union with God was the original law of man's nature, so is reunion with him essential to the perfection, harmony and happiness of his moral being. And to lead to this consummation everything not only in the ordinances and teaching of christianity, but also "the whole experience of life, all that befalls and belongs to him in it, his domestic position, his social position, whatever is his, whatever lies around him," are all made to work together to form one comprehensive scheme of discipline devised by infinite wisdom for the purpose of contributing to the accomplishment of that great design. The great end and aim of education, therefore, is not to fit and prepare men for a successful scramble for the loaves and fishes, the gold and silver, the honours and emoluments, or any of the beggarly elements of earth,-but to secure the renovation of a heart which has fallen away from God, by the operation of truth upon the mind and character.

"Knowledge is not then a couch, whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrasse for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; but a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."*

Religion, therefore, must be included not only as one of the many branches of instruction to which the attention is directed, but it must be the pervading and controlling principle of the whole, to which all the others are subordinated, and for which the foundation is to be laid and all the details regulated. Nature herself teaches, that all kinds of physical good are, in her estimation, not once to be compared to the very lowest moral acquirements. These man shares, though it is true in a higher degree, with the brute creation; while the moral and religious capacity are altogether peculiar to man. A complete moral machinery is, therefore, implanted in the human mind. The moral and religious faculties are the first which are developed, and the only ones, which can, in fact, be cultivated at all infidelity on the one hand, and the bold efforts of Romish priests on the other? Oh! how are these principles of infidelity encouraged, which strew everywhere the road to that lordly Rome which in all places raises her head, and shows herself the same mother of lies as in the times of the Reformation. And when we turn our regards towards academical instruction-ah, well, a new desolation! We have three universities; and in two of them they teach an infidel science-a modified Rationalism-a system of doctrine in which vital truths, such as the Trinity—the Divinity of our Saviour-the inspiration of the Sacred Writings-the expiation or death of Christ to satisfy divine justice the personality of the Holy Spirit—all that forms the foundation of our holy religion—is denied in the most insidious manner. And it is under such a teaching that our young ministers are prepared for the preaching of the Gospel! For many years some laymen (and in my humble way I have the privilege of being of that number) have made reclamations and appeals against these enormities; but we have had no further success than opening the eyes of many.""-Home & Foreign Missionary Record of the Free Church. *Bacon's Works, vol. i, p. 251.

during the earliest years of childhood. Children are incapable of learning anything else, than what is connected with one or other of these branches of education. In these they are, however, capable of making rapid and permanent progress. Their faith is unhesitating and complete, their imagination fitted to comprehend what is mighty and sublime, and their affections ready to give themselves up to the influence of love and kindness as exhibited in the character and ways of God. Moral attainments, also, are accompanied by the calm consciousness of dignity, self-approval, and peace, and excite the admiration and approval of others, while the highest intellectual attainments, when not accompanied by religion, lead only to personal dissatisfaction, degradation, and misery. In every way, therefore, does nature point out the immeasurable superiority and supreme importance of moral and religious, above mere physical and intellectual attainments. "We believe that, if it be really wished to repair to the most authentic sources, and to labour with a view to permanent, as well as to immediate results, in the culture of the human being, we must draw our information, not from any vague theory or speculation, but from the consideration of the experimental facts of the nature of man himself, and of the condition in which it has pleased God to place him. If we go to Scripture, as to the highest record of that which most concerns us, we are assured that his natural life upon earth is a life that perishes like the grass,—that it flourishes in the morning, and that in the evening it is gone. If such be the case, is it not natural and incumbent upon us that we should direct our attention to that imperishable life which lies beyond the grave; that we should not pretend we are educating a man, when, in point of fact, our efforts only have reference to the temporary incidents of this earthly state, which is the state of his infancy; and have no reference to that future state, which is the state of his manhood and full development? If, again, we look to the institutions of our religion, do we not find that all our children are already in covenant with God; that they are already dedicated to him by baptism, and after they have been so dedicated, and during the very first days or weeks of infancy have been stamped with His seal, is it to be supposed that when their faculties begin to ripen and expand, they are to be trained up without the knowledge of the life-giving truths of revelation? If we look to the nature of the human mind itself, if we consider its longings, how comprehensive is its range, how great its capabilities, how little its best and highest faculties are satisfied with the objects that are placed before us upon earth; how many marks this dispensation bears of being a temporary, and as it were an initiatory dispensation, is it not monstrous to pretend that we are giving to the human being such a cultivation as befits his nature and his destiny, when we put out of sight all the higher and the more permanent purposes for which he lives, and confine our provision to matters which, however valuable (and valuable they are in their own place), yet of themselves bear only upon earthly ends? Is it not a fraud upon ourselves and our fellow-creatures,-is it not playing and paltering

