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"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.

"Another one, who had studied to be a preacher, suddenly disappeared, but at length his remains were found fast in the ice, where he evidently had been for a long time, as the fowls of the air, and the inhabitants of the deep, had consumed the most of his flesh.

"Joshua Miller, notorious as a teacher of infidelity, was found upon a stolen horse, and was shot by Col. J. Woodhull; N. Miller, his brother, who was discovered one Sunday morning seated upon a log playing cards, was also shot.

"Benjamin Kelly was shot off his horse by a boy, the son of one Clark, who had been murdered by Kelly; his body remained upon the ground until his flesh had been consumed by birds.

"W. Smith was shot by B. Thorpe and others, for robbery.

"S. T. betrayed his own confidential friend for a few dollars; his friend was hung, and he was afterwards shot by D. Lancaster.

"F. S. fell from his horse and was killed. W. Clark drank himself to death; he was eaten by the hogs before his bones were found, which were recognized by his clothing. J. A., sen., died in the woods, his rum-jug by his side; he was not found until a dog brought home one of his legs, which was identified by his stocking; his bones had been picked by animals.

"S. C. hung himself, and another destroyed himself by taking laudanum. D. D. was hired for ten dollars to shoot a man, for which offence he died upon the gallows.

"The most of those who survived were either sent to the State Prison, or were publicly whipped for crimes committed against the peace and dignity of the State."

This is a brief history of the Orange County "Liberals," as they called themselves. To the infidel and evil-doer, it presents matter worthy of serious reflection, while the believer will recognize in each event the special judgment of God, which is too clearly indicated to be doubted by any honest mind. I ask, will the Lord fail to visit with similar judgments all those who are guilty of the same crimes? Will the Lord fail to visit with similar judgments all those who, by keeping up and defending a godless system of education, prepare the young for infidelity, and all kinds of crimes and iniquities? If the Lord punished so severely the King Antiochus for carrying away the sacred vessels from the temple of Jerusalem; if He sent so many plagues upon the Egyptians, and drowned, at last, the King Pharaoh and his whole army in the Red Sea, for refusing to let the people of God offer sacrifices where and in the manner the Lord desired it, what will be the punishments for those who, by a godless system of education, abolish religion? If God slew twenty-four thousand men of the Israelites for having fallen into fornication , with what punishments will He visit those who add, to the sin of fornication and adultery, even the crime of child-murder! Numberless child-murders are committed daily in the land. Assuredly the voice of these innocent victims will cry to heaven for vengeance, and the Lord will not deafen His ear to their voice. If the American people will not soon put an end to the godless system of education, if they permit any longer the rising generation to be raised to infidelity, the wrath of the Lord, enkindled against them ever since the introduction of the godless system of education, will fall upon them. In former times, when the Lord threatened the people with His chastisements, they entered into themselves, and did penance, because they had faith, and the Lord was appeased. But our modern heathens laugh at the very idea of doing penance. So the wrath of the Lord will surely overtake them when they least expect it.

THE STATE.--ITS USURPATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.--ITS INCOMPETENCY TO EDUCATE.

It is certain and undeniable that two orders of things actually exist in this world, the natural order and the supernatural--nature and grace. These two orders have the same ultimate end, though, in themselves, they are distinct. Nature is, and must be, always subordinate to grace; the natural must be always subservient to the supernatural. This is God's immutable decree. Hence religion must always hold the first place in everything. A system of education that places the natural and the supernatural on the same level is absurd, and must be condemned; but a system of education that ignores the supernatural altogether, is, if possible, even more wicked and detestable. Yet this wicked, detestable, irreligious system, diabolical in its origin, and subversive of all political, social, and religious order, is imposed by the State upon all Christian denominations, whether they approve of it or not. Now the State has no right whatever to force such a godless system upon its subjects.

For the right understanding of this most important point, I attach great importance to a clear understanding of what is commonly called the State.

People in general have a vague and confused conception of this matter. You will hear the people talk of the "sovereignty of the State," "the life of the State," "the power of the State," "the absolute authority of the State," "the paramount allegiance due to the State," etc., etc. Not only the Public at large, but even those who assume to lead and direct public opinion, are constantly blundering on this subject.

To illustrate: a false conception of the nature and authority, of the legitimate functions, rights and duties of what is called the "State," has led, and will, if not corrected, ever lead to the most deplorable political, social, and religious disorder and oppression. As diverging lines in mathematics can never approximate, but must continue to widen as they are extended, so a false departure from a political "standpoint" can never be rectified unless by a return to correct first principles. This is what is meant by the democratic maxim, "that a frequent return to first principles is necessary to secure the ends of public liberty."

