one exception willing to unite upon this version-is it fitting and proper that this should be adopted. It was the English Bible centuries ago. The descendants of Englishmen still cherish it. It has been the American Bible for centuries also. The Catholics who have emigrated found it here when they came, found it here as the people's Bible, found it here in the schools which they came to share with us. These reasons alone should be sufficient, but there are other reasons for the use of our Bible which will, I am sure, appeal to the heart and the brain of every foreigner who sends his children to our public schools.

I appeal to their gratitude now, to their sense of honor now, as I would appeal to their generosity, if it were necessary, and ask them if they would wish to come here to share our freedom, to ask our hospitality, to enjoy the liberties,-the free education-the institutions which our fathers purchased at such a price, and then take our Bible away? It was to read that Bible in safety that our fathers came to this cold and barren shore-that Bible lay in the narrow cabin of the " May Flower"—it was the only star that shone for the Puritan in that long night of toil and strife and famine, which well nigh ended in despair. It was with hands clasped above that Bible that Washington prayed in his tent, through those seven long years of doubt and distrust, when the "God of Battles" alone sustained him. It has been the household god of the school-room from the infancy of the country. The schools which made us free, which will make worthy and true citizens of your children, have grown up under its influences. And will you take it from us now?

It is difficult to discuss this question calmly. I imagine that feelings which it is best not to express, are aroused in the heart of every American who is told that we must justify or defend the use of our old Saxon Bible. I will not trust myself to express them. I will ask for any reason for rejecting our common familiar version and for substituting another in its place. If this were a fitting time or place, I should be very willing to discuss the comparative merits of the two versions, either as literary productions, or as faithful translations. The Douay Bible has its history too, of which I should be very willing to

speak if it were proper to do so, but this is not a suitable occasion.

May it please your Honor, I ask now for a single candid objection to the use of King James's Bible-not the Restestant Bible, but the Christian Bible-the Saxon Bible, which we love. Are the particular portions of it which are used in the schools objectionable? Our children are to learn piety from it, not sectarianism, or creeds; but pure religion, undefiled before God. They are to learn from it piety, a sacred regard to truth, justice, chastity and humanity. Was it from sectarian views that the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments were selected as fit lessons of these cardinal virtues? What sect, Catholic or Protestant, has received the monopoly of these portions of God's Word? What priest or preacher can call them his own? Are they indeed offensive to the tender consciences of children? Is it indeed dangerous that they should hear or repeat them? I am inclined to believe that no one who has heard the evidence of the father or his boy, would be willing to say that it is either unnecessary or very dangerous to repeat to either of them the divine injunction, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Does bishop or priest dare to say that it would be dangerous to repeat to the children those sacred portions of the Bible?

Can it be that even bigotry and fanaticism would take exception to the prayer which Christ taught us—to the tables of the law which Jehovah himself gave to his children on Mount Sinai ? Is it one of that order of priesthood which has assumed to itself the name of the "Society of Jesus," who has found it a necessity of Christian duty to forbid his followers from repeating the Lord's Prayer? Has he forgotten that it was Jesus who said "suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not." Jesus who bade his disciples go forth into every land and teach the Gospel to every creature-that he dictated to his disciples. the lofty worship, the simple and pathetic beauty of that miraculous prayer, in which all the nations of the earth might together lift up their hearts to God without remembering any distinction of sect or race or creed? Subtle and artful as men have been in raising doubts, untiring as they have been in creating differences of opinion-no sect, no dogma, has yet been founded upon that marvelous, that inspired prayer, which in its divine

sweetness and purity embraces in itself the whole Christian religion, and the universal worship of God-that simple but sublime prayer in whose thanksgivings still linger the tender tones of a gentle mother's voice teaching it at eventide; the sweet, natural music of home. Was that priest unwilling that his flock should unite with the children of heretics, and joining their hands and their hearts, say with them, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name?" Was he unwilling that the children of the Huguenots and the Puritans —the children of those Protestants who remembered the mountains of Piedmont and the Waldenses-who remembered the night of St. Bartholomew and the fires of Smithfield-should join with his flock, and say "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us?"

