EVENING SESSION.

The Convention reassembled at 7 P. M., Judge Hagans in the chair. The attendance was even larger than during the afternoon, and the proceedings were listened to with profound attention.

The exercises were opened with prayer by the Rev. Milton Wright, of Dayton.

The Rev. N. R. Johnston was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Convention.

The report of the Executive Committee of the National Association for the year 1871, was presented by the Chairman, the Rev. T. P. Stevenson, of Philadelphia. It was laid on the table for the present.

The Rev. A. D. Mayo, D. D., pastor of the Church of the Redeemer, (Unitarian), Cincinnati, was then introduced to the Convention, and spoke as follows:

I was glad to sign the call for this convention, and am glad to attend its meetings. It seems to me that no subject of political interest now demands as thorough discussion so much as the relation of our Republican government to. unsectarian Christian religion. I suppose, with the exception of a few states-men of French philosophical notions, the great mass of the American people who formed our government agree substantially with the idea set forth in yourcall. The government of the nation and the States has always been administered in formal respect to these principles, whatever may have been the moral. tendencies of legislation. The vast majority of the Christian people of the United States to-day suppose that all you speak of is really in the government, though not expressed in the Constitution. The American people certainly believe that God is the author and Providence of our nation, and confess dependence on Him, and the obligation of the government to conform to His holy law. The people understand that this is a Christian country. The mass of the people are Christian in belief. Our whole order of society and government is such as could only have grown up in a land where the people had reached a very advanced and practical form of Christian faith. The standard of public morality, as far as theory is concerned, is the standard of Jesus Christ. The New Testament is regarded as the final authority concerning the highest life of man. The mass of Christian people are surprised and confused when they are told that our government and order of American Society have nothing to do with religion are purely "secular."

If the mass of religious people are not interested now in your proposed amendment to the Constitution, it is because they think the substance of these ideas. is there already, and it is not worth the while to agitate the country to change the phraseology of that instrument. But I believe the people will be compelled to do what you ask before many years, in order to defend both religion and liberty in this country from public disgrace. The Catholic priesthood is fully resolved to force an acknowledgment of their infallible ecclesiasticism on the State, and thus to destroy religious liberty in America. The "secular" party is as thoroughly determined to sever American society from all religious

influence, and make our government neutral or Atheistic in religion. Both these parties are already in the field of politics. Though containing many noble men, both these parties are intensely selfish and mercenary; ready to act apart or act together to accomplish their ends. Both have repeatedly broken the peace, and both threaten to fight to carry their points. Catholicism and Communism have already inaugurated a revolutionary movement that will finally drive the American people to place in the Constitution of the United States such a guaranty for the preservation of our Christian liberties as you suggest. I believe it is well that this and similar conventions should be held to prepare the country for a conflict of opinion that may be nearer than we suppose

I have been chiefly interested in this great subject as it has come before the people in relation to public education; and, at your request, I offer some remarks on

RELIGION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Every philosophical system of education that has been found competent to the practical training of youth has held that the fundamental ideas of religion underlie, and are implicated with, all the culture of the mind and character in the young. Every nation that has seriously attempted to educate its children at public expense, has held some training in religion and morals essential to the public good. The religious faith indorsed by these systems, or held by these ations, has varied in numberless ways; but the obligation to instruct the young in religious morality as an essential to good citizenship, has never been disputed by any great people. It is disputed now chiefly by a class of speculative political philosophers, who, having conceived of such a social chimera as a State with no recognition of God and a political society in no way referring to religion, absurdly declare that this republic is such a State and should forbid all recognition or cultivation of the religious nature of the child in the common school. There are Christian people who think the reading of the Bible in schools is not the best way to advance that religious instruction they confess to be imperative. But the party of "secularism" in education would sweep away all attempts at religious, and moral as far as dependent on religious, training from the school-room, as an infringement of religious liberty. I repeat, this is the first time in the world when such a theory of public education has been seriously entertained or proposed as a public policy in any established State.