That sphere of action of the State in this country is clearly defined in the written Constitution. The State, then, must scrupulously abstain from violating any of the rights it was organized to protect.

There never has been, and never will be, but two forms of government--one seeking to restrain, the other to enlarge, the liberties of the people. To the former belong the centralized and despotic governments of the past and present; to the latter, the limited and representative ones.

Here is where the danger comes from, and it is against this that the people must provide. The people must see to it that the State, or those who are charged with its authority, keep within their proper place. The people can never be too vigilant or jealous of their constituted authority, never permit themselves to be the victims of misplaced confidence. The State is not seldom the usurper--the rebel that should be watched. The allegiance is not to it, but from it to the people--its master. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

But most absurd did the State-school system appear after it had been transplanted into free America. Here this "State system of education" was at first applied to the poor, and other unprovided-for "waifs of society." But not long after, the State claimed to have a paramount interest in the children of all classes; it made no distinction, it knew not the rich from the poor, but opened its scholastic treasures alike, and it was thought to be all right.

What an absurdity! The State, as I have remarked, must scrupulously abstain from violating any of those rights which it was organized to protect. It must not paralyze or take away the industry of the individual, family, or private institutions by substituting for it its own industry. The State should rather protect and promote the industry of its subjects, as well as other rights and liberties. Let me speak more plainly: the State, for instance, should protect trade, but it should not be itself a tradesman; the State should encourage agriculture, but it should not be itself a farmer; the State should sustain honest handicraft, but it should not work at shoe-making or tailoring, and bread-baking. So, in the same manner, the State should promote and protect education, but it should not be itself a school-master, and give instruction.

What a cry would be raised if the State erected State workshops, and thereby ruined all other similar trades! Now the State does the same thing, as far as possible, in regard to education. What an absurdity! In our free country, State education has no more foundation in good sense than the old sumptuary laws, that regulated the length of a boot or the dimensions of a skirt.

If the State claims the right to educate our children, why does it not just as well claim the right to nurse, feed, clothe, doctor, and lodge them? Indeed these necessities are more indispensable, and must be supplied to a considerable extent before education can be given at all. Why should the State throw all these burdens on the parents, and assume that of instruction? It cannot claim to know more of grammar than of the art of nursing and cooking. It is even said that the tailor and barber have more to do in fashioning the man than the school-master.

Again, how absurd is it not for the State to undertake to teach all alike, without regard to their circumstances or prospects in life, the same business. This scholastic equality soon ends, if it ever had a reality. They cannot all expect to be Newtons, Humboldts, or La Places. They cannot be all, nay, not one in ten thousand, "professors," or "editors," or what not. We cannot, if we would, escape the sentence imposed on our forefather in the garden: "Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy face." As well might the State claim that all the children from seven to seventeen years of age should sit at the same table, provided at public expense, and be served with the same food and the same number of dishes. If the State thinks it necessary to prescribe a State education, it is equally important that their food, and even their clothing, should be of the approved State quality and pattern!!! All know that this was the old Lacaedemonian plan, and how it ended history tells;--in ferocity, avarice, dishonesty and disruption. All admit the folly and wickedness of forcing a people into uniformity in matter of religion. Now it is just as unreasonable, just as absurd, just as wicked to force the people into uniformity in the matter of education. One species of tyranny as well as the other disregards the just claims of conscience, tramples on the most vital rights of individuals, and usurps the most sacred right of the family.

Nothing shows better the absurdity of the State in claiming the right of education, than its incompetency for the task. The State is forbidden any interference with religion.

But let me not be misunderstood as concluding that states, nations, or kingdoms are not moral persons, and are not responsible for their acts and conduct to Almighty God. They have no right to do wrong more than an individual. "States" have their lives, their mission, their destiny; they have their sphere here below. They represent the temporal, or the things which belong to Caesar.

The constitutions of the State guarantee to every citizen the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; but this is not guaranteeing to every one the liberty of not worshipping God at all, to deny His existence, His revelation, or to worship a false god. The freedom guaranteed is the freedom of religion, not the freedom of infidelity. The American Constitution grants to the infidel the right of protection in his civil and political equality, but it grants him no right to protection and support in his infidelity; for infidelity is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. The American State is Christian, and under the Christian law, and is based upon Christian principles. It is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, Spiritism, Freelovism, Pantheism, or Atheism. But the State does the contrary. For, I ask, is not the State indirectly prohibiting the profession of Christianity by establishing a system of education which prohibits all religious instruction? The State forbids the teacher to speak a word on the subject of religion.

