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r a change for the better, just as if it were possible "to gather grapes of briars, or figs of thorns."

In these Public Schools the whole education of children is directed to the cultivation of their heads or intellectual faculties alone. The heart, with all its moral and mysterious emotions, is entirely neglected. Every mental power and acquirement is intended and directed to promote their prosperity, success, and happiness in this life; at least this is what is sought and promised as the reward of study and application. They are constantly presented with the bright side of the world. Scientific knowledge, they are taught, will do away with the old drudgery of labor, and bring the acquirement of wealth and honor within the reach of all, no matter how poor or humble the condition of their fathers or mothers. They have all, no doubt, read the Declaration of Independence, and learned that all men are created free and equal. They have shared the equal bounty of the State in the way of education, and have, in the language of the day, "an equal right on the world for a living."

I ask if this is not a pretty fair and not overdrawn statement of the case? You will bear in mind that all this time the free-and-easy social intercourse of the sexes is going on; that while their studies and exercises are strictly confined to dry, secular knowledge, or such other pursuits as might excite their vanity, pride, or imagination, not one line or lesson, caution or command, as stated before, is used or administered to curb or control the natural, I might say inevitable, cry of the youthful passions clamoring for their gratification.

EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM ON THE MALE PORTION OF SOCIETY.

You must remember that, as I have said, not one of the boys have ever been taught the first principle, prayer, or moral duty. They are, as far as the Public School-training went, perfectly ignorant of the Divine law as rule of our life; they are, in fact, but educated apes or animals. How can this young man reconcile "poverty and wealth," "labor and ease," "sickness and health," "adversity and prosperity," "rich and poor," "obedience and authority," "liberty and law," etc., etc. All these are enigmas to him, or, if he affects to understand them at all, he thinks they arise from bad management or bad government, and can and ought to be remedied by repression or sumptuary legislation. He will be a tyrant or slave, a glutton or miser, a fanatic or libertine, a sneak-thief or highway robber, as circumstances may influence him. Think you that the common "fall back" on principle of self-interest--well or ill understood--will ever restrain such a one from doing any act of impulse or indulgence, provided he thinks it can be safely done? He will look on life as a game of address or force, in which the best man is he who carries off the prize.

The heart of such a man is cold, insincere, destitute of every tender chord for a tender vibration, of every particle of right or just feeling or principle that can be touched; on the contrary, it is roused to rage, revenge and falsehood if interfered with. How is such a heart to be touched or moved, or placed under such influences as could move it? Indeed, it would require a miracle! Nay, even a miracle would fail to make a salutary impression upon such a heart. A French infidel declared that, should he be told that the most remarkable miracle was occurring close by his house, he would not take a step out of his way to see it. Pride never surrenders; it prefers rather to take an illogical position than to bow even to the authority of reason. Furious, beside itself, and absurd, it revolts against evidence. To all reasoning, to undeniable evidence, the infidel--the man without religion--opposes his own will: "Such is my determination." It is sweet to him to be stronger, single-handed, than common sense, stronger than miracles, than even the God who manifests Himself by them.

EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM ON THE FEMALE PORTION OF SOCIETY.

Now, whatever success a "godless system of education" may have on boys, I think all must admit that it must prove not only a failure, but a positive injury, to girls. It is not that moral and religious education is not equally required by both, in a spiritual sense, but that women, in an especial manner, have certain duties assigned them, in the Order of Providence, of so high and holy a character, that it requires, in some sense, a special education to fit them for the faithful discharge of these duties.

Let us remember that the Public School-girls of to-day will be the mothers of to-morrow. Mothers are called by God to take particular care of the bodily and spiritual life of their children. This care is a heavy, a very heavy burden indeed, and mothers cannot carry this burden without a tender love for their children. Now God has made the love of mothers for their children a necessary love. It is for this reason that there is no command in the Divine Law for parents to love their children, whilst, on the contrary, children are commanded to love their parents. Love towards one's own offspring is a love so deeply planted in the heart by Nature herself, that the wild beasts never fail to love their young. It is said that even tigers, hearing the cry of their whelps when they are taken by the hunters, will plunge into the sea to swim after the vessels where they are confined.

Some years ago a vessel sailed from the coast of Ireland. It was filled with passengers who were coming to this country to better their future. The vessel set sail with a favorable wind. The sky was clear, and the sun shone gayly upon the sparkling sea. But suddenly the heavens grew dark. A fierce storm arose. The winds howled madly around the vessel. The ship was hurried on--on, till it was dashed against the rocks. The wild, surging waves dashed over it. The vessel split in twain. Part remained hanging amid the rocks, and the rest sank, with those on board, beneath the waves, far down into the depth of the sea. The storm continued to rage for several days. At last, when the wind had died away, some hardy fishermen, who lived on the coast, took a skiff and rowed out to the wreck. They entered the part of the vessel that remained hanging amid the rocks. They broke open the cabin door. They heard distinctly the feeble wail of a child. They rushed in. They found a little babe lying upon the breast of its dead mother. The child was eagerly sucking the blood which oozed from a large wound in its mother's breast. The mother had died of cold and hunger; but, even amid her fearful sufferings, she did not forget her child. She took a sharp knife, and, with the wonderful love of a mother's heart, she made a deep gash in her breast, in order that her child might preserve its life by drinking her own heart's blood!

"Oh, God of mercy," she prays, "spare my child! Heaven is already full of light and gladness. Do not then take to heaven the light and joy of my heart. Thou art ever happy, O my God! do not then deprive me of my only happiness. God of compassion, O leave me the sweet babe whom Thou hast given me! my love, and all my happiness, is centred in him. Since he has come to me, the earth, and sea, and sky, the whole world around has grown doubly beautiful. The air seems filled with light, and song, and sweetness. Ah, do not take my child away, for when his tender body lies beneath the sod, my heart and life shall lie there with it, and this whole world shall grow dark and dreary as one vast gloomy graveyard. O God! remember I am yet so young. I am not used to tears. Deal gently with my poor weak heart! I have never yet known what it is to lose a friend, a relative, or beloved one. O God! shall, then, the first that teaches me the dread meaning of grave and shroud be my own, my first-born child? O Jesus, I conjure Thee, by Thy wounded Heart--wounded for love of me--do not crush my tender heart, for Thou hast made it tender. Thou hast made me a mother; oh, spare my darling child!"

Ah! who can measure the depth of the wonderful love of a mother's heart! But this natural love of a mother for her offspring, in order to be persevering and untiring, must be cultivated--must be ennobled and supernaturalized by religious education; otherwise this love will decrease, and be lost in the end, and with the loss of this love the Christian woman has lost her divine calling. Now as no religious education is imparted to the girls in the Public Schools, can we wonder to see thousands and thousands of them who have lost their divine calling--can we wonder that we hear of a countless number of unnatural crimes, committed under the veil of marriage, that are becoming so common at the present day? Dr. Storer, of Massachusetts, declares that increase of children in Massachusetts is limited almost wholly to the foreign population. Mr. Warren Johnson, State Superintendent of Common Schools in Maine, reports to the Legislature a decrease of 16,683, between the ages of four and twenty-one years, from the census of 1858. Total decrease from maximum of 1860 is nearly 20,000. Mr. Johnson asks: "Are the modern fashionable criminalities of infanticide creeping into our State community?" Dr. H. R. Storer, of Massachusetts, in 1859, declared that forced abortions in America were of frequent occurrence, and that this frequency was increasing so, that from 1 in 1,633 of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans has been publicly noticed and commented upon time and again; but the true cause thereof, if known, was carefully concealed. And can we wonder that the crime has descended from the highest to the lowest, and now pervades all classes of society? Statistics have been frequently published to show that in certain States of the Union, and in certain districts of those States, the births did not, and do not, equal the deaths; and were it not for the foreign population among us many of those districts, and not a few of those States, would be depopulated in a few years. Massachusetts and New York lead the van in this criminal record. Dr. T. A. Reamy, of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1867, wrote, that after a careful survey of the field he was ready to say that "to-day no sin approaches with such stealth and dangerous power the altars of the Church as foeticide; and, unless it can be stayed, not only will it work its legitimate moral depravity and social ruin, but God will visit dreadful judgment upon us no less severe, perhaps, than He did upon the Cities of the Plain."

In 1865, Dr. Morse Stewart, of Detroit, Michigan, declared that few of either sex entered the marital relation without full information as to the ways and means of destroying the legitimate results of matrimony. And among married persons so extensive has this practice become, that people of high repute not only commit this crime, but do not even blush to speak boastingly among their intimates of the deed, and the means of accomplishing it.

Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass., at a meeting of the Social Science Association, Boston, entitled "Wanted--More Mothers," remarked "that the increase of population for twenty-five years has been mainly in cities and towns, and it will be found to be largely made up of foreign element; and in the smaller villages, chiefly American, the stock has hardly increased at all.

