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of justice; of every act or word which implies a recognition by the State of God, or religion, or a future life. The State must become atheis.ic.

The same reasons, resting, as they largely do, upon the supremacy of the individual conscience, likewise carry us into the sphere of morals. as well as of religion. A Mormon may be "conscientious "about his plurality or wives; a free lover about the laws of marriage; a communist about the right to property. What are we going to do about their "consciences?" We must either alter all our laws to suit them, or we must vote down their consciences by our consciences.

Of like purport is the deliverance which we find ascribed to Prof. Seelye, who is very high Congregational authority:

There are two dangers that beset us in this question of religion in the schools: one is letting it alone, and allowing education to slip into the hands of the Catholic priesthood; the other is taking away the Bible from the schools, and making them altogether secular. The first means delivering posterity, body and soul, into the hands of the Romish Church; the second means destruction to our system of education. He would avoid both dangers; and while he would yield neither to the Romish nor the secular theory of education, he would maintain, as stoutly as the Romanist, the need of religion in schools, and resist as positively as the secularist the domination of a church or a hierarchy.

But nowhere have we seen the true doctrine on this whole subject of the relation of religion to the government and its public schools better stated, than in the following extract from the late annual message of Governor Bedle of New Jersey:

Concerning the school question the Governor says: "Free schools are safeguards of the State and nation, and should be kept completely divorced from sectarian control or influence. It is a cardinal principle in our political economy, and fundamental in our system of government, that church and State must be kept perfectly separate, but mistaken notions arise, oftentimes, in applying the principle. We should never lose sight of the fact, that this is a land of Christian or Bible character and civilization, and that its teachings are the foundation of our virtue and social elevation. These, it is true, may and do assume different shapes in men's minds in considering their relations to God, thereby inducing such religious sects and associations for worship as may be deemed necessary or better for that purpose, according to belief, but the. great undisputed, underlying doctrines of duty to God and man and individual virtue which make good citizens, are in the Bible, and to exclude it from being read in schools is a retrogression toward heathenism. