results. A number of ideas decidedly the most important that were ever formed in human thought, or imparted from the Supreme Mind, will be so taught in these institutions, that it is absolutely certain they will be fixed irrevocably and forever in the minds of many of the pupils. It will be as impossible to erase these ideas from their memories, as to extinguish the stars. And in the case of many, perhaps the majority, of these youthful beings, advancing into the temptations of life, these grand ideas, thus fixed deep in their souls, will distinctly present themselves to the judgment and conscience an incalculable number of times. What a number, if the sum of all these reminiscences of these ideas, in all the minds now assembled in a numerous school, could be conjectured! But if one in a hundred of these recollections, if one in a thousand, shall have the efficacy that it ought to have, who can compute the amount of the good resulting from the tuition which shall have so enforced and fixed these ideas, that they shall be infallibly thus recollected? And is it altogether out of reason 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 unhappy 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 henceforth and forever."+

* Foster on Popular Ignorance, ch. 2.

† Is, lix. 21.

But those who argue for the banishment of the Bible from our schools, would take away this pledge and assurance of a blessing from heaven, and would leave the youthful race of immortal beings, defrauded of their inheritance, their birth-right, not indeed to the uncovenanted mercies of God, but to the power and providence of a system that permits no reference to his mercies, and no knowledge of them. These men would shut up the youthful mind in its pursuit of knowledge, and its disciplinary development, within a narrower way, bounded by high blank walls, over which it is forbidden to look, even were that possible; beyond which, stretches an infinite reach of thought and knowledge, a region of bright celestial light, none of 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 concerning 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 teachers, 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, in that gentle, and yet elevated and impressive character, which we wish to see possessed by every woman, and especially every mother of our Republic? Of all motives, those of religion

are best adapted and most effectual in the discipline 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 charge of sectarianism, that the teacher shall not dare to comment even on the simplest, sweetest, most comprehensive sayings, invitations, parables, or actions, of the Saviour of the world! Think of such an espionage and interdiction, 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 liveth 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,