education," says Niebuhr. "He shall believe in the letter of the Old and New Testaments, and I shall nurture in him from his infancy a firm faith in all that I have lost, or feel uncertain about. Oh, that such a faith may one day be my own portion! The principles of faith in God, which have been early implanted and carefully watched over, so as to gain even all the strength of prejudice, confer extraordinary powers both over the world within and that without. He who begins his course thus armed fights with a weapon which is wanting to those around him.

"His heart," Niebuhr continues, "shall be raised to God as soon as he is capable of a sentiment, and his childish feelings shall be expressed in prayers and hymns; such religious practices, so despised and unused in our age, shall be a necessity and a law to him. I wish, I strive, with all my heart, that he may grow up with the most absolute faith in RELIGION; that from his earliest years the way may be prepared for the union of faith and reason. . . . But there are men who really imagine they possess religion, who nevertheless know nothing of it."

We know this illustrious scholar as a man of critical keenness and unrivalled sagacity of judgment and reasoning; with the greatest sincerity

in the pursuit of truth, and power in the detection of falsehood. For this very reason his testimony, over against the public scorn of a religious faith by such teachers as Huxley and Tyndall, is priceless and overwhelming. His bitter sorrow and regret on account of his own want of faith gives a melancholy weight to his parental anxiety for the right guiding of his child's mind. Beautifully illustrative is the remark of Ruskin, that "childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, which it is the pride of utmost age to recover."

To the example of this celebrated and learned German historian, and hater of shams, we add that of Franklin, the not less celebrated American philosopher and statesman. If the records of all nations were ransacked, it would be impossible to find instances of minds further removed from any predisposition to credulity, or better secured by mental habits and knowledge of mankind from the domination of imposture. The legacies of belief which they have left for their countrymen are possessions for mankind.

The conclusion in the mind of Niebuhr, noted from his own letters in regard to his children, was that they should be educated under the

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full power of the most sacred prepossessions of divine truth. There should be formed in their minds, so far as a careful education could do it, an anchoring steadfastness of assurance in God and in Christ, and a power of religious faith and reasoning, which he himself to his infinite sorrow had lost, and feared he could never regain. They should thus be kept from that shipwreck and despair in which he had almost perished.

To the same conclusion Franklin had come, politically, in regard to the nation. The people of the United States should be educated under the full power of the most sacred prepossessions. They should believe in God, and in their responsibility as a nation to him; and in the wisdom of their political Constitution, provided only that they would permit themselves to be so guided by him as to frame a righteous chart of government, under his guidance, in answer to prayer.

The scene when Franklin addressed the assembly of Congress in behalf of the wisdom, necessity, and duty of a national acknowledgment of their responsibility to God, and of daily prayers to him for guidance, was in some respects more impressive than anything else recorded in the annals of history. Never did philosopher or statesman utter the last public expression of his thoughts

more impressively, or on a more important and sublime occasion.

Through an active and observant life, from the age of fifteen to that of eighty-four, Franklin's mind travelled from the doctrine of necessity and fate to that of God and prayer; the latter conviction having delivered him from the habit of doubting Divine truth to that of distrusting himself and rejecting human error.

Thus disposed, Franklin watched the deliberations of the Congress for many weeks patiently and calmly, taking as yet little part in them, except in the application of his mind to the great governmental problems that were laid before the representatives to solve. And the greatest of them was that presented by Franklin himself, the obligation of a national religious faith in God, and the duty of seeking him in supplication for his divinely guiding Providence and Spirit.

This was Franklin's religious philosophy; and he would have inspired the whole representative Congress with it, if he could have done it. But he could not breathe into those whom he addressed the fervor and sincerity of his own convictions. They regarded him with amazement, and listened much as the Athenian senate of the Areopagites listened to Paul.

He had declared, several years previous to this occasion: "I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our machine not to see that our human means were unequal to our undertaking; and that if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is He who abases the proud, and favors the humble."

Franklin's motion in the Federal Convention, for opening their deliberations with prayer, was introduced after four or five weeks spent in confusion of counsels, without progress, without unity, but with perplexed and opposing interests and schemes. It seemed as if only an interposition of Divine grace could inspire the members with patriotic confidence and wisdom.

"In this situation of this Assembly," said Franklin, "groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger,