The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
what we had to offer for another time and place. Our end,
for the present, will be answered, if we shall have furnished,
even to a few congenial readers, the suggestion of a plan, however simple, by which the elementary minutiae of the history,
instead of being thrown aside or slighted, may acquire a legitimate, though adventitious interest, as subjects of detailed investigation, and a firmer hold upon the student's memory.
ART. V.-1. Denominational Educatzon. By the Rev. Dr. R.
J. Breckinridge. Published originally in the Southern Pres byterian Review. Philadelphia: Printed by C. Sherman.
1854. Pp. 24.
2. Letter to the Governor of South Carolina. By the Rev.
Dr. Thornwell.
3. The Thirty-Third and Thirty-Fourth Reports of the Board
of Education of the Presbyterian Church. Philadelphia:
1852 and 1853.
4. Right of the Bible in our Public Schools. By George B.
Cheever, D. D. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, No.
285 Broadway. 1854. Pp. 303.
5. The Position of Christianity in the United States, in its
Relations with our Politzical Institutions, and especially with
reference to Religious Instruction in our Public Schools.
By Stephen Colwell. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo &
Co. 1854. Pp. 175.
THESE publications are evidence of the strong and widely
diffused interest taken in the subject of Popular Education.
They evince also, as we think, that in the midst of apparently
conflicting principles, there is a substantial agreement among
religious men, as to the most essential points involved in the
discussion. We are well aware that the difference between the
religious community and those who, in many instances, control
the action of our legislative bodies in relation to this subject, is
radical and irreconcilable. We are sorry to be obliged to add,
that many religious men, from different motives, have been led
to throw their influence in favour of this latter party, who
advocate the exclusion of religious instruction from our public
schools. The religious community, however, as a body, we
[JULY,
504