It must be 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 moral feelings is not possible, without a religious training of the conscience, and the guidance of the Word of God. If this were 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 beautifully 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 conflict was waged between those who maintained the natural and legal right and moral necessity of the Scriptures in the schools, and those who endeavored, 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 administration of Col. Stone, laws were passed in 1842 and 1843, containing the section forbidding sectarian teaching and books. Under cover of these laws, the

effort was driven on to banish the Bible, as being itself a sectarian 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 having been read daily in all the public schools for forty years, without complaint or opposition.

Col. Stone "advised, counselled, recommended, and remonstrated, terminating his official labors by invoking the interposition 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. Notwithstanding this, the ward officers of different schools still maintained the exclusion, and forbade the teachers the privilege of using the Bible. "Many of the teachers," the Superintendent declared, "were thus intimidated, from an apprehension least they should lose their places, which indeed was intimated in some cases, and dis

tinctly threatened in others. Valuable teachers, in several cases, for reading the Bible in their schools, have been actually either dismissed or compelled to resign." As an illustration of the influences and the men by whom the exclusion of the Bible was accomplished, a written order was produced by the teacher of a school, in one of the wards where the Bible was prohibited, which order was served upon him by the trustees of the school, in the words and manner following:

"Sir By a unanimos vote of the trustees Last Meeting all Secterian Books is Requisted to Bee Removed from the School as it is thaught the Bibl one it is Requisted to Bee Removed."

The Superintendent justly remarked, that "the orthography, capitals, and want of punctuation, as well as the beauties of the sentence, exhibited the lofty qualifications of such trustees of common schools to control the interests of popular education." But if the sacred cause and system of a common school education be thrown into the hands of politicians, to be arranged with reference to

votes, to please this or that political party, nothing better can be expected. The history of that period shows the danger and disaster inevitable upon such a course; but the efforts of the Roman Catholics to expel the Bible, divide the schools, and distribute the school funds, signally failed, through the merciful overruling providence of God.*

* A controversy, growing out of the same question, ran on in the public journals between Bishop Hughes and Mr. Hale, the well-known independent Editor of the Journal of Commerce. On Mr. Hale's part, the controversy embodied facts, appeals and arguments, of such energy and power for the people, that we cannot but present one passage, of great pith and point, directly connected with our subject:

"The effort of your priests and yourselves, gentlemen," said Mr. Hale, "to get possession of the money appropriated by the State of New York for the support of the Common Schools, has a singular appearance. Bishop Hughes says, We come here, denied of our rights.' Pray, what are the rights here, of a priest who holds his commission and his place by the will of a foreign hierarch, and upon condition of continued obedience. Such a man cannot, in the nature of the case, become an American. He may swear allegiance, and kiss the Bible and the cross ever so many times-he is a foreigner still. He may have the privilege of staying here, and being protected by our laws; but as to rights for intermeddling with American affairs, he has none. The amount which Catholics pay towards the school-money is exceedingly