"We find there are absolutely more deaths than births among the strictly American children; so that, aside from immigration, and births of children of foreign parentage, the population of Massachusetts is really decreasing.

Many parts of Vermont are undergoing a gradual depopulation. Sandgate had a population of 1,187 in 1810, and 805 in 1860.

The town of Rupert had a population of 1,848 in 1800, which had diminished to 1,103 in 1860.

The town of Arlington was settled in the year 1762. In the year 1800 all the arable and pasturage land was occupied, and the inhabitants numbered 1,569. In 1830 the number had decreased to 1,207, and in 1860 to 1,146.

"The Rev. Dr. Todd has written two most truthful lectures, one entitled 'Fashionable Murders,' and the other 'A Cloud with a Dark Lining.' His revelations with regard to the determination that the Americans evince not to have children, is fearfully true, more especially among the women.

"Three doors from the rooms I lived in is the stylish house of Dr. and Mrs. Grindle, where there are hundreds of 'fashionable murders' committed yearly. And twice the papers have teemed with accounts of the unhappy mothers dying, and on the last occasion the child was not to be found, although born alive--and nothing done to either the doctor or his lady!"

Trustworthy physicians assure us there are not less than sixty ghouls in New York City, who grow rich by killing infants. We have seen the number stated at six times sixty. Those who have passed through Fifth Avenue, New York, must have noticed a magnificent dwelling, or rather palace, in the neighborhood of the Central Park. It was built by a certain doctress who has acquired her wealth by the murder of helpless innocents.

The unhappy victims of these ghouls are not generally of the low and debased sort. Most of these illegitimate mothers are of the educated classes, many of them, shocking to say, under the age of fifteen; many of them delicate, sensitive females, who make use of these unhallowed means to hide their shame from the eyes of their friends and relatives.

The number of marriages has largely decreased within the past few years. The crime of infanticide is largely increasing. A certain species of it is practised in the first families, and the drugs and implements for committing such murders are publicly sold everywhere. Physicians advertise publicly, offering their services to enable people, as they say, "to enjoy the pleasures of marriage without the burden." At least 25,000 foeticides are annually committed. How to preserve their looks, and how to avoid having children, seem to be the chief aim of many women nowadays. In the upper classes of society, in some of our large cities, a lady who is the mother of more than two children is looked upon as unfashionable.

The author of the book "Satan in Society" writes, on page 130-131, as follows: "A medical writer of some note published, in 1861, a pamphlet, in which he declared himself the hero of three hundred abortions." He admits, in a work of his, that he only found abortion necessary to save the life of the mother in four instances, thus publicly confessing that in an immense number of cases he has performed the operation on other grounds; and yet, in the face of all this self-accusation, several attempts at his expulsion from his county medical society have been defeated, and he is accounted "a brother in good standing" of several learned bodies, and holds an enviable position in a fashionable church and fashionable society. This rascal walks unhung; for this the "Medical Code" is primarily responsible, and after that the "ministers of the Gospel," the "worshippers" in the churches, the dwellers in "south fronts."

I have said above that the love of children has always been deemed a sign of superior intelligence--of noble manhood. Affection for its offspring is a quality possessed alike by all animals, with scarcely an exception; and few indeed of the millions of the animal creation seek to destroy their own offspring after birth, or to so neglect them as to leave them liable to destruction by other bodies or forces. It was left for human intelligences to encompass the death of their children, both before birth and after, and it was left to the anti-Christian civilization of this nineteenth century also to discover and adopt the most revolting and barbarous means to accomplish this end. The crime of foeticide, or infanticide, is not of recent growth. Like every other crime, it has had a venerable existence, but its beastly development among us has been mainly the work of a few years. Thirteen years ago its prevalence attracted the attention of medical jurists in all parts of our country, and essays, tracts, and bound volumes were issued against it. But the crime grew apace, and its deadly and dastardly fruits appear before us to-day, sickening to the moral conscience and religious sentiments of the nation.

And in view of the alarming increase of this crime of child-murder, the prediction of Dr. M. B. Wright to the Medical Society of Ohio, in 1860, will soon be fulfilled, namely: "The time is not far distant when children will be sacrificed among us with as little hesitation as among the Hindoos, unless we stop it here and now."

The moral character of the Public Schools in many of our cities has sunk so low, that even courtesans have disguised themselves as school-girls, in order the more surely to ply their foul avocation.

WHAT IS IT TO BE A MOTHER?