with words, is it not giving stones to those who ask for bread, if, when man, so endowed as he is, and with such high necessities, demands of his fellow-men that he may be rightly trained, we impart to him, under the name of an adequate education, that which has no reference to his most essential capacities and wants, and which limits the immortal creature to objects that perish in the use."

Just as surely, therefore, as "the mind is the man, and the knowledge is the mind," so that "a man is what he knoweth," and "the. truth of being and the truth of knowing is all one," just so sure is it that God is truth and its only source, rule, and standard, and as all true wisdom cometh down from above,-an education which is not positively religious, is irreligious, profane, contrary to the NATURE, capacities, and wants of man, and leaves him in a condition of moral inanition, ignorance, depravity, and wild disorder. And since, as we have seen, education of some kind must be given, and will be had, the conclusion is forced upon us, that our people must have a religious education, or our liberties are gone. For, if the spirit and character of a people is the essential element in the establishment and perpetuity of any peaceful and prosperous kingdom, how much more is this necessary in a commonwealth, where every man is a component part of the Government, and gives tone to its character, and shape to its laws.* Just in proportion, therefore, as education is increased and elevated, must the religious and moral instruction which are combined with it, be increased. For there may be,-and let this consideration be well weighed,-spiritual knowledge conveyed, and yet it may be so conveyed as to be useless, because disproportionate to the worldly knowledge which is imparted. And just so far as this is the case,- -so far as the intellect is strengthened by the acquisition of science, professional learning, or general literature, without being proportionately exercised in spiritual subjects,—just so much the more will the mind be open to infidel and sceptical ob

*"Better, far better, that every such school should be closed, even though the scholars should grow up without education of any kind, than that they should be trained up with prejudices against the Bible, such as those which its official exclusion from the schools, as a sectarian book, is calculated to create. Without the inculcation of that system of morality which the Bible reveals, the mere instruction in letters will prove a curse rather than a blessing; and if, superadded to the neglect of moral training, there be inculcated a contempt for the Bible by nicknaming it a sectarian book, the youth coming forth from such schools will be prepared to infect the moral atmosphere in which they live, and spread the contagion of vice throughout the community.

"Well did that Christian patriot, Doctor Channing, who has so recently left his country and the world to feel and mourn his loss, exclaim, "The exaltation of talent, as it is called, above virtue and religion, is the curse of the age. Talent is worshipped, but if divorced from rectitude, it will prove more a demon than a God.' For, in the language of another gifted writer, 'Better that men should remain in ignorance, than that they should eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge only to be made more subtle and powerful adversaries of God and humanity.' And yet such must be the practical fruit of Common Schools thus dishonoured, perverted, and prostituted to the service of this crusade against the Bible."-Dr. Reese.

See also, Powell on Education, pp. 44, 53, 79, 80; Smith's Wealth of Nations, B. v, ch. i; Tocqueville, vol. i, pp. 349, 351, and 428, and vol. ii, pp. 319, 153, 155.

jections which it finds itself unprepared to meet; and thus be led to throw off from itself, as a vulgar or outworn garment, that system of divine truth which it does not appreciate, only because it does not fully understand it;-which is full of difficulties only because it is full of unexamined matter;-and which is so distasteful, only because a taste and relish for it have not been properly formed. Not being trained up in the way he should go, the man follows in that path of worldliness in which he was trained, and being brought up in the nurture of science and not of the Lord, when he is old, he casts off the Lord that bought him, and goes after the idols of the heart, of the affections, and of the understanding.*

III. But if such a religious education is essential, the question arises, can it be imparted by the state or government? Now it will admit of a very strange argument whether in this country at least, if not everywhere, it is competent for the government to interfere with the education of the people in any other way, than by encouragement, or such an equalized tax for educational purposes as will allow every citizen to designate the particular institutions to which he wishes his tax to go. On this basis colleges managed by the State might be acceptable, or even preferable to some, and by their example useful to all.