The nameless abominations of the Communists, Fourrierists, and other such vile and degraded fraternities; the cold-blooded murders and frightful suicides that fill so many domestic hearths with grief and shame; the scarcely-concealed corruption of public and professional men; the adroit peculation and wilful embezzlement of the public money; those monopolizing speculations and voluntary insolvencies so ruinous to the community at large; and, above all, those shocking atrocities so common in our country of unbelief--the legal dissolution of the matrimonial tie, and the wanton tampering with life in its very bud; all these are humiliating facts sufficient to convince any impartial mind that there can be no social virtue, no morality, no true and lasting greatness, without religion.

"Religion," says Lord Derby, "is not a thing apart from education, but is interwoven with its whole system; it is a principle which controls and regulates the whole mind and happiness of the people." And, "Popular education," says Guizot, "to be truly good and socially useful, must be fundamentally religious."

Science, without religion, is more destructive than the sword in the hands of unprincipled men; it will prove more of a demon than a god. It is these upholders of the present Public School system that arrest the progress of true happiness in our country, and prepare terrible catastrophes, which may deluge the land with blood.

Who are those turbulent revolutionists who now long to erect the guillotine by the Tuilleries? And who are those secret conspirators and their myrmidon partisans who have sworn to unify Italy or lay it in ruins? Men who were taught to scout the idea of a God and rail at religion, to consider Christianity as a thing of the past; men who revel in wild chimeras by night, and seek to realize their mad dreams by day.

Let us, then, dear American fellow-citizens, rest assured that intellectual discipline, without the co?peration of any religious element, will not, and cannot, produce the greatness of a nation, nor can it maintain its life and splendor and prevent its decay; let us, on the contrary, be persuaded that the only safety for a commonwealth, the only source of greatness and prosperity for a nation, as well as of tranquillity and happiness for the individual, is the true religion of Jesus Christ; it is this religion alone that is the safeguard of morality, and morality is the best security of law, as well as the surest pledge of freedom.

THE STATE A ROBBER.--VIOLATION OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND COMMON LAW.

We have seen, so far, that the irreligious, godless system of the Public Schools tends directly to turn the youth of both sexes into the worst kind of infidels; to make them disregard good principles, and hold iniquity in veneration; to do away, not only with all revealed religion, but even with the law of nature; to make them practise fraud, theft, and robbery almost as a common trade; to make them regardless of their parents and of all divinely constituted authority; we have seen that this godless system of education is the most powerful means to create confusion, not only in religion, but also in government and in the family circle; to increase the number of apostates, and make of these apostates members of such secret societies as aim at the overthrow of governments and all good order, and Christian religion itself.

Truly, this godless system of education, if carried out to its logical consequences, will disrupt society, destroy the right of the Christian family entirely, bring back on the world the barbarism, tyranny and brutality of Pagan antiquity, and make slaves and victims of its children and their posterity forever!

Referring to the wrong done to Catholics who cannot, in conscience, send their children to these schools, Judge Taft, of Ohio, said not long ago:

If the State taxes us, as a religious and Christian people, for the education of our children, it must give us a Christian education. If it cannot, or will not do that, it must cease to tax us, and leave the education of our children to ourselves. If the Christian gives to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, he has a right to demand of Caesar that he allow him to give to God what belongs to God.

Again, the Constitution says, "That no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public worship, nor support any minister of the gospel, or teacher of religion," etc.; and it says, "That no private property ought to be taken or applied to public use without just compensation." Now let us apply these constitutional principles to State-schools, and see if our compulsory support of them is not violative of our constitution as well as common law. Why is it "that no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public worship, nor support any minister of religion"? Simply because he "don't want to"; and he don't want to, "because it is against his conscience"; and "no human authority," says the Constitution, "can control or interfere with the rights of conscience"; that is all the reason, and no other. The State believes that all places of worship, and ministers of the gospel, are good; but, knowing that there is a difference of opinion among the people on that subject, wisely leaves such matters to their choice, and will not take private property for public use without compensation. Why, then, is private property taken for Public Schools without compensation? We cannot use them in conscience, and we have seen there is no lawful power or authority to "control or interfere with conscience." I ask, then, if I am not right in stating that our compulsory support of an odious and infidel system of Public Schools, against our conscience and against our consent, is not far worse than the support of any form of church establishment?

Every day there are instances of men slipping from the high rounds to the lowest one in the ladder of wealth. Business men find themselves engulphed in the sea of financial embarrassment, from which they emerge with nothing but their personal resources to depend upon for a living. Clerks, salesmen, and others find themselves thrown out of employment, with no prospect of speedily obtaining places which they are competent to fill, and with no other means of gaining a livelihood. How many men are there in every city to-day, some of whom have families dependent on them for support, who bewail the mistake they made in not learning useful trades in their younger days? There are hundreds of them. There are men in every city who have seen better days, men of education and business ability, who envy the mechanic, who has a sure support for himself and family in his handicraft. Parents make a great mistake when they impose upon the brain of their boy the task of supporting him, without preparing his hands for emergencies.