I hold that just to the extent this nation, or any State in it, is bound to acknowledge and uphold religion in its political policy and legislation, is it bound to combine religious and moral with mental, æsthetic, and physical training in its people's schools. The existence, sovereignty, and providence of God, and the duty of all men and nations to obey His laws; the spiritual nature, moral obligation, natural rights, and immortal life of man; the binding obligation of the morality of Jesus Christ as the only universal moral law, the acceptance of the New Testament morality as the moral constitution of every civilized State; the obligation of government to secure the religious liberty of all men in order that true religion and morality may not be crushed out by despotism and persecution—all these religious ideas will be found interwoven in the warp and woof of our national existence. The highest American citizenship is found where these ideas are most fully comprehended and practiced. The State is bound to educate the child into this circle of ideas, as an absolute necessity to its own security. Along with such knowledge of physical health, and such mental discipline and culture of good taste as it is able to impart, the State should see that the religious morality essential to good citizenship is also taught. And, as

in our form of government theological and ecclesiastical affairs are strictly left to private opinion and sectarian zeal, and the State only takes cognizance of religion as it helps to form the character of the good citizen, so, in the public school, religion should be taught solely with a view to create in the young that moral and religious character which shall fit them to be good citizens of the republic.

Regarded from a truly philosophical point of view, the notion that there can be a purely intellectual or "secular" education of a child, is one of the crudest of unscientific conceits. The very idea of education implies a spiritual being as a scholar; and faith in the spiritual nature of man is the corner-stone of religion. There can be no such thing as education without a desire for the truth. But the eternal difference between truth and error is a postulate of religious faith, and the love for truth is the foundation of Christian duty. Every science is predicated upon the fundamental ideas of religion; the existence of God; the spirituality of the soul; the eternal distinction between truth and falsehood, right and wrong; the moral ability and obligation of man to follow the true and the right; the eternal providence of God in the eternal life of man. Every human language is built up around these primary faiths of man, and the least object lesson, or the teaching of the alphabet, implies them all. Every axiom of pure mathematics implies a religious faith in the existence of absolute truth, and the duty to pursue it. Every law of scientific investigation implies and pledges the votary of science to the highest reverence for truth. Without religion there never was a literature, and it would be useless to learn to read. Without religion, history is a stupid riddle, that only a fool would attempt to teach. Every step in mental and moral philosophy, political economy, industrial science, and the fine arts, implies a step toward the confession of fundamental religious faith.

There is no possibility of training the mind without at every point, involving the moral and religious faculty, and moulding the character. There is no possibility of extracting the intellectual power, like the brain from a manikin, and educating that alone. We can take the soul and the character into account when we educate the child,-and that is our duty; or we can ignore the soul and the character, and pretend to be neutral concerning them. But there is no neutrality in the realm of spiritual things. The teacher that systematically leaves out moral and religious considerations from his instruction, or repudiates responsibility for the character of his pupil, by that act becomes a disorganizer of the life of the child, and an enemy of human society. The "secular" schoolmaster is compelled by the repudiation of all save the intellectual power in his training, to follow a logic that leads to the atheism which denies the possibility of human knowledge. And it will be found that, as a class, the educational theorists who now clamor for what they call "positive" secular education, in public or private, are pledged to a philosophy which drives mankind upon the shoal of materialism and atheism, where there can be no reliable knowledge of anything. "Secular or "positive" education, by its logical disciples, is education committing hari-kari—a man without a soul sacrificing himself to a god that does not exist.

But we are not driven to the purely scientific argument for the enforcement of unsectarian religious education, as far as concerns the moral duties of American citizenship, in the American common school. The American common school does not pretend to be a purely scientific agency. It is not even a universal educational agency. It is a politico-educational institution, devised to fit

the masses of American children for American citizenship. It proposes to do this by a peculiar style of training, in which the awakening of the mind, the imparting of knowledge, the discipline of the body, the training of the morals, the formation of character, and the imparting of republican views of government, each bears its part. To narrow down this complex politico-educational agency, the common school, to a mere mental gymnasium, is a most destructive misapprehension; a perversion which a materialistic philosopher would commit on principle; a blunder that many religious people might fall into from ignorance or want of reflection, but of which no common school teacher of character and good common sense would be in danger. So the question before the State is: The duty to impart in the common school that element of religious and moral knowledge and discipline, which will best combine with mental, physical, and æsthetic training, to educate the child into a good American citizen. More than this it would be vain to attempt. Less than this the State must not attempt, as she regards her own existence and prosperity.