But it is said there is a difference between the Catholic and Protestant version of this prayer. I have not forgotten it; it will be very long I think before I shall forget it, or forget that in the book which was produced here in court; the hands of some little fanatic, who had been taught hatred and bigotry under the name of Christianity—or of some priest who feared for the tender consciences of his flock, had carefully and industriously obliterated the closing words of the prayer, "For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen."

Are those reverential ascriptions of praise dangerous and heretical? Is the worship which acknowledges our Heavenly Father as the source of all power, as the Ruler of the Universe -is that worship to be denounced and proscribed by one who calls himself the priest of the living God? Was it for this that he gathered the children of his flock together, and by threats of a shameful exposure from God's altar, persuaded them to violate the laws of their country-persuaded them to rebel against their teachers-persuaded them to sacrifice the great gifts of education?

How vain and how shallow are such pretences. How trifling and immaterial are the verbal differences which are now insisted upon. Does any one fail to see that this movement is only a settled, and determined, and preconcerted opposition to our Holy Bible? Does any one fail to see that it is because the prayer is read with Protestants, that the Catholic children are forbidden to join in it-that the Catholic priests are resolved to

banish it from our schools? This is the ground which the Bishop of Boston has openly taken in his letter to the school committee, and although we can see that the counsel for the prosecution will not be bold enough to take it here, we can all very plainly see that it is the great and the real objection.

Can there be any more sincere ground of complaint because the children were called upon to repeat the Ten Commandments? Are the lessons of piety and morality which they teach offensive to the conscience or sinful to hear? Have these divine commands lost any thing of their obligations in the progress of civilization? Has their sublime morality lost its virtue? Is there one commandment which to-day any Christian of any sect dare disavow?

Over three thousand years ago these tables of the law were delivered from Mount Sinai by our Heavenly Father-when the "mountain burned with fire into the midst of Heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness"-when Jehovah said unto Moses," Gather me the people together and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children."

Has that divine injunction lost its force? Is it useful at this hour to teach those divine precepts? Would it wound the tender consciences of children to be taught those ancient and holy commands? Is any intelligent Catholic parent really unwilling that his child should repeat them? Who that has watched the signs of the times-who that has watched the winds, and the waves, and the dark clouds which drift along our stormy sky, fails to see the object and end of all this movement? No, no, there is no fear for the consciences of the children; the real objection is to the Bible itself, for, while that is read daily in our schools, America can never, never be Catholic. I am told that the most zealous of English Catholics acknowledge that England can never be Catholic so long as they keep their Saxon Bible. Of its power over the hearts of the people, an Englishman has most truly and eloquently said: "King James's version lives in the ear of a Briton, like music that can never be forgot, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. felicities seem to be almost things, rather than mere words. It is a part

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of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of 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 spoiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not an English Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."" Yes, all that is true! True for Englishmen to-day, but how much more deeply and dearly true for us?

Of all the wealth of happy England, of all their birthright and inheritance this sacred book was all that our ancestors brought with them to these, then barren and unkindly shores. They left behind them their lands, their wealth, their titles, their kin, their country, and the sweet memories of home. It was to read this Bible aright; to learn from it the mysteries of the living God, that they gave up all which man holds sweet and cherished; and does any one dare now to hope that this Book will be driven from our schools? Never! never! The sun may turn back in its course, the stars may fall as the leaf falleth from the vine, and the heavens may be rolled together as a scroll, but until we have sold our birthright of freedom, never, never will the descendants of Englishmen consent that the Saxon Bible shall be banished from their free American schools.

But I may be told that our fears are groundless, that they do not object to our Bible, but to the particular use made of it in this particular case. We are not to be deluded by such specious arguments. We well know the foe with whom we deal; they will be content with any step in advance, if it be but the thousandth part of an inch, and bide their time for the next step.

This is no time for timid concessions, no time for politic compromises; the enemy are to be met at the gates. We see through their plans and strip off their plausible disguises. I repeat that their objection is to our Bible, our whole Saxon Bible, and they cannot consistently stand upon any other