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 liberty as a necessity at any rate in the free school system; and now, following out these principles logically, consistently, in the formation or expurgation of our whole school literature for the relief of conscience, for the liberty of conscience, 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 consciences 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 determined 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 Romanist 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 passages 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 the tyrant of all the rest.

And to this day this disgrace stands perpetuated in the school books. The Romish edict has marked its way, 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 English tongue, and most exquisitely-wrought compositions, historic, poetic, and didactic, must be cut away, and

cast out as sectarian, against which the suspicion of sectarianism was never before breathed, the idea never thought of. Compositions of superior acknowledged excellence and immemorial use are to be charged as sectarian, in which no quality or aspect of sectarianism can be detected, because the imprimatur of a particular sect is withheld from them! Because they are not sectarian,-because the historian was not a Romish historian, -because the poet was not a Romish poet, coloring his descriptions with the colors that the church demands; therefore they are to be marked and condemned as sectarian, and, on that pretence, excluded! And in the gaps thus made, in the speech of Lord Chatham, for example, the blackening impression is stamped upon the 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 stars filled up the omissions; and, in another edition, the offensive stereotype plate, where it formed a whole page, was destroyed, and pages totally blank were left here and there through the volume. Such is the aspect of a portion of the school literature at this moment.

The Christian's Rights of Conscience.

THUS have you done. But in doing this, you have forgotten or ignored the fact that others, 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 elimination, from the benefit of an education by the Government. They pay their tax; but the Government oppresses and tramples 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