State education, except in the way and on the plan suggested, as Tocqueville and other writers teach, tends to centralize power in the hands of the government; and as its patronage is exclusive, to form a body within the nation which, as it has the power, stability, and wealth of the government, must more and more fill up the place of an aristocracy, and undermine that principle of self-government, local association, and municipal control which is fundamental to the theory of republican institutions. May not the exclusive support of some institutions also check the improvement of education, by destroying the great stimulus to all progress, namely the necessity for exertion arising from competition and rival institutions? Does not such exclusive patronage also remove the teachers of the youth of a country from an immediate responsibility to the people, and thus convert colleges, as Adam Smith says, from being the seminaries, into the dormitories of learning, where, like Rip Van Winkle, they wake up to improvements some centuries after they have been discovered?

* See this picture filled out in the melancholy history and course of Mr. Brownson as depicted by himself in his work, "My Progress in Error," who has run like an unchained and untamed beast of the forest, through every species of error and delusion, until now he is fanatically in love with the Pope, and mad for the substi tution of the free! tolerant!! and republican!!! system of Popery, with its literature too!!!! in the place of the republican Protestantism in America.

Democracy in America, vol. ii, pp. 325, 326, 339, and 342.

Bacon is of the same opinion. "It is not to be forgotten," says he, "that the dedicating of foundations and donations to professory learning, hath not only had a malign influence upon the growth of sciences, but hath also been prejudicial to states and governments; for hence it proceedeth, that princes find a solitude in re

May it not also be questioned, whether the Legislature of any State is the most competent body to direct its education? Not to say that such bodies may often be under the control of their least educated and enlightened members, it is certain that they have not the time necessary for the work, while local and narrow views may affect their whole proceedings, and thus legalize, stereotype, and perpetuate an erroneous, defective, or useless system, while they impede, by their exclusive endowments, the progress of other and independent institutions. And then, too, may it not be argued that the education of their own minds, and those of their children, is one of those inalienable rights which can never be given up by any individual, or by any body of men; and one of those rights therefore, which is not given up to society, and with which its legislators have no right to interfere, except in that mode of voluntary taxation which will allow individual opinion to promote the common welfare, and yet to secure that education it regards as essential to the welfare of its own children? Besides, can any man show, that the assumption of the control, and the endowment of some particular colleges, and other schools, out of many, is not an incipient alliance between the State and certain opinions there inculcated, which may be either religious or irreligious, moral or immoral? Education, assuredly, cannot be neutral. It must either be Christian, Jewish, or Infidel; and as Christian, either Presbyterian, Romish, or of some other denominational form. Hence in making such an exclusive selection, the State must enter into alliance with one or other of those forms; and, if so,

spect of able men to serve them in causes of state, because there is no education collegiate which is free."

In his "Table Talk," Hazlitt expresses himself of the same opinion. "Our Universities," says he, "are in a great measure become cisterns, to hold, not conduits, to disperse knowledge. The age has the start of them, that is, other sources of knowledge have been opened since their formation, to which the world have had access, and have drank plentifully at these living fountains, from which they are debarred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignity and privilege. All that has been invented or thought in the last two hundred years they take no cognizance of, or as little as possible; they are above it; they stand upon the ancient landmarks, and will not budge; whatever was not known when they were endowed, they are still in profound and lofty ignorance of."

* On this point let us learn instruction from the English State Universities, for they are not voluntary or independent denominational colleges.

In the Westminster Review, for September, 1844, in an article on the Ethics of Politicians, based upon the report of the Parliamentary Committee on opening Letters, which practice involves, say they, theft, lying, forgery, treachery, roguemaking, and tyrannous injustice, says: We have long considered the state of our Academical and University education to be the cause of half the errors committed in legislation, but of all the evils to be traced to this fruitful source, none are greater than the moral canker they occasion. The ethics of Archdeacon Paley, and Professor Sewel-political expediency on the one hand, and blind submission to authority on the other, the transformation of Ovid, and the history of the Punic wars, leave no place for the decalogue or any sound interpretation of its meaning; and the result in after life, when our highborn University graduates appear at the Council board, as the world has seen with astonishment, is a formal recognition of PETTY LARCENY as a fundamental maxim of State policy." (Page 117.)