Let us again bear in mind that the Public School-girls of to-day will be the mothers of to-morrow. Mothers are destined, by God, to bring up children for heaven. This is their grand mission. What a happiness, what an honor for a mother to give angels to heaven! Would to God she only knew the real dignity and importance of her mission, and comprehended the qualifications in the moral and religious order that best prepare her for the duties of her sublime calling! What mission can be more sublime, more sacred, what mission can be more meritorious before God than that of giving to the young child the primary lessons of religion?

Our Saviour says: "Whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones, even a cup of cold water, shall not lose his reward."-- May we not infer that those mothers who bestow upon children the treasures of divine knowledge will receive an exceedingly great reward? If God denounces so severely those who scandalize little children: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea" , what recompense will mothers not receive who instruct and sanctify them?

Mothers who give their efforts and means to this object, choose the surest way to appease the anger of God, and to insure their own salvation. They choose the best means of attaining a high degree of perfection. Almighty God gives to each one the graces proper to his vocation. Mothers, therefore, who are devoted to the religious instruction of their children, must rest assured that God will give them extraordinary graces to arrive at perfection. "Whoever," says our Lord, "shall receive one such little child in My name, receiveth Me."-- Whosoever, then, believes that our Saviour will not allow Himself to be surpassed in liberality, must also believe that He will bestow His choicest blessings on those mothers who instruct their children in the knowledge of God and the love of virtue.

What obligations have not the "angels" of children "who always see the face of the Father who is in heaven" , to pray for these mothers--their dear colleagues and charitable substitutes, who perform their office and hold their place on earth. The children will pray for their mothers, and God can refuse nothing to the prayers of children, and their supplications will ascend with the prayers of the angels.

Do you desire, O Christian mother, to be saved? Do you wish to acquire great treasures in heaven, and to attain great perfection in this life?--Employ yourself diligently in the religious instruction of your children. Do you wish to gain the love of our Lord, and to deserve His protection?--Teach your children to fear and love God; you cannot do anything more pleasing to His Divine Heart.

It is related in the Gospel that mothers brought to Him little children, that He might touch them. And the disciples rebuked them that brought them. And when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and said to them: "Suffer little children to come to me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God; and embracing them, and laying His hands on them, He blessed them." If Jesus was displeased with those who prevented little children from coming to Him, what love and tenderness will He not have for those mothers by whose means they come to Him?

Oh! how consoled will they not be in their last hour, when they shall see the souls of those whom they prepared for heaven, accompanied by their good angels, surrounding their bed of death, forming, as it were, a guard to protect them from the snares and assaults of the enemy!

This is a happiness which those mothers may confidently expect who labor assiduously to give their children a good religious education. Ah! would to God, I say once more, that mothers would understand their sublime mission on earth!

But it is just here that the difficulty lies: how can a mother give the child these early lessons of piety and devotion, if she has never learned them herself? How can she train it to raise its young heart to that Heavenly Father, and ask Him for His continued mercy and blessings, of whose name or law she has never been informed or instructed in the Public Schools? How can she impart to her child that knowledge which she herself has never learned in the Public Schools, and which she has always been taught to look upon as unnecessary? Can she teach the child to love God and keep His commandments, to hate sin, and avoid it for the love of God?--To love, honor, and obey its parents, not from natural motives alone, but because, in so doing, it would love, honor, and obey God in the person of its father and mother, and have thus not only a great reward, and length of days here below, but also the joys of heaven above? This lesson the poor mother was never taught in the Public Schools. How can she teach her sweet child that it has an immortal soul, that God sees even the inmost thoughts of the soul, that it is this soul that sins by consenting to the evil inclinations of the heart; that when the child is tempted to pride, gluttony, anger, disobedience, theft, lies, or any manner of uncleanness, even in thought as well as deed, that it must call on God and its good guardian angel to come to its assistance, and keep its soul from consenting, and its body from doing, any of those things that might offend its good God? All this the poor mother has not been taught in the Public Schools. The State claims the right to educate her, and it did not regard this kind of knowledge necessary, else it would have provided it.

Let us again bear in mind that the Public School-girls of to-day will be the women of to-morrow.

The most majestic kingdom for woman to reign in is home. A woman nowhere looks more lovely, more truly great, more fascinating, and more really beautiful and useful, than when in her own house, surrounded by her children, giving them what instruction she is capable of, or devising some plan of intellectual entertainment. Depend on it that this is the grandest position in this world for a woman, and this home-audience is nearer and sweeter to the affectionate heart of a mother whose brain is properly developed, than all the applause and flatteries that the outer world can bestow. It is not in the court-room, the pulpit, and rostrum, but it is among the household congregation that woman's influence can achieve so much, and reign paramount. This, however, is not easily understood and practised by women who have been educated without religion. And it is for this reason that such women cannot make faithful wives and tender mothers.

