3. We will defend against all attack the fountain of public intelligence and civic virtue, the American public school; we will consent to no division of the general funds as between public and private schools, we will oppose all aid, by taxation, of sectarian institutions.

There is in a Parisian Gallery a most interesting painting. Its central figure is the aged Richelieu. His features are thin, his body broken, but his iron will is as mighty as ever. He is represented as sitting in a boat drifting toward a gallows. In the boat sit two striplings in the morning bloom of youth. They have displeased the aged tyrant, and he of the palsied hand will see well to it that they die on yonder scaffold. It is Age slaughtering Youth; it is Death slaughtering Life.

So might our American liberty be painted as still fair and young, in the morning of life, with the light of a grand future falling upon its brow. Shall Age slay Youth? Shall Death conquer Life? Shall bigotry master

and destroy the freedom that is at once our inheritance and our glory? Let every American swear by his birth-right, his liberty, by the flag for which he would die, by his race, his religion, and his God. So IT SHALL NOT BE.

IT

outset the subject we have chosen will arouse dissent. Before the meaning of a single paragraph has become apparent, some one is likely to ask "Is there indeed an American Religion, a new device to secure by Act of Congress the salvation of man? Are we to be told that there is one law of life for Europe and another for America? Or, in deeper vein, -Is not religion one in all lands and ages, and is not the essential unity of all so-called religions the most vital teaching of the hour?"

The truth, always weighty-suggested by these questions, is this: The foundation of religion is always the same. All faith is born of the nature, needs and aspirations of the human soul;

and not more certain is the solidarity of the race than the fundamental unity of all the Religions of Earth. But this religious unity concerns chiefly certain primary instincts of the soul, which constitute the foundation of faith. It is safe to say that the foundation of religion is always the same; not much more than this can be truly affirmed, for upon the same foundation a palace or a prison may be erected. In like manner the religious nature of man may be developed into all that is wise, pure, noble; or into the darkness of ignorance and evil.

Many potent influences affect the growth of a people's religion. CLIMATE. The Religion of the North is not the Religion of the South. RACE. The contemplative Hindoo and the practical American each may have a lesson to communicate to the other, but neither can enter into the secret of the others' spirit. The mystic North, the sensuous South, the stable East, the mobile West -all have their types of faith, har

HISTORY.

monious to the soul of each. The current of a nation's life profoundly affects the development of the national church, for there is a church national. Never in this country-we may hope-a church supported by taxation, and controlled by the State, but a church which embodies the truest aspirations, the highest sentiments, the best life of the nation. A church not subordinate to civic life and development, but a kind of transfigured radiance of that life.

In this sense, there is an English Church. Sturdy, conservative, practical, -in full accord with Anglo-Saxon reverence for law and liberty. A church in harmony with the nation's life, yet moulding that life to higher ends and loftier aims. In this sense, there is a German Church. Scholarly, patrioticloving learning and the Fatherland. church expressive of the noblest life of that mighty nation. France and Spain may both be nominally Catholic, but the indifference of one and the fervor of the other are well known. This national

A