Right of the Bible in Our Public Schools

sect, or political party, or temporary prejudice, but through the vista of a hundred generations, and a thousand years. To-day indeed we legislate for only twenty-five millions; to-morrow for a hundred millions. Yet the project is up for legislating the Bible and religion out of our schools, and thus providing for the training of the hundreds of millions of the future generations of this country.

The question is not for ourselves, but for our children, and our children's children. The question is not local, but a question for the whole country. It is argued on principles of exclusion on the one side, that apply everywhere; and on principles of religion and of right for the human race, on the other hand, that apply everywhere. If we, in this generation, get the Bible and religion effectually out of our schools, ignoring it, or legalizing its exclusion, and putting the ban of sectarian ignominy upon it, another generation will not be likely to re store it to its rightful place, or to redeem themselves from the fetters of this dreadful mistake. There are those who would establish in our schoolsystem the thunder of the Vatican, with an Index Expurgatorius for our whole school literature; and even good men are fearfully influenced by their sophistry.

"It is a question," said Mr. Webster, "which, in its decision, is to influence the happiness, the temporal and the eternal welfare, of one hundred millions of human beings, alive and to be born, in this land. Its decision will give a hue to the apparent character of our institutions; it will be a comment on their spirit to the whole Christian world." "I insist that there is no charity, and can be no charity, in that system of instruction from which Christianity is excluded." We commend to the earnest consideration of the reader, the powerful argument of Mr. Webster, commencing on page 241 of this volume,

The public mind is beginning to be awakened on this subject. While these sheets are passing through the press, we are glad to notice an able article in the New York Observer, commenting on the recent extraordinary decision of the State Superintendent, founded on the complaint of a Roman Catholic priest, in which the facts of the case have been shown to have been entirely misrepresented. Yet the Superintendent, on an ex parte view, has issued a judgment doing great injustice to individuals, and assuming, contrary to the custom and special and common law of our school system, that neither the Bible may be read, nor religious instructions given.

To say that they must not be given, nor prayer be offered, in school hours, is to banish them entirely. The act is despotic, unauthorized, illegal. "Such a position," says the author of the argument in the Observer, "I hold to be not only unsustained by any law, but to be at war with the spirit of our statutes, with the policy of our State, and with the best interests of our country."

From the history, nature, and laws of our Common School System, as developed in this volume, the reader will be able to demonstrate the perfect correctness of this statement. The decision of the State Superintendent, and some of the views elsewhere set forth under like authority, tend, according to the argument of Mr. Webster, to "undermine and oppose the whole Christian religion," and consequently the common law of the land. all cases," Mr. Webster says, "there is nothing that we look for with more certainty, than this general principle, THAT CHRISTIANITY IS PART OF THE

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