Young ladies whose education has been devoid of moral and religious instruction, whose imagination, always over-ardent and vivacious, has been still more stimulated by a class of exercises, public examinations, and studies better calculated to give them an unreal than a sober view of life, are not prepared to fulfil their divine mission on earth. An illustration of this truth is the fact that quite recently over six hundred personal applications--mostly made by girls of from fifteen to twenty--were made in one day at the Grand Opera House in New York to fill places in the ballet and Oriental marches of the spectacle of Lalla Rookh. Assuredly this fact is evidence that the women in New York, like so many women in all quarters of the land, are unwilling to do the work which properly belongs to them to do, and prefer any shift, even the degrading one mentioned above, to honest household labor. There are thousands of ladies to whom the following description, written by a lady herself, may well be applied:

"How is it that there is not more nature in the present age, and less sophistication in society, and that mothers do not teach their daughters to fit themselves for wives and mothers? For they all seem to be setting traps to get husbands. Why, the young ladies of the present day are quite ashamed should they be ignorant of the name of the last new opera and its composer, but would feel quite indignant if they were asked whether they knew how to make good soup, or broil a beefsteak, or mend stockings.

"Very many young ladies act as catch-traps, with their painted faces and affected sweetness, to lure young men into the swamps of iniquity.

This sort of women wish to have the "women's rights." They would like, if they knew how, to turn the world upside down, and inside out. This great desire among a certain class of women, to have the world think that they possess masculine power, generally proceeds from persons who wish to create a sensation, and fail to do so in the station they belong to. When a woman wishes to go out of her natural element, she shows that her intellect is shallow, and she is desirous of being thought greater than her sex generally; while, in reality, she discovers to us her own littleness. These people seem to wish to be what it is impossible for them ever to become--"men."

The good and perfection of women consist in remaining contentedly in the place which God has assigned them, and in performing well the duties of their divine calling. If the hand wishes to be in the place of the eye, and the eye wishes to be where the hand is, they become burdensome, and disturb the good order and harmony of the body. Now it is the same with the members of the social body. If women are in the place, or engaged in the occupation which God has chosen for them, they enjoy a profound peace; they rest under His protection; they are nourished by His grace; they are enriched by His blessings, and work out their eternal happiness with but little pain.

EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM CONTINUED.

Few questions affect so directly the welfare and interests of the people as the question of education; and assuredly, in this country, there is none of more moment as regards the well-being and permanence of our national institutions. These, our institutions, our prosperity and civilization, depend for their permanence and perpetuity, not so much on the culture of the arts, sciences, literature, or philosophy, as on the general diffusion of the salutary and vivifying principles of religion. History tells us in its every page, that the decline and downfall of nations have ever been caused by irreligion and immorality.

Only keep up the present godless system of State education, and depend on it, as sure as effect follows cause, every species of villany and defilement will flood the land. It is certain that all education which is not based on religion is heathenish, and must prove destructive in the end. It will destroy the very people whom it was expected to save. It will consume them as a fire.

"You all have, undoubtedly, heard of Blind Palmer, a professed infidel. After he had tried to lecture against Christ he lost his sight, and died suddenly in Philadelphia, in the forty-second year of his age. You will also have heard of the so-called Orange County Infidel Society. They held, among other tenets, that it was right to indulge in lasciviousness, and that it was right to regulate their conduct as their propensities and appetites should dictate; and as these principles were carried into practical operation by some families belonging to the association, in one instance a son held criminal intercourse with his mother, and publicly justified his conduct. The step-father, and husband to the mother who thus debased herself, boldly avowed that, in his opinion, it was morally right to hold such intercourse. The members of this impious society were visited by God in a remarkable manner. They all died, within five years, in some strange or unnatural manner. One of these was seized with a sudden and violent illness, and in his agony exclaimed: 'My bowels are on fire--die I must,' and his spirit passed away.

"Dr. H., another of the party, was found dead in his bed the next morning.

"D. D., a printer, fell in a fit and died immediately, and three others were drowned within a few days.

"B. A., a lawyer, came to his death by starvation, and C. C., also educated for the bar, and a man of superior intellectual endowments, died of want, hunger, and filth.

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