Wiseman's Essays on Various Subjects, 429.
"Give Catholics their full rights; ask nothing of them you would not willingly concede if you were in their place."--_New York Journal of Commerce._
The subject of education, the method and extent of it, is undoubtedly one of the foremost topics of discussion to-day, and will be more conspicuous than ever in the immediate future. And, while all men are agreed that a sound and sufficient education of the entire people is our only ground of hope for the perpetuity of our rights and liberties--that, in truth, it is vital--it is not to be wondered at that men differing in the depth as well as extent of their individual culture, should also widely differ as to the constituent elements of a sound and sufficient education. There are, for instance, some, as yet happily few in number, who, in the maze of confusion and Babel-like discussions of sectarians and false teachers turn their faces away in hopeless, helpless uncertainty, and suggest that _religion_ of every name and kind must be excluded and the Deity himself ignored in our public schools, so that public education shall be _secular_; and however much of "religion" of any and every sort may be taught, it must be _in private_. This is natural enough in those unfortunate persons who so far lack a _positive faith_ that they see no safety except in uncertainty, and hence adopt a kind of _eclecticism_ which, embracing some abstract truth, may confessedly also contain something of error.
The early settlers of this country--this "land of liberty"--however, had no idea of excluding religion from the schools; and if any among them or their immediate successors entertained even any peculiar notions as to what constituted religion, they were very summarily "squelched out."
Even "the great expounder of the constitution" was in the habit of adjuring his fellow-citizens "not to forget the _religious_ character of our origin," and to remember that the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is guaranteed to us in that epitome of human wisdom which the great New Englander was born to defend. That right it is the privilege and the duty of each one of us also to maintain, especially when it is threatened under the specious pretext of reform.