monstrous intolerance towards all the other churches, or sects, or denominations that claim it, or have been in the habit of using it, and still insist upon that privilege as their right. The Constitution of the State of Maine declares that, "No subordination nor preference of any one sect or denomination to another, shall ever be established by law." How much more, that no preference of any one sect above all the others, shall be permitted, and that there shall be no one denomination to which the arrangements of all the others shall have to submit. Now, the banishing of the New Testament as a class-book, at the demand of a hundred Romish children, the passage of a law requiring the Superintendent of Common Schools in any township or county to do this, would be, in fact, absolutely and unquestionably installing and establishing the one Romish sect in preference and power over all the oth ers. And yet, a public writer has quoted that very provision in the Constitution of Maine, to prove that neither the Legislature nor the School Superintendent have any right to appoint the reading of the New Testament as a class-book, and to require the children who attend school to attend to that lesson! Has quoted that very provision to prove that the Romanists ought to be admitted to make a law for all other sects, preventing them from having the Bible as a class-book! The argument is, that if the Bible be admitted, the Roman Catholic children are excluded, and inasmuch as the Constitution says that no subordination nor preference of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law, therefore the Bible must be excluded. But why? Because a particular sect requires it! Then what is that, but just preferring a particular sect to give law to all the others, contrary to the Constitution? And yet this absurd argument will seem plausible with many; and any case where the Bible is used in school, notwithstanding the opposition of a party against it, and where, on right principles, the established custom and law of the school demanding it, the teacher and superintendent cannot do otherwise than retain the Bible, or trample on the rights of all denominations, will be paraded as a case of intolerance and usurpation! Because the Constitution requires that no one sect shall have preference over another, therefore it is unconstitutional to use the Bible! therefore the Bible in the school is a usurpation and oppression! Because the Constitution requires that all denominations shall have equal rights, therefore no denomination shall have a right to the Bible, if any denomination object to it. Is not that an admirable logic of equality and freedom? The appointment of a reading lesson from the sacred Scriptures, with a rule that the whole class, or the whole school, as the case may be, shall take part in it, is no more an instance of religious compulsion, than the appointment of a reading lesson from the Task, or from the Paradise Lost. If the children were compelled to give their assent to it, or signify their belief of any religious truth in it, then indeed it would be compulsion. But the appointment of a reading lesson from the Bible is no more an oppression upon conscience, than the teaching of the art of reading itself is an oppression upon conscience. Any school exercise is as much an oppression as the reading of the Bible, if any child refuse it, and be compelled to join in it. Yet, to avoid even the appearance of compulsion, it should be entirely at the option of parents to say whether their children shall join in such an exercise. We shall consider this matter again under the example of Scotland. CONSEQUENCES OF THE REASONING For the Exclusion of the Bible, ON THE GROUND OF ITS BEING AN THE reasoning of those who would exclude the Bible, makes the assumption that if only one conscience object to it, its use is wrong. No ultimate rule of conscience is proposed, none admitted; and although the Divine Being has given his Word to dissipate the doubt and darkness of the human conscience unenlightened, and to set it right, yet this reasoning assumes that a conscience without the Bible and against it is of as much validity and authority, as a conscience guided by the Bible. A man who rejects the Word of God, has, on this theory, as much right to set up his conscience as the ground in making that rejection. a rule for others, as one who receives the Word |