times, to be the hand and the voice of God upon the earth. Our American system not only permits, but secures the right of all men to worship God as they severally prefer; and this is the American idea of the right of conscience. The Papacy pronounces this to be the right of heresy, as directly in opposition to their religious system, and to their rights of conscience. These contradictions cannot be reconciled. Our American system refers all questions of authority to the people, as the fountain of all our political power; the Papal system refers all questions of power ultimately to the Church, or its infallible head, by which it professes to decide upon the validity of every power, and upon the validity of every exercise of authority. According to the Papal interpretation of the right of conscience, it is the right to carry out their religious system in all its parts, one chief part of which is to recognize no other Church, and permit no other, for the very good reason, in their view, that no soul can be saved in any other. Christianity, as incorporated in our institutions, involves rights of conscience also, and these involve conscientious obligations to sustain and carry out the only system which gives and secures religious freedom.

The question then recurs, shall the advocates of religious freedom in the United States insist upon their rights of conscience, or shall they yield and allow the Papal right of conscience to prevail? We know that many entertain the view which it is one of our chief objects to controvert, that there is no particle of Christianity in our political system, and that, therefore, the right of conscience does not permit us to advance positive claims in behalf of

Christianity, but only requires us not to do any thing in the name of Christianity to which any one objects on the score of conscience. Our system is no such absurdity as to be reducible to zero by the conflicting pretensions of either Papal or infidel objectors; it is a grand, original, expansive, and positive system of Christian toleration, with civil and religious liberty. We are religiously bound to maintain it at every hazard. We cannot retreat and leave a territory occupied by neither party; we must not proclaim this nation to be Godless; we cannot say this is no longer a Christian nation; besides, whatever inch of ground we yield will be at once in Papal possession. Their claim already covers all: when we retreat, they are in possession. When their power is great enough to enforce their doctrines, toleration and religious liberty and rights of conscience are at an end. The Papacy tenders no consoling substitute; not even a modification, or amendment, or counterpart of our American system, civil or religious, but simply the Papal System, of which the world has had, and is now having, such experience as can leave us in no doubt of its qualities.

In one view there is no discrepancy between the Catholic religion and the Christianity of the United States. The laity of that church can enjoy their rights of conscience, and liberty of worship, in perfect harmony with other Christians. It is with the Ecclesiastical government of that Church that the difficulty began, and that government is wholly in the hands of Ecclesiastics; their people have no authority nor function in the government of their church. There is, then, no obstacle in the way of Catholic piety or

Catholic worship; it is the law of the Romish Ecclesiastical government which is at absolute war with our whole system, civil and religious. At present, our system is the strongest and ought to be carried faithfully into effect as the only means of preventing theirs from becoming the strongest, for when it does become the strongest, it will be enforced. Our delicacy forbids us to enforce our rights; their doctrine and duty commands them to enforce their system. But this is not the chief reason why ours should be carried into effect; if the Christian element be withdrawn, or, what is the same thing, if it is not taught, our social system has no bond; it becomes subject to the very reproaches which the Papacy fling at us, that we are verging to Paganism, that we have no unity, that we have no common faith. This will, indeed, be our case if we yield before the rights of conscience asserted by others without setting up and maintaining our own - if our devotion to religion is in going backward, and not in pressing forward; if we restrict ourselves to punishing men for blasphemy, for offences against good morals, for vilifying Christianity, and take no note of the spirit of a whole Priesthood which dooms every man professing this religion, which our law protects, to eternal damnation; which pronounces the Protestants of the United States, constituting nine-tenths of the inhabitants, heretics and schismatics, undeserving even of Christian burial. The law of Christian toleration requires us, and Christian charity requires us, to give these men a home among us; but they do not require us to shut our eyes to these facts; they do not require us to omit the vindication and teaching of that Christianity which is the

basis of our whole civil and religious system. If we may punish a man for vilifying Christianity- our Christianity-should we not regard that as an offence in the Hierarchy, when they proclaim that ours is no Christianity at all, and that no soul can, by any possibility, be saved by it? Which should be the most offensive in our view, the miserable blasphemy, or the priestly denunciation?

We do not make such remarks to raise a clamor against the Romish Priesthood, or to call down upon them popular vengeance. Heaven forbid! Every attack upon the property and lives of Catholics disgraces and violates our system, and strengthens theirs. Let them have toleration and liberty of worship, with all the civil rights we have to give; that is our compact: but let us be true to ourselves and to the world- true to God; let us uphold and assert that Christianity which teaches toleration, and secures liberty of worship. And if we have in the midst of us a powerful and ambitious band of Ecclesiastics, who condemn the system which is our boast, and regard ours as no Christianity; who would put an end to religious freedom and the right of private judgment, let us meet this formidable enemy only by a more firm and constant vindication of that religious system which we regard as the safest for all men, as well Catholics as Protestants, and which, at any rate, is indispensable to the continuance of our national institutions.

Let not our friends become more dangerous than our enemies. Let us not betray Protestant Christianity, for upon it depends the validity of the principles of religious toleration, the rights of conscience,

the right of private judgment, and liberty of worship. If we have no punishment for a system which denies all these principles-and we need none, for these principles imply none-let us at least more faithfully and vigorously propagate that new system of Christianity from which these principles spring, and overcome our enemy by heaping coals of fire upon his head.*

SECTION XIII.

The Policy of Public Schools adopted in the United States. — The necessity of Religious Instruction. — Denominational difficulties. The Nature of the Religious Instruction to be given in them.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS are already the policy of the people of the United States. More than two-thirds of the States have already such schools in operation. Congress has provided an ample fund for their sustenance in all the States in which there is public land. American schools are spoken of throughout the world, where there is question of public education, as among the best in existence. The adoption of this system of public education by the governments of so many States, and the liberal provision made by Congress, indicate that the sentiments of the people in those States are favorable to the system. We run no risk in saying that the intelligent and evangelical portion of the people have brought about this decision. In point of fact, it is well known that these have been the active friends of the public school system. The

* See Appendix A.