est by the way, and when thou heat down, and when thou risest up." (Deut. vi. 6, 7. and xi. 19.) " He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their chil- dren ; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children ; that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments." (Ps. lxxviii. 5, 6, 7.) " Train up a child in the way he should go ; and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Prov. xxii. 6.) Fathers bring up your children " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." (Eph. vi. 4.) These are not ceremonial or obsolete laws. They bind the consciences of men just as much as the com- mand, " Thou shalt not steal." If parents themselves conduct the education of their children, these are the principles upon which it must be conducted. If they commit that work to teachers, they are bound, by the law of God, to see that the teachers regard these divine prescriptions ; if they commit the work to the state, they are under equally sacred obligation to see that the state does not violate them. This is an obligation which they cannot escape.
5. When the Sunday laws were under discussion, on a previous page, it was urged that it would be unreasonable and unjust for a man who joined a business association of moral men, to insist that the affairs of the association should be conducted on im- moral principles ; if he joined a company of Christian manufac- turers, it would be unjust for him to require that they should violate the laws of Christianity. So if a Christian should go to Turkey, it would be preposterous for him to insist that the Ko- ran should be banished from the public schools. No less prepos- terous is it for any man to demand that Christians in this coun- try should renounce their religion. Christianity requires that education in all its departments should be conducted religiously. If any set of men should found a school or a university from which all religious instruction should be banished, the law of the land would doubtless permit them to do so. But for the law to for- bid that the religion of the people should be taught in schools sustained by the money of the people, ought not to be sub- mitted to.
6. The banishment of religious influence from our schools is impossible. If a man is not religious, he is irreligious ; if he is not a believer, he is an unbeliever. This is as true of organiza- tions and institutions, as it is of individuals. Byron uttered a
3e56 PART IE. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
profound truth when he put into the mouth of Satan the words " He that does not bow to God, has bowed to me." If you banish light, you are in darkness. If you banish Christianity from the schools, you thereby render them infidel. If a child is brought up in ignorance of God, he becomes an atheist. If never taught the moral law, his moral nature is as undeveloped as that of a pagan. This controversy, therefore, is a controversy between Christianity and infidelity; between light and dark- ness ; between Christ and Belial.1
It is admitted that this subject is encumbered with practical difficulties where the people of a country differ widely in their religious convictions. In such cases it would be far better to refer the matter to the people of each school district, than by a general law to prohibit all religious instruction from the public schools* This would, in fact, be to make them infidel, in defer- ence to a numerically insignificant minority of the people. It is constantly said that the state, if it provides for anything more than secular education, is travelling out of its sphere ; that civil government is no more organized to teach religion than a fire company is. This latter assertion may be admitted so far as this, — that the same rule applies to both cases. That is, all individual men, and all associations of men, are bound to act according to the principles of morality and religion, so far as those principles are applicable to the work which they have to do. Men cannot lawfully cheat in banking, nor can they right- fully conduct their business on the Lord's Day. In like manner if God requires that' education should be conducted religiously, the state has no more right to banish religion from its schools, than it has to violate the moral law. The whole thing comes to this: Christians are bound by the express command of God, as well as by a regard to the salvation of their children and to the best interests of society, to see to it that their chil- dren are brought up "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; " this they are bound to do ; through the state if they can ; without it, if they must.
Obedience due to Civil Magistrates. If the fifth commandment enjoins as a general principle, re- spect and obedience to our superiors, it includes our obligations
1 So little is this matter understood, that one of the most respectable and influential jour- nals in the land, recently announced the fact that one of the cantons of Switzerland had prohibited all religious instruction in the schools, as a proof that "the world was getting tired of sacerdotalism." Thus religion is reduced to sacerdotalism or priestcraft.