It is easy to elaborate a "secular" theory of education in the closet, where an ideal boy can be placed in a spiritual vacuum, and developed according to an exclusive mental system. But install this philosopher as the principal of an army of 1,000 children and a score of sensitive teachers, in a great city district school-house, and the situation is bravely changed. He then comprehends the fact that to "keep school" is not to manipulate an ideal youth, or even to try nice intellectual experiments on a solitary child, but to face a restless community of children, and educate them together into intelligence and character. The American school is the child's rehearsal of American society. It is to him what the whole world of business, politics, and social life, rolled into one, is to his parents. In the little red country school-house every social and political class, every phase of human life is daily represented. The city school is a collection of 1,000 little Americans, of almost every possible ancestry, culture, tendency, temperament, and character. There is the "upper ten," the "middle class," and the "democracy;" the exquisite and the demagogue; the belle and the blue-stocking; the criminal class, as well defined as in your Police Court; the respectable class, as pronounced as at your East End. A thousand men and women, representing such varieties of character, are distributed in two hundred homes at arm's length; but this youthful community is shut up under one roof. We appoint a score of young people to keep this community in such an order as grown people would never submit to without a revolution, to develop the mind of each member of this little State, to turn out all as "lively stones," fit for the temple of our new republic.

"secular'

Now, the effort to control and educate such a miniature republic on or purely intellectual principles is a job compared with which harnessing Niagara to turn the spindles of a cotton mill would be a cheerful enterprise. You have no place there to set up your fine mental machinery that shall isolate the intellectual power and handle it so delicately that the religious and moral susceptibilities may not be disturbed. You have no time there to demonstrate how much of a child is mind, how much is animal, and how little is soul. The clock strikes nine; and you are facing fifty full-blooded, uproarious, Western boys, seething down from a mob to a school, and what do you propose to do with this tremendous fact? An American argus, with its hundred eyes, glares right into your face; pierces through your shams; pokes fun at your fine theories, and cries out, "What do you want of me?" To say that the teacher does not need every resource of religious and moral power save the ecclesiastical and

theological, for which children care nothing, to govern and educate this community, is to mock at all educational experience and declare ourself utterly ignorant of human life.

How shall the teacher keep that little State in order; by what method of legislation govern it so that instruction can be given; by what motives secure its willing co-operation in the work on hand? Shall he stoop to the lowest methods of punitive despotism, and control it by the fear of bodily pain or the stimulant of reward, alternately buying obedience or crushing out opposition? Then he is training up a school of little Tweeds and Mansfields; teaching children that obedience to law always brings a "stealing," in the way of "patronage;" and this is not just the road to "civil service reform." Or he is teaching them the awful lesson of government by brute force, and nurses a rebellion in the soul of every generous subject of his hateful despotism. If he is to train these children for citizenship in a republican State, he must learn to govern them by appeal to all the higher elements of their nature, their reason, their love of order and beauty, especially their conscience and sense of obligation toward each other. And where shall he locate the last court of appeal in this array of motives to cheerful and obedient co-operation? Only in God, from whom alone the authority of teacher, parent, State is derived to shut that group of children up one hour, and demand from them years of irksome toil and confinement. If he can awaken in these little men and women a sense of grateful dependence on God, reverence for the eternal law of duty, love for each other; a feeling that this mystery of school life is in some way a beneficent arrangement for their own good, his work is well begun. And just in proportion as he can effectually work in this region of life, will he succeed in organizing a school. Unless he can awaken a religious and moral public opinion among that crowd which will co-operate with himself in all good things, he is only a cultivated gentleman reading the riot act to a mob. To go into such a place, and say to the teacher: "You shall give no religious instruction, you shall not read a religious book, nor sing a religious song, nor repeat the Lord's prayer, and the Bible, of all books on earth, shall not be seen here," is to betray an inability for the comprehension of childhood which is almost incomprehensible.

And when this little community is organized into a working school, how shall the young woman who, in nine rooms in ten, is set to guide them, begin to teach? The first thing is to arouse the love of knowledge. The "H grade" of six year olds has hardly soared to the philosophical altitude of the pursuit of wisdom for its own majestic self, and must somehow be won to a desire to know. The wisest educators every where now declare that the " object system" of teaching is the true method of nature. The children should be taught to observe simple and connected objects, converse upon them, learned to study nature, and be led from things up to words and science. The animal, vegetable, and mineral world, home life, trades and professions, society, the nation, all things that children live among, are introduced to them, and their young minds are trained to observe, reason, combine, classify. But an "object lesson," that does not, in some way, lead up to a Creator, and outward to the moral and spiritual life of man and the everlasting law of duty-in other words, to all the fundamentals of religion-is what a skeleton is to a living child, a grinning death in life. No intelligent teacher can talk five minutes with fifty quick-witted children about anything, without feeling the tide of interest rising toward the nobler aspects of the theme like the sea waves surging in upon the shore. Who made the grass, the tree, the lion, the eagle? Who fashioned the wonderful body we are talking