Christ, and what he disowns he condemns, thus placing all moral sentiments in the same predicament, with regard to the Christian economy, in which Jesus Christ placed his contemporaries, 'He that is not with me, is against me.'"

"An entire separation of moral science" (and consequently of education) "from religion it is hardly possible to preserve, since Christianity has decided some moral questions on which reason was dubious or silent; and since that final retribution which the New Testament has so luminously foreshown, is evidently the greatest of sanctions. To make no reference, while inculcating moral principles, to a judgment to come, after that judg ment has been declared on what has been confessed to be divine authority, would look like systematic irreligion."

But any reference to such truths, or inculcation of such lessons, produces a religious bias, and is the inculcation of distinctively religious truth, though not sectarian. And if God disowns that which disowns religion, he must disown a system of education which rejects it

from the things to be taught, defrauds the mind of its sanctions, and places the creature in a state of constant exile from the climate of the kingdom of Christ. It walls off the thoughts from all contact with the eternal realities of our being, and naturalizes the mind to an existence like a dungeon. The unfortunate objects of such a discipline of jealousy against religious truth, remind us of one of Foster's illustrations; "they are somewhat like the inhabitants of those towns within the vast salt mines of Poland, who, beholding every object in their region by the light of lamps and candles only, have in their conversation no expressions describing things in such aspects as never appear but under the lights of heaven."

Now, connect with this such an extract as you may make almost at random from the annual reports of any of our benevolent societies, designed for the good of children, and of the poor, as, for example, the last report of the Association of New York, stating the condition of multitudes of children, who are taught nothing of God, nothing of Divine truth, nothing of the Saviour of the world,

nothing but vagrancy, low cunning, and vice; and suppose a multitude of such children gathered into a school, from which all reference to religion, all religious distinctive instruction, all lessons from Divine truth in regard to God, and the relations of man to the future world, as a world of retribution and reward; and if they get no education but such as the State gives them in such a school, in what better condition would they be, as respects "the lights of heaven," than that of the inhabitants of the mines of Poland?

Strange delusion, to think of benefiting the children of the poor and vicious, by bringing them into schools under the rule of a studied exclusion of the Bible, and all religious instruction; a system of education properly described as wearing the stamp of systematic rreligion! Yet such is precisely the course of policy to which this community are urged, on the plea of accommodating 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!

Argument from the Necessity of Religious

Self-government.

I HAVE at this moment lying before me a discourse by a popular preacher, reported in one of our public papers, in which it it proclaimed that in our country, the foundation of power in the individual and liberty in the masses is self-government, founded on religious belief and conscience; the necessity is forcibly and eloquently presented, of "religious inspiration and religious self-control in the individual," and it is declare that "if these be lost or corrupted, our expiring anguish will surpass that of any nation that ever lived." This position may be completely maintained; it is almost a truism concerning the nature of republican freedom, that it is impossible without the habit of self-government. But who

ever heard of religious inspiration and religious self-control without the knowledge of the Word of God? And where shall this sense and knowledge of religion and of the Scriptures, presented as of such vital importance to the preservation of our country's liberties, be taught? Can it be safely left to the churches, and to those schools where sectarian tenets are taught? The answer instantly 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, there are not enough of such churches and schools to accommodate a fourth-no, not an eighth-part of the community.

The argument in behalf of the very existence of free public schools, is an argument for the necessity of the Bible in them. The churches and the parochial schools are glaringly inadequate; perhaps not more than 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