Part 6 (2/2)
The constitutions of the State guarantee to every citizen the right to worshi+p God according to the dictates of his own conscience; but this is not guaranteeing to every one the liberty of not worshi+pping God at all, to deny His existence, His revelation, or to worshi+p a false God The freedoion, not the freedorants to the infidel the right of protection in his civil and political equality, but it grants hiht to protection and support in his infidelity; for infidelity is not a religion, but the denial of all religion The American State is Christian, and under the Christian law, and is based upon Christian principles It is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its lahether assailed by Mormonism, Spiritism, Freelovism, Pantheism, or Atheism But the State does the contrary For, I ask, is not the State indirectly prohibiting the profession of Christianity by establishi+ng a systeious instruction? The State forbids the teacher to speak a word on the subject of religion
The State says that ”it is an adovernment, ence of the people_ The State proposes to furnish this _virtue_ and _intelligence_ through the _Public Schools_” That is, the safety of the State depends on the virtue and intelligence of the people, and the latter is derived froence of the ”State” But where does the virtue and intelligence of the State come from? The only answer on this theory is, frohtens and purifies the people, and the people enlighten and purify the ”State”
The people support the State, the State supports the Public Schools, and they support the State If this is not what logicians call a ”vicious circle,” it looks very much like it It puts me in mind of the Brahmin's theory of the support of the earth The Hindoo says, ”The world rests on the back of an elephant--the elephant rests on the back of a turtle”
But what does the turtle rest on? So it is with our ”_Public School Brahmins_” They will tell you, with all the coolness of Hindoo hypocrisy and pretension, that the ”State depends on the schools--the schools on the State or people,” but they do not say what the turtle stands on This is the dilemma that all who rest society on the State, or on an atheistical basis, get into They would cut the world loose froned order of dependence on Divine Law, and ”set it a-going on its own hook” But the trouble is, they have no support for this turtle; they have an earth without axis The Public School savans would have a self-supporting, a self-adjusting, and a self-created State, balanced on nothing, resting on nothing, responsible to nothing, and believing in nothing but in its own perfection and iive virtue without ion without God; thereby sinking below the level of the poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in the clouds, and hears Him in the wind
The nameless abominations of the Coraded fraternities; the cold-blooded htful suicides that fill so rief and shame; the scarcely-concealed corruption of public and professional men; the adroit peculation and wilful e speculations and voluntary insolvencies so ruinous to the co atrocities so coal dissolution of thewith life in its very bud; all these are hu facts sufficient to convince any impartial mind that there can be no social virtue, no ion
”Religion,” says Lord Derby, ”is not a thing apart from education, but is interwoven with its whole systeulates the whole mind and happiness of the people” And, ”Popular education,” says Guizot, ”to be truly good and socially useful, ious”
The essential element of education--its pith andit fro injustice to the rising generation, and one of the worst--if not the very worst--of criainst society It is not one portion of the ”triple man,” but the whole--the physical, intellectual, and --the body, the mind, the head, as stated in a previous chapter--that lect any one part of man's nature, and you at once disturb the equilibrium of the whole, and produce disorder; educate the body at the expense of the mind and soul, and you will have only anience at the expense of the s, and you but fearfully increase a man's power to effect evil
You store the arsenal of his mind eapons to sap alike the altar and the throne, to carry on a war of exterainst the welfare and the very existence of society
Science, without religion, is more destructive than the sword in the hands of unprincipled men; it will prove more of a demon than a God It is these upholders of the present Public School systeress of true happiness in our country, and prepare terrible catastrophes, which e the land with blood
Who were the leaders in the work of destruction and wholesale butchery in the Reign of Terror? The nurslings of lyceums in which the chaotic principles of the ”philosophers” were proclaimed as _oracles of truth_
Who are those turbulent revolutionists who now long to erect the guillotine by the Tuilleries? And who are those secret conspirators and their myrmidon partisans who have sworn to unify Italy or lay it in ruins? Men ere taught to scout the idea of a God and rail at religion, to consider Christianity as a thing of the past; ht, and seek to realize their mad dreams by day
Let us, then, dear American fellow-citizens, rest assured that intellectual discipline, without the cooperation of any religious elereatness of a nation, nor can it maintain its life and splendor and prevent its decay; let us, on the contrary, be persuaded that the only safety for a coreatness and prosperity for a nation, as well as of tranquillity and happiness for the individual, is the true religion of Jesus Christ; it is this religion alone that is the safeguard of morality, and morality is the best security of law, as well as the surest pledge of freedom
CHAPTER X
THE STATE A ROBBER--VIOLATION OF OUR CONStitUTION AND COMMON LAW
We have seen, so far, that the irreligious, Godless system of the Public Schools tends directly to turn the youth of both sexes into the worst kind of infidels; to ood principles, and hold iniquity in veneration; to do away, not only with all revealed religion, but even with the law of nature; to make them practise fraud, theft, and robbery alardless of their parents and of all divinely constituted authority; we have seen that this Godless system of education is the ion, but also in government and in the family circle; to increase the number of apostates, and make of these apostates overnion itself
Truly, this Godless systeical consequences, will disrupt society, destroy the right of the Christian fa back on the world the barbarisan antiquity, and make slaves and victims of its children and their posterity forever!
Who does not feelintroduced such a Godless system of education? And for the support of this system of education--of this _prolific mother of children of anti-Christ_--we are enormously tithed and taxed! Horrible!
I have shown that the State in America is Christian; that it cannot profess or play infidel What right, then, has a Christian State to compel Christians to support infidel schools? Is not this coious rights? According to the Constitution of the State, ”no huhts of conscience” Now, the direction and control of the education of our children is clearly not only a duty, but a ”right of conscience” This right, of course, belongs to all denominations, whether few or many By what authority, then, does the State iainst this constitutionally guaranteed right of conscience? I would like to knoherein this differs from an established church, such as has been lately re been imposed for centuries by State supremacy on the Irish people, without their consent
_It is, in fact, h the Episcopal Church was not in accordance with the religious belief of a majority, yet it was, nevertheless, a Christian Church of a sect of high orthodox pretensions
But these ”_Public Schools_,” for whose support we and all other Christian denominations are taxed, are, by their own confession, utterly _irreligious_ The early Christians refused to burn even a little guan idols, and preferred rather to go to the lions; but we Christians, in this late day, and in what is boastingly called ”Free America,” are forced to pay taxes to support what is worse than heathen idols--schools from which the name of God is excluded, and, to our sha done to Catholics who cannot, in conscience, send their children to these schools, Judge Taft, of Ohio, said not long ago:
”This is too large a circumstance to be covered by the Latin phrase, 'Detheir proportion of the taxes) are constrained, every year, on conscientious grounds, to yield to others their right to one-third of the school-, at the present time, about 200,000 every year That is to say, these people are _punished_ every year, for believing as they do, to the extent of 200,000; and to that extent those of us who send our children to these excellent common schools _become beneficiaries of the Catholic money_ What a shame for Protestants to have their children educated for money robbed from Catholics! Mercantile life is supposed to cultivate, in soains But if it were a business ious concern, could business e as this? I think it would shock the secular conscience!”
The State, in creating _free schools_, is like the Turkish Bashaw'spork cheap He first compelled the Jews to buy it at a rate fixed by himself; but the Jews had no use for it, so it was left for every one to pick up at will Indeed, what is a school worth when ahis children to it? The State, boasting of its splendid Public Schools, is also like that poor felloore a gold watch and boasted of it ”Where did you get it?”