104 PERILS. — religio:n" akd the public schools. 



moral training is addressed to the will, and the will 

 must be influenced by motives. The lying that is done bj^ 

 children in this country is not due to ignorance of the 

 fact that lying is wrong, but to the fact that their Avills 

 have not been sufficiently strengthened by motives to 

 truthfulness. We do not claim that religion must be 

 taught in connection with morals, on the ground that it 

 affords the only adequate basis of the science of ethics, 

 for tlie children are not taught the science of ethics ; but 

 on the ground that religion alone affords adequate 

 motives to the practice of moral precepts. The philos- 

 opher Cousin, in a report upon Public Instruction in 

 Germany, referring to the fact that it is based on the 

 Bible, says, "Every wise man will rejoice in this; for, 

 with three-fourths of the population, morality can be 

 instilled only through the medium of religion." Presi- 

 dent Woolsey, in a paper on The Bible in the Public 

 Schools,^ said: "We can, in a system of morals, con- 

 sidered in the abstract, separate religion from it, but in 

 the practical part, even of a book on ethics, there is an 

 unavoidable necessity of bringing the two into connec- 

 tion." And Daniel Webster, in a Fourth of July oration, 

 said: "To preserve the government we must also 

 preserve morals. Morality rests on rehgion; if you 

 destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. 

 When the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, 

 laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper." 



There are of course individuals Avho are agnostics or 

 atheists and yet moral in life, but many if not most of 

 these had Christian training in childhood, under which 

 their habits became fixed. This is a very different 

 thing from teaching a child that there is no God or 

 leaving him uninstructed. And though there are indi- 

 vidual atheists who are moral, there are no moral infidel 

 communities. Plutarch says, you remember, ' ' There 

 never was a state of atheists. You may travel all over 

 the world, and you may find cities without walls, Avith- 



1 Read before the National Council of Congregational Churches, 1877. 



