The Education Question [pp. 504-544]

The Education Question.
under obligation to secure the preaching of the Gospel to the
people. So it would be, were there not other agencies by which
that end might be more safely and effectually accomplished.
In every case in which other agencies cannot operate, the State
is bound to provide its subjects with the ministrations of the
gospel. It is under the most sacred obligations to provide
chaplains for the army and navy, for military schools, and
penitentiaries, and on this principle all Christian States, our
own among the number, have ever acted.
The two leading objections to the doctrine, that the State is
bound to provide for the religious education of the young, are
the following; the one theoretical, and the other practical. The
former is, that the State has no religion and has no means of
determining what the true religion is; the latter, that in consequence of the diversity of opinion on religious subjects among
the people, no system of religious instruction can be introduced
into the public schools, which will not offend the feelings, or interfere with the rights of conscience of a portion of the people.
In the New Englander for April, 1848, already quoted, it is
said: " The principle, which has been so extensively adopted in
the discussion of this subject, that in this country the State, or
civil power, is Christian and Protestant, and therefore that
schools sustained and directed in part thereby are Christian and
Protestant, and that whoever attends them has no right to object to a rule requiring all to study Christian and Protestant
books and doctrines, we wholly disbelieve and deny. The State,
the civil power in whatever form, in this country, is no more
Protestant or Christian, than it is Jewish or Mohammedan. It
is of no religion whatever. It is simply political, interposing,
or having the right to interpose, in matters of religion, only by
protecting its citizens in the free exercise of their religion,
whatever it be; of course excepting such violations of civil
rights, or civil morality, as any may commit under a pretence,
or a fanatical sense of religion." p. 242. Here, indeed, is a
radical difference. We, on the contrary, maintain that the
State in this country is Christian and Protestant, and is bound
to see that the schools which it establishes are conducted on
Christian and Protestant principles, and that the chaplains
which it appoints are neither Jews nor Mohammedans. This
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[JULY,