er's eye, whose light should, like that of the sun falling upon opening flowers, give them the hues of imperishable beauty. But unfortunately for the rising generation, this high parental duty is now so often neglected at home, that many a child must receive at school his first notions of his various duties as a social and an immortal being. True education, in the broad and liberal meaning of the term, includes . . . . such a moulding of the youthful affections and impulses, as will bring them. into ready obedience to the voice of conscience, and above all, SUCH RELIGIOUS CULTURE as will aim at imbuing the mind with that Christian spirit which teaches us to love God with all the heart, and our neighbor as ourselves."

This would be impossible, were the Bible and religious instruction excluded from the schools. If the proposed divorce of a common school education from religious truth should be accomplished, where is the “religious culture" that constitutes a primary part of "true education" to be provided or introduced? The affections cannot be rightly moulded, the

conscience cannot be trained, without religious instruction.

Mr. Mann applies the same principles to the formation of District Common School libraries, and contends that one grand object of them should be, by the substitution of useful books instead of idle and immoral trash, to protect the children from those temptations and exposures which come from the flood of pernicious reading. "Much can be done by the substitution of books and studies which expound human life and human duty as God has made them to be." "To rear the amaranth of virtue for a celestial soil; to pencil, as with living flame, a rainbow of holy promise and peace upon the blackness and despair of a guilty life; to fit the spirits of weak and erring mortals to shine forever as stars amid the host of heaven; for these diviner and more glorious works, God asks our aid; and He points to children who have been evoked into life as the objects of our labor and care."

"For this purpose, I know of no plan as yet conceived by philanthropy, which promises to be so comprehensive and efficacious as

the establishment of good libraries in all our
school districts, open respectively to all the
children in the State, and within half an hour's
walk of any spot upon its surface."

But how is it possible to accomplish this ob-
ject, if all peculiarly religious truth is first to
be expunged from the volumes? How, if at
the door of the school district library, a win-
nowing Index Expurgatorius is to be set up,
that shall drive away every religious volume,
and blot out from other volumes any pages
that may possibly be tinged with a religious
bias?

Opinion and Practice in Pennsylvania and

New Jersey.

AT the session of the National Convention of the friends of public education, held in Philadelphia in 1850, a Report was presented on the subject of moral and religious instruction in common schools, by the Committee appointed for this purpose.

They remark that "in the common schools, which are, or ought to be, open for the instruction of the children of all denominations, there are many whose religious education is neglected by their parents, and who will grow up in vice and irreligion, unless they receive it from the common school teacher. It seems to us to be the duty of the State to provide for the education of all the children, morally as well as intellectually, and to require all

teachers of youth to train the children up in the knowledge and practice of the principles of virtue and piety."

After insisting on the importance, first of all, of teaching by example, they say: "In the next place the Bible should be introduced and read in all the schools in our land. It should be read as a devotional exercise, and be regarded by teachers and scholars as the text-book of morals and religion. The children should early be impressed with the conviction that it was written by inspiration of God, and that their lives should be regulated by its precepts. They should be taught to regard it as the manual of piety, justice, veracity, chastity, temperance, benevolence, and of all excellent virtues. They should look upon this book in connection with the teachings of the Holy Spirit, as the highest tribunal to which we can appeal for the decision of moral questions, and should grow up with the feeling, that the plain declarations of the Bible are the end of all debate. The teacher should refer to this book with reverence. If he have reasons that are clear and satisfactory to his own mind, why