Part 8 (1/2)

Nohat is to be done to stop the poisoned source from which the diabolical spirit and the crimes of our country flow? A certain class come forward and say, ”Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools The Bible is the grand source of religion and rand source of life and civilization”

Very well, let the Bible be admitted, but with the Bible you must send the key--the interpreter And then, which of all the Bibles, and who the numerous sects, shall be sent?

To read the Bible, without note or coerous speculation, or to leave thee In mixed schools there is no other resource, because it is i of Christ and His Apostles, without trenching upon the conscientious opinions of some one or other of the listeners ”The Father and I are One” ”The Father is greater than I” Here at once we have the Unitarian and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock! ”This is My Body” ”It is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing” Here we have the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real presence (consubstantially), and his Calvinistic coadjutor in reforain of water and the Holy Ghost,” etc Here we have the Baptist and the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion

Nevertheless, widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a fundamental assimilation between all the Protestant sects which may render it possible for theanization; and yet we findthe Protestant clergy of A the denominational system, such as we find it in the European countries They believe that education should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion, and they are liberal enough to insist that, by natural right as well as by the constitutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine adverse to the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or surreptitiously imposed upon his child It is well known, however, that between the Catholic faith and all Protestant creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged over It would, therefore, be si whatever inwith Catholic conscience No such teaching is atteeneral rule, we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility and barrenness of whichwith very htened and zealous Protestants, believe that secular education, adly pernicious; that it is fast under the Christian faith of this nation; that it is rapidly filling the land with rationalis the authority of the Holy Scriptures; that it is educating men who prefix ”Reverend” and affix ”DD” to their names, the more effectually to preach covert infidelity and iations; that, instead of the saving morality of the Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealedus that same old array of the natural virtues or qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the heathen nations of old It must, then, be evident to every h it be the Word of God, will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education Indeed the reading of the Bible alone is by no means an adequate remedy to stem the torrent of the evils in our country What impurities have not been committed under the sanction of those words of the Lord, ”Increase andin the wake of the Anabaptists of Munster, in Geritiamy On such misapplication of a text from the Gospel, Luther, Bucerus, and Melanchthon have perrave of Hesse, to have tives

In the name of the Bible, of the Word of God, Luther at first incited the Gerhtened at his oork, he persuaded the princes to massacre the peasants John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he should nated, in the Bible, as the Envoy of the Lord Nicholas learned fro connected with faith, and that we race may abound Sympson pretends to find in the Scriptures an ordination that men should walk in the streets stark naked, to teach the rich a lesson that theyRichard Hill justified, with the Bible in hand, adultery and ood purpose, especially when joined to incest, in which case more saints are added to the earth and more blessed to the heavens Even on the avowal of honest Protestants, no crime or abomination has ever failed to find its pretended justification in some scriptural text

What, then, , without note or comment, leads to such consequences? Indeed what has been said on the evil consequences of the Public School syste of the Bible is no adequate means at all to stem the torrent of crimes in our country Nowhere has the Bible been readschool-hours, than in the Public Schools of the New England States, and yet nowhere have the results of these schools provedof the Bible alone, therefore, though it be the Word of God, will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education

There are others who ious instruction should be left to parents”

Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the parents' home; that the best school is the family This is indeed true of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which fathers and mothers fashi+on the first outlines of character, andNone have reminded parents of this more faithfully than the Pastors of the Church

But to say that fathers and mothers are to educate their children, and that their home is to be the school of Christian instruction, catechetical teaching, formation of conscience, preparation for sacraments, and the like, is either the shallow talk offor it, or a heartless mockery of our poor The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is their own, do not educate their own children They systees, or pay for tutors or governesses under their own roof They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have the tiift, or the method of the perseverance or the patience And if this be, as it is, universally true of those who are the most competent, and the most provided with all the means and opportunities for the work, now is it not hardness of heart, or want of common sense, to say that the children of the poor are to learn reading, and writing, and su and forht Their wives have the burden of the whole family; the poor mother is alone both the head and the servant of the whole house When is she to teach, and train, and shape, and fashi+on the characters, hearts, consciences, intellects of the children? Is it to be done in the midst of a day's work, or in the weariness after the day's work is done?

And are they competent to do what the mother of the rich cannot do?

Broken with cares, wearied by work, suffering fro from sickness because worn out with all these burdens, how shall the father or le room, do what the rich and the educated, in their spacious houses, and with abundant leisure, never drea?

Moreover, as I have shown in a preceding chapter, it ious andchild; this fully disposes of the argu alone will supply what is acknowledged to be wanting in the ”Public Schools” It is to be hoped that we shall hear no more of this heartless talk

”Well, then,” some will say, ”let our children receive, _in Sunday-schools_, that aious culture and instruction which the State says shall not be given in the school, and which is believed to be so essential in the education of the young”

Now it is in vain to open our Sunday-schools and expect to cure, on one day of the week, or rather a few hours of that day (when this even depends, in a great part, on the weather), the work not only of the other six, but the fruits of years of an ill-directed and Godless State education The Sunday-schools are nothing but soplasters_” on Christian consciences The want of religious training for six days in the week, added to the positive knowledge of error on all religious subjects which youthsthat time, will more than counterbalance the best-directed efforts of parents and the clergy to give any definite knowledge on the truths of revelation The question whether or not religious education is compatible with Public School education, has been tried in all English-speaking countries, and in parts of Germany, with this result: that, a class, the Public School children are without any adequate religious knowledge or training The clergy may have Sunday-schools, as they have, in all their churches; but what can children learn, in a few hours, of a subject which took three years from the Saviour of man to teach even to the apostles? And then the apostles, after three years of instruction froion; they were slow to understand, and, after His resurrection, Christ upbraided them with incredulity and hardness of heart Even the children of the Public Schools, as far as experience goes, lose all taste for the study of religion, which is developed a the children of Christian schools without any effort Sunday-schools, at best, may train children to be Christians _one day_ in the week, and Pagans six days School-days over, the usual result will be _Pagans_ all the seven days of the week

