PERILS. — UELIGIOJT AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 105 



out king, Avithout mint, without theater or gymnasium ; 

 but you will nowhere find a city without a god, without 

 prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. Sooner may a 

 city stand without foundations than a state without 

 belief in the gods. This is the bond of all society, and the 

 pillar of all legislation." Permit me to add that oft- 

 quoted passage from Washington's Farewell Address, 

 " Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined 

 education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and 

 experience both forbid us to expect that national 

 morality can prevail in exclusion of religious prin- 

 ciple." 



All Christian secularists hold of course that the chil- 

 dren should receive religious instruction, but tell us that 

 it should be furnished by the home and the Sunday 

 school. But how are those children to be instructed 

 who are in no Sunday school, most of whom doubtless 

 have little or no religious training in their homes? 

 Assiuuing that two-thirds of all the Catholic children 

 are in their Sunday schools, it leaves about one-half of 

 the children and youth in the United States of school 

 age, who are in no Sunday school of any kind. Will 

 the secularists tell us how these children are to be 

 taught "reverence for God, reverence for man, rever- 

 ence for woman, reverence for law, which," it is said, 

 " are the pillars of the Republic," unless they are taught 

 it in the public school? It is not enough that one-half 

 our children be instructed in the knowledge of God; 

 not enough that one-half only reverence divine, and 

 therefore human, authority; not enough that one-half 

 are instructed in morals whose motives include the 

 solemn sanctions of religion. Such a division of our 

 population would leave our destiny in a hesitating 

 balance. Popular government is by majorities. Free 

 institutions are safe only when the great majority of 

 the people have that reverence for law which can spring 

 only from reverence for God. The most striking defect 

 of young America is the lack of reverence. The spirit 

 of independence and sense of equality are unfriendly to 



