granted, and whole courses of information and of reasoning are built upon it, and the name of its founder, whom the Jews execrate as an impostor, is often referred to, and always with the most reverential and adoring regard. Nay, the New Testament itself, which the Jews teach their children to abhor, is referred to as divine, described in most attractive terms, and beautiful passages are quoted from

it.

This is an outrage on my conscience, a violation of the first principles of religious liberty. My children are excluded from schools, for the support of which I am taxed, or else they are compelled to listen to instructions and to read lessons which would persuade them that their father is a liar, and the religion of their fathers a deception. My children are excluded from these schools because of my religious scruples, which the government of the schools would thus ignore, contemn, or outrage. And, as a Jew, I am in the right, on the assumption that the use of the Bible, as the Word of God, in our public schools, or the admission of any "religious bias," is a violation of the rights of conscience.

Suppose I

Let us take yet another case. am a Mohammedan. I teach my children at home that there is but one God, and that Mohammed is his Prophet. I teach them the Koran as a Divine revelation, and carefully instruct them that all men, except the followers of the Prophet, are infidels, and that none but Mohammedans can possibly be saved. But I pay my tax for the system of free public schools, and I have a right to have my children educated there. But the very day I place them there, they bring me home, as a specimen of the public instruction, a reading lesson, entitled "The spirit and laws of Christianity superior to those of every other religion." The very title is an outrage on my conscience, an intolerant defiance of the claims of the religion of my fathers, the proclamation of falsehood as to all the teachings I have given to my children at home.

But I also find in other lessons and sections, a mode of teaching equally subversive of my liberty and rights. I find the founder of Christianity spoken of as a Divine Person, the Deliverer and Saviour of mankind; and I find

the apostolic teachers of that religion favorably compared with Mohammed, nay, and that great prophet himself, entitled the Impostor of Arabia. I find things taught, which, by the laws of the Koran, are blasphemous, and punishable with death. It is a violation of religious equality and liberty for the government to institute such schools. My own children are excluded from the benefits of education by the very religious scruples and convictions which are thus ridiculed and blasphemed. And for this I am compelled to pay the government. I am oppressed in my rights and liberties as a citizen, by the very government which I support for the protection of both. Nay, my very usages and precepts of domestic life, which I teach as sacred to my children, are publicly ridiculed; and under cover of the inoffensive title of "The Love of the World Detected," I find it asserted that Mohammedans themselves, in spite of the interdiction of their prophet, do everywhere, in some part or another of the unclean abomination, eat pork. I find a poem from one of the most esteemed

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writers of the English language given to my child to read, in which it is affirmed,

That conscience free from every clog,
Mohammedans eat up the hog.

This man, again, is right, on the assumption that the recognition and use of God's word is an infraction of the rights of conscience, and that an impartial system of public education must be free from any religious bias. The least allusion to the Saviour of the world as a Saviour, is a "religious bias."

Yet again, we may take the case of a Chinese, a Pagan, a Hindoo. He is conscientiously attached to his own idolatrous worship, and teaches it to his children. Jupiter, Vishnu, Confutzee, or what not, he has the shrine of domestic superstition, and brings up his children in his own faith. But he desires to avail himself for them, of the benefits of the free public schools; for he has his rights as a citizen, and pays the government for protecting them. But the very first thing his children meet with, is perhaps a reading-lesson on common things, declaring "that pure religion is the worship

paid to one Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, but that men through wickedness have become worshippers of false gods, adoring images wrought by their own hands, forsaking the worship of their maker, and deifying even animals and vegetables." This lesson teaches the children of this idolater that his own teachings are all false, and that the only true religion is taught in the life and writings of Christ and his Apostles. Now, this is an incomparably greater violation of the rights of conscience, than if a Romanist had to send his children where the Word of God is recognized and read. It is, by your hypothesis, an oppression of him by the government that taxes him for the support of the schools. You compel him to take away his children, and forego all the benefits of a free public education, or else have them instructed in what he considers falsehood. "His children are excluded from these schools, because of his religious scruples, which the government of the schools would thus ignore, contemn, or outrage." It is, by your own theory, an intolerable oppression.