If it is in vain to say, ”Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools,”

or ”let our children receive religious instruction from their parents, or in Sunday-schools, in order to arrest the fast-spreading crimes of the land,” it is still islature be called upon”

It cannot be denied that the higher culture of America has, from the time of the introduction of the present Public School system, ceased to be Christian What is the natural harvest of this sowing? It is that we have already a generation of men, thousands of whom are not fit to be the heads and fathers of fauides of public opinion, ever so ivers of the United States, who are infidels and profligates; who see _only themselves_ in all they do, who desire only to fret out their little hour on the political stage _with a sharp eye to their own interests_, without the sainst future disasters--who cannot, or _will_ not, see the disastrous storms the shi+p of the Republic will soon have to encounter What good, then, could be expected froislature? It would only show its impotency, or, what is more, its own corruption The executive is unable, suspected, or often found in the ”_ring_,” or, to use a common expression, ”Justice stinks” The judiciary, by its very nature, always ti Well, then, the press: what shall be said of it? Only this: that it would be unreasonable to expect it to possess the supernatural powers of healing such a multitude of foul lepers, or to be able at any tie of the age and country

What, then, must be done to save society from the perils that menace it--to stem the tide that bids fair to sweep away, eventually, even civilization itself? We must proceed on a true principle When we proceed on a true principle, the ically and completely we carry it out the better; but e start with a false principle, the ical we are, and the farther we push it, the worse Our consistency increases, instead of di, the evils ould cure The refor her under hueneration found they did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it farther and farther, till they find theion, and beginning to doubt if there be even a God So, in the question of education, the upholders of the Public School system have pushed the false principle ”that all individual, donorance, and can only be prevented by high intellectual culture,” till they have nearly taught away all religious belief and h abolished the family which is the social unit, and find that the evils they pretended to prevent, and the wrongs they sought to redress, are fast increasing

Weto reraces so many of our crowded centres, and the de even our rural districts

One thousand eight hundred and forty-odd years ago, youhis steps on the Appian way to the Capitol of the world,--the wealthy, ates, and threads his way unobserved through its populous streets On every side he beholds gorgeous palaces raised at the expense of downtrodden nationalities; stately teregated in Rome; public baths and amphitheatres devoted to pleasure and to cruelty; statues, monuments, and triumphal arches raised to the memory of blood-thirsty tyrants He passes warriors and senators, beggars and cripples, effeladiators and slaves, merchants and statesmen, orators and philosophers;--all classes, all ranks, all conditions of e and color under the sun

Everywhere he sees arace for pleasure; everywhere the irowth of cri, diabolical cruelty and barbarity And this poor, meanly-clad wanderer was St Peter Oh! how the noble heart of the fisherman of Galilee must have bled, when he observed the e licentiousness of the teradation of wo under the load of her own infa inhumanity which slew the innocent babes and threw them into the Tiber; when he sa prisoners of war, slaves, and soldiers were trained for bloody fights, and entered the arena of the ale one another, for the special entertainment of the Roman people When Peter came to Rome, that city was the condensation of all the idolatry, all the oppression, all the injustice, all the immoralities of the world; for the world was centred in Rome

Here, then, were evils to be rean philosophers, poets and orators, had tried their best to cure these evils and to elevate mankind, but they had tried in vain

What they were unable to bring about, St Peter acco to the Roion of Jesus Christ--which iht of truth, and lays down for the will authoritatively the unchangeable principles of supernatural morality, true prosperity, true happiness, and peace on earth and for eternity Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the Capitoline teolden house of Nero, and with it Roman excess and Roman cruelty, the throne of the Caesars, and with it Roave way and disappeared in proportion as the light of Christianity was infused into that foul mass, into that rotten society, centred in Roed a sinful people into saints, and so s of the religion of Christ brought about in Ro about wherever they are diffused Hence all true lovers of the country tell us that there is but one remedy for the cure of the diabolical spirit and the crimes of our country--it is to teach our children the truth and blessings of the Christian religion It is the Christian religion that infallibly and authoritatively teaches the duties of civil authorities towards their subjects, of husbands towards their wives, of parents towards their children, of masters towards their servants, of pastors towards their flocks, of the faithful towards their pastors, of servants towards their masters, of wives towards their husbands, of children towards their parents, of subjects towards their lawfully constituted civil authorities, of all men towards God, their Supreood and evil Moreover, it is the Christian religion alone that affords htens the mind to see the beauty of virtue, inflames the heart with love for it, and inclines the will to practise it with perseverance If we then wish to be sure of having a virtuous and virile people, wetheir school hours; we ious ation hout the entire ion hout the child's entire education, in order to be solid and effective

Not a ious influence It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious ation is not a study, or an exercise that may be restricted to a certain place, or a certain hour It is a faith and a lahich ought to be felt everywhere, and which in this manner alone can exercise all its beneficent influence upon our minds and lives It will never do to suffer the child to devote six days in the week to worldly science, and to depend on Sunday for a religious training This would be like reserving the salt which should season our food during the week, and taking it all in a dose on Sunday

By such a system we may make expert shop-boys, first-rate accountants, shrewd and thriving ”earth-worood citizens, still less virtuous Christians