Popular Education [pp. 228-235]

Popular Education.
condition is very apparent even now.
This has resulted from the too prevalent idea, taught by the infidel or
indifferent press, and accepted by
the unreflecting or equally indifferent citizen, that morality can be
maintained without formal or doctrinal religion; that one morality
is as good as another; that Plato
would answer as well as Christ;
that what even the pagans taughtto deal honestly by your neighbor
and perform the domestic and public duties of life with reasonable decency- is quite sufficient; and that
all else is nothing more than priestly dogmatism and controversial jargon. So that, indeed, the prevailing opinion of the country would almost seem to be (if we judge it by
the secular press and multitudes of
very honest and intelligent citizens)
that America, as a Christian democratic nation, may be satisfied to be
as moral, and consequently as grand
and powerful, as was pagan Rome in
the days of her republican simplicity
of manners. They forget or ignore
the history of the Decline and Fall,
and fail to see in that tremendous
catastrophe of the most extraordinary people of the ancient world, the
logical development of the certain
causes of destruction which were inherent in the nation from the day that
Romulus slew his brother upon the
wall of the rising city. It cannot be
that Christ came for a delusion and
a snare, or even as a simple fatuity.
If his coming was necessary, then it
was to teach a new religion and a
new morality; the one inseparable
from the other. If this be indisputable, then all education which is
not based expressly and clearly upon
religion is heathenish, and will prove
destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was
expected to save. It will consume
them as a fire. Pride and lust of
power will burn out the public conscience. The nation will drip with
the blood of unjustifiable conquest,
as did pagan Rome, or be given up
to the ferocious struggle for individual aggrandizement, as seen in later revolutionary times. The father
of our country fully recognized these
principles, and in the foregoing we
have but echoed his words of warning in his Farewell Address to the
American People:
" Of all dispositions and habits," he says,
"which lead to political prosperity, religion
and morality are indispensable supports. A
volume could not trace all their connection
with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for regulation, for life, if the sense of
religious obligation desert the oaths which
are the instruments in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained
without religion."
To this it will be replied, by some
well-meaning persons, "How can we
place education in the United States
upon the basis of doctrinal religion,
when we have innumerable sects,
none of which absolutely agree?"
And now we approach the marrow
of the subject.
First, let us clear away one difficulty. Let it be very distinctly
comprehended that nowhere can the
state find its commission as exclusive educator of the people. That
is a duty and a privilege belonging,
of original right, to the family; it is
domestical and not political, though
it may be always, and is most frequently, wise and politic that the
state should lend efficient aid to assist, but not arbitrarily to control the
training of the free citizen's child.
The parent is placed over the child
by the Creator, and is the natural
guardian, primarily responsible for
the training which is to lead through
this valley of probation to the eternal home. Religious freedom, free
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