CHAPTER XIV.

ADDRESS OF DR. N. H. AXTELL CONCERNING MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS.

The diffusion of morál culture is an absolute necessity to the existence and prosperity of the State. Plutarch puts it in its broadest statement when he says, "There has never been a state of atheists." Can any historian bring an exception? There has never been a state of atheists. You may travel over the world. You may find cities without walls, without a king, without a mint, without theatres or gymnasiums, but you will never find a city without a god, without prayer, without oracles, without a sacrifice. Sooner may a city stand without foundations than a state without a belief in the gods. This is the bond of all society-the pillar of all legislation.

No state can continue existence without vigorous morals; but this is especially true of a republic, dependent upon the intelligence and morals of the individual constituents. All past history

establishes the fact that however intelligent a people may be, yet, lacking the moral element, they are unable to sustain a system of self-government, or for long an existence at all.

In view of this, the English decided in 1842 that, "The courts will not sanction any system of education in which religion is not included;" and that "a scheme of education without religion would be worse than a mockery."

Justice Shaw says, "The public school system was intended to provide a system of moral training."

Blackstone says, "Christianity is part of the law of England;" and his American Commentator adds, "We have received the Christian religion as part of the common law." The courts have so held it to be.

Webster won the Girard will case on the point, "Christianity is the law of the land." Mr. Webster says, "Statutes against blasphemy and violation of the Sabbath, and others of the same effect, proceed on this great broad principle, that the preservation of Christianity is one of the great and leading ends of government."

I ought, perhaps to answer a common mistake right here. It is, that the separation of Church and State in this country has left the State with

out religion, or with nothing to do with religion. Organized civil society, the separation of this necessary religious impulse, this conviction of accountability to God in all relations of life, this looking for the supernatural sanction upon doing right and frown upon doing wrong-separation from this would be as un-American as un-Christian. Nothing could have been farther from the thought of the Founders of the Republic. They rather thought that they divorced a particular form of religious establishment from the State, that Christianity in its broadest fullness might enter into cordial and eternal marriage with the State. The very first amendment acts both ways.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

(1) This recognizes religion as an element here to stay. In accordance with this, in the same Constitution, is the requirement of oaths of President and others. In accordance also is the establishment of Sabbath rest, chaplaincies, etc.

(2) Religion might be impaired and injured by establishment. So it would have been, being made to include a part, a sect. Now it is broad enough to include all the Roman ideal of law, all the Jewish idea of purity, and all the Christian

It includes the sum of all its

idea of grace. parts.

(3) Religion can be better administered by being free from complication with any sects or special creeds.

(4) "No law shall prohibit the free exercise of religion." Christianity as a system is recognized: for the law securing a right recognizes the legitimacy of that right. The State makes use of the moral influence of church and school, and grants immunities and guarantees, not for what the church believes, but for what of safety and progress she contributes by making men moral.

Confessedly the Bible is the text book in morals. The heathen dammio of Hirosaki, when the school asked for the study of moral philosophy, asked, "What is that?" Being told "it is the science of right and wrong," said, "It must go in." When the question came up, "What is the best text book?" a messenger was sent to Dr. McClay; Well, the best text book is the Christian's Bible;" it was said, "Well then, we must have that." Heathen though he was forty Bibles were secured for that school.

66

There are not probably in our sixty-six millions of people sixty-six who would think any child would receive hurt from hearing, "Thou shalt

not steal." "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” Or, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." No child forgets the parables, or the story of Joseph. How are the utterances of Isaiah or Paul caught upon the ears of infancy, and how they linger through the life, and are the last forgotten in the wanderings of old age! No book will take its place-so will say Christian, Jew, moralist, and literary critic.

How true are these words, written by a noble Catholic scholar, speaking of the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the King James version of the Bible:

"It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things, rather than words. It is a part of the National mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes with it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."