of God, and that their lives should be regulated by its precepts. They should be taught to regard it^'as the manual of piety, justice, veracity, chastity, temperance, benevo- lence, and of all excellent virtue^. They should look upon this book in connection with the teachings of the Holy Spirit, aa 189 the highc't tribunal to \n jich wo can appe.fl ''or tlio decision of moral questlon.s and should grow up with the feeling, that the plaii) declarations vf the Diblc are the end of all debate. Tho Hcher should refer to tin's book with reverence. If ho have u 'isons that are clear and .satisfactory to Ids own uiind, wh^ he c. -wklei-s the Bible the nraclp f divine truth, he may from time to time cuinmunicn' ,.,,,ns to his pupils, if ho judges them to bo such as they can . Hiotographic Sdences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) S7!2-4503 1 V iV \\ u^ ommM A' <^ ^. f/j \ ^v ^ 190 Bible as a sacred volume, to be read as a devotional exercise, or as the text-book of morals and piety. On this basis let hira teach ail he can, without interfering with the rights of the dif- ferent denominations of which the school is composed ; which we believe opens a larger field in this department of education than most teachere cultivate." The Board of Directors of the Public Schools of the Fourth Section in Philadelphia recently adopted certain lesolutions, in reference to the attempt on the part of the Roman Catholics against the Public School System, among which were the following : ^''Jiesolved, That we will ever insist on the reading of the Bible, without note or comment, in our public schools; because, 1st, we believe it to be the Word of God; and, 2d, because we know that such is the will of the vast majority of the common- wealth. ^Jieifolvedj That we look on the effort of sectionists to divide the school fund as an insidious attempt to lay the axe at the root of our noble public school systcLi, the benefits of which are every day manifested in the training of the youth. " Mesolvedy That we will use every means proper for Christ- ians and citizens to employ to maintain our present school system, and to insure the continuance of the reading of God's holy word in all our schools, without respect to consequences, political or otherwise, and we respectfully call on the members of the legis- lature to respect the rights of the great majority " Of the opinion on this subject in New Jersey, we may judge something from the following extract from a report by Mr. Hal- sey, of the Board of Exarainei-s for the County of Middlesex, presented in the Report of the State Superintendent for the year 1850. Speaking of the importance of some work iu which **tb© best modes of imparting moral aij4 religious iosferuO' %j^. VSk <^9 didMctfifiJlOo', n^ tiU9 im|»|tdn QiC 8W4i6^fttEt^ mm 191 may be thoroughly discussed, and urged upon the mind and heart of the State," he remarks: " What God has united man may not separate without peril. The children of our schools carry hearts in their bosoms, as well as brains in their heads ; now, to separate the head from the heai-t, to cultivate the on^, and neglect the other, is a divorce as unnatural and unchristian as perlious. The child whose hand is educated in elegant and exact penmanship may yet try Lis acquired art and skill at countei-feiting and forgery, unless his conscience is duly educated. The child whose passions are left untrained aright^ whose will is unsubdued, whose lusts are unchecked, when hereafter crossed or roused, may rise upon his parent, take the life of a magistrate, sow sedition on shipboard, fire a court-house or jail, a dwelling or a prison, or revolutionize his country to effect his fell purpose and reek revenge ; reNengo for tAe robbery of an education without religion^ a heart vir- tually plundered, because deprived of those salutary restraints his fallen nature imperatively needed and Ood has so boun- teously provided. Nothing, save the fear of God, can bo a safeguard against the terrific powera of educated mind, quickened genius, sharpened wit, and enlightened talent, to which it is the aim of our school system to give birth and manhood. How shall this mighty responsibility be safely met, unless parents and teachers be made to feel it, and steadily and earnestly aim at educating the heart and conscience of our children, at home and in the district school ? How, unless the Bible be more honored, both as a classic and a class book, and its pages and its truths made familiar to our children ? Hov/, unless a higher and holier standard be diligently sought for, in those who have these young hearts, six days out of s^ven, under their powerful example and tuition ?." CONCLUSION. To us, as well as to our fathers, God has spoken : ''Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shaJl teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, «nd upon thy gates." Educated as the Puritans were in the Scriptures, and in the most jealous reverence and love for them, as the foundation both of their civil and ecclesiastical privileges and blessings, they have be- queathed the habit of a religious education, and of the same enshrinement of the Bible in the heart, to all their descendants; a habit, which no attempt was made to undermine, in any part of the country, till the Roman Catholics began the outcry against the Bible and the element of leligion in our public schools, as a sectarian thing. But the good ancestral primitive habit is too strong for this infusion of Papal jealousy against the Bible. The decision and firmness of character, which marked our Puritan ancestry, are features of New England still; and New England schools and institutions have got their roots so entwined around the Scriptures, and imbedded in them, that under God's blessing all the miners and sappers of Komanism can do nothing to loosen them. The same love of the Bib]e, and sense of our tlependence upon it, are increasing elsewhere; and tlie very attack and insidious etibrt of Ronuniism against a oominon school education with the Bible, as sectarian, tends to awaken the sensitiveness and alarm of the Christian public on a point in regard to which the people had sunk into too sluggish a security. If we would keep our civil ficedoni, we must educate our ciiklreu iu the Scriptures. That freedom came to us from the Bible ; by the Bible only can we keep it. Like the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, Divine Truth led our heroic ancestors thi'ough all the sufferings, discipline, and struggles, by which they established our liberties, and nothing else can preserve those liberties, or the spirit of them in their descendants. We must have a religious education; and if an evil influence should prevail with the State so to change the system to which we have been accustomed as to banish tho Bible and religion from it, then the church will be compelled to take it up, as she does the voluntary support of religious worship. In reliance on Christ alone, she has advanced leligion more than all State endowments in the world have ever done. In reliance on Christ alone, if compelled into it, she is able to do the same with education. She rejoices in the appropriations of the government for a common school education ; but if the con- dition of such help is to be an oppressive exclusion of the Bible and religious teachings, she abhors the treachery. It would be the death warrant of freedom and religion to put her hand to such a covenant. There must be an education in religion and morality, or our life as a free people is ended. It is claims from other worlds according to that noble sonnet of Wordsworth, that have in- spirited our star of liberty to rise, and other worlds alone can keep it above the horizon. No earthly expediency, or political management, truckling to the cry of Sectarianism, can save us. 194 Our freedom is the product of celestial wisdom, and not a covenant with the powera of darkness, nor the child of a cun- ing policy ; and celestial wiwom alone can keep it. •* WbtA came from heaven to heaTen by ti*tnr« cUogs, And if dissevered thence, its course ia short." 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