No matter how favorable a boy's circumstances may be, he should enter the battle of life as every prudent general enters the battle of armies: with a reliable reserve to fall back upon in case of disaster. Every man is liable to be reduced to the lowest pecuniary point at some stage of his life, and it is hardly necessary to refer to the large proportion of men who reach that point. No man is poor who is the master of a trade. It is a kind of capital that defies the storm of financial reverse, and that clings to a man when all else has been swept away. It consoles him, in the hour of adversity, with the assurance that, let whatever may befall him, he need have no fear for the support of himself and his family.

Unfortunately a silly notion--the offspring of a sham aristocracy--has, of late years, led many parents to regard a trade as something disreputable, with which their children should not be tainted. Labor disreputable! What would the world be without it? It is the very power that moves the world. A Power higher than the throne of the aristocracy has ennobled labor, and he who would disparage it must set himself above the Divine principle, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!" A trade is a "friend in need"; it is independence and wealth--a rich legacy which the poorest father may give to his son, and which the richest should regard as more valuable than gold.

Now what kind of education is necessary for a tradesman to carry on business successfully? Only a plain, practical education; that is to say, that kind and amount of knowledge of daily ordinary use and appreciation. It is reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and geography, and possibly a knowledge of the German language, sufficient to speak it.

If we look around we will see that all the important and every-day duties of life are carried on by the use of industry, common sense, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

As to those who are able, and desire further information, they can have it to any extent at the colleges, convents, academies and higher schools.

Surely it is time for all good Christians of America to cry out to our rulers, "And now, O ye rulers, understand; receive instruction, you that judge the earth."-- Do not force any longer upon a Christian nation an educational system which produces such results; do not train any longer our children without religion--to infidelity, and consequently to revolution. Do not teach the youth of America any longer to reject God and His religion; they will not be long faithful to you if you make them unfaithful to the faith of their fathers. You, and all the classes in society who delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or destroyed, never seem to realize, until it is too late, that you are sure to be the especial victims of your own success. The man who scorns to love God and His law, how shall he continue to love his neighbor? The man who has said "there is no God," is he not on the point of also saying "lust is lawful," "property is robbery"? If you raise instruments to deny God and to do away with all religious principles, God will use these very instruments to do away with you also.

Your Pagan system of education will ultimately overturn all order in the land. Among ancient Pagan nations, where the poor were comparatively ignorant--where they did not know their rights--it was easy to hold them in bondage; but now things have changed. Discontent in the lower order of society can no longer be smothered. Education has become general; and, unfortunately, the very element, without which education is often a curse, is omitted. Religious education has been separated from secular instruction. Without religion, the poor are unable to control their passions, or to bear their hard lot. They see wealth around them, and, unless taught by religion, they see no reason why that wealth should not be divided amongst them. Why should they starve, while their neighbors roll in splendor and luxury? If the poor were ignorant, they would not, perhaps, notice all the sad privations of their state; they would not, perhaps, feel them so keenly. But they are partially educated, and "a little learning is a dangerous thing."

REMEDY FOR THE DIABOLICAL SPIRIT AND THE CRIMES IN OUR COUNTRY.

Men look around, and ask, Where is the remedy for the so wide-spread corruption of all classes of society? This is a most important question. It is not difficult for a Christian to answer it. A skilful physician, who wishes to cure his patient, endeavors first to remove the cause of the disease. So, in like manner, if we wish to stem the torrent of the evils that flood the land, we must stop the source from which they flow.

Now the leading men and the most prominent journals of New York and New England, confess that the greater part of the wide-spread immorality in our day and country is to be traced to the separation of religion from the instruction in our Public Schools.

Governor Brown, addressing the Seventh National Teachers' Convention in St. Louis, in August last, said: "It is a very customary declaration to pronounce that education is the great safeguard of republics against the decay of virtue and the reign of immorality. Yet the facts can scarcely bear out the proposition. The highest civilizations, both ancient and modern, have sometimes been the most flagitious. Nowadays, certainly, your prime rascals have been educated rascals."

And indeed if we go to Auburn, Sing Sing, and other prisons, and examine some of the criminals confined there, we will find that there is truth in the Governor's words.

No one, certainly, gifted with ordinary power of observation, will ascribe crime solely to ignorance, nor will such a one fail to see that a large class of the most audacious and dangerous offenders of both sexes are educated, nay, over-educated, according to the Public School standard.

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