paid to one Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, but that men through wickedness have become worshippers of false gods, adoring images wrought by their own. hands, forsaking the worship of their maker, and deifying even animals and vegetables." This lesson teaches the children of this idolater that his own teachings are all false, and that the only true religion is taught in the life and writings of Christ and his Apostles. Now, this is 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 others, not now with reference to the Word of God itself in the schools, but to other books, instructions, moral and historical lessons. He pays his tax we will suppose, for the support of a public free school system, and he wishes to avail himself of the benefit. His priest has taught him, and he and his priest have taught his children, that all out of the church of Rome are heretics and infidels, doomed to everlasting perdition; that the socalled Reformation was a great and dreadful schism in the only true church, a piece of wickedness set forward mainly by one of the worst men that ever lived, a licentious, profane, abandoned, and apostate monk, Martin Luther; that the Pope and the papal church are infallible, and that the Pope's followers, 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 Brit

ain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties, and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. To send forth the merciless Indian, thirsting for blood! -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 ungov ernable savages!" Tyranny of Rome, and Popish cruelties! These teachings are against the conscience of a Romanist; 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 that he has been taught, and that he wishes his children conscientiously to believe, shall be brought as truth before their minds. It is an infringement of his religious liberty, his rights of conscience, for his children are de

barred from a school where Martin Luther is presented as a good man. It is intolerance in the government.

But again, he finds the historical narrative of the execution of Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, extracted from the pages of Hume, and it is against his conscience to permit his children to be taught that Cranmer was a good man, or that the Romish Court was guilty of barbarous persecution in putting a heretic to death. It is an oppression of the government to have this taught in the schools. His religious scruples are in this ignored, contemned, and outraged.

Once more, he finds an extract from the exquisite poetry of Oliver Goldsmith, in which the inhabitants of Italy are described in two of the lines as follows:

Though grave, yet trifling, zealous, yet untrue,
And e'en in penance planning sins anew.

This, again, 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 Chris

tians; but here is a hint that penance may be merely the cover of sin; and it is contrary to his religious 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 pinching? Who are most injured by an education containing such examples of "religious bias," such presentations of known, common, and admitted truth? Deists, Mohammedans, Jews, Idolaters, or Romanists? And of all these forms of conscience, which shall be taken as the rule of religious liberty? According to the assumption in the argument against the Bible in the schools, they ought all to be taken. But that again would create intestine war; each and all would complain in turn of religious 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