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felt this. When the youthful Tyndale began first to have his eyes opened to the truth, and to form the purpose, by God's blessing, in after years, to give the Word of God in English to the people, he saw that it was the right of all mankind, for that it was the gift of God to all. The indignant speeches that fell from him, even then, exposed him to danger. In controversy with an ignorant Romish ecclesiastic, he one day said, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, to know more of the Scripture than you do." But how were the plowboys to know it, if it should be excluded by law from the system of education, on pretence of liberality of conscience? In vain would the noble Tyndale's prophecy have been fulfilled, and his mission-task performed and sealed with martyrdom, for the plow-boys of his country, if the translation of the Scriptures was to be excluded from the schools, as a sectarian book, or forbidden, on the plea of its going against the Romish conscience.

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Right of Religions Education by the State.

OPINION OF MR. WEBSTER.

"THE Government," says Hugh Miller, "that should imprison with punishment or death the man whose only crime was, that he had given a morsel of bread to a dying beggar, or rescued some unhappy human being who was in danger of perishing in the pit into which he had fallen, would be held to have violated the rights of man, if the person so punished was a subject of its own, and the rights of nations, if he was the subject of another State. But does not that Government as really violate the rights of man, and the laws of Christian nations, which says, you shall not give a copy of the Bible to a human being, however desirous he may be to know the will of his Maker, and however much he

may feel that his eternal welfare depends on knowing that will? The Government that should act thus would so violate the first right of conscience and the first duties of man, and so uproot the foundations of society, as to place itself beyond the pale of civilized nations; it ought to be declared an outlaw,— a nation at war with the eternal principles of duty and right, and entitled to exact no regard or obedience to its laws."

Now, let us just apply these principles to the right and duty of providing the children in our common schools with the Word of God, and with the religious instruction they may receive from it, and thus judge and determine the iniquity of any statute for the exclusion of the Bible. Such a statute, whether in legislative act and form, or merely the force of prejudice and custom wrought into a common law, would be glaringly inconsistent with the duty of the State, and with our rights as individuals. And what an incongruity would it present, while the common law of the State is based upon Christianity, and in favor of it, to have the common law of the schools ex

cluding it, and so in reality against it. The argument by which the opponents of the Bible, in schools, would support their views, goes the whole length of denying to the State the right of religious instruction, because it is asserted to be an oppression of the conscience. And the demand is made of a wholesale exclusion of all religious bias, because otherwise the State cannot be impartial to her children. But let us hear the voice of some of our greatest and wisest statesmen on this matter.

In speaking on the subject of taxation for public education, Mr. Webster once said: "We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. By general instruction, we seek as far as possible to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiment uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censures of the law and the denun. ciations of religion, against immorality anc crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of

ment.

enlightened and well-principled moral sentiWe hope to continue and to prolong the time, when in the villages and farm-houses of New England there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors."

Mr. Webster was a man that weighed his words. And now in perusing the succeeding paragraph, let it be remembered that this speech was on an occasion that demanded the greatest solidity and accuracy in the formation and expression of his views, being no less im-. portant than the revision of the Constitution of the State of Massachusetts. His opinions were, therefore, deliberate and well considered, and they are decisive as to the power and duty of the State to provide a religious education for her children, if an education at all.

“I rejoice that every man in this community can call all property his own, so far as he has occasion for it to furnish for himself and his children the blessings of religious instruction, and the elements of knowledge. This celestial and this earthly light he is entitled to by the fundamental laws. It is every poor man's undoubted birthright; it is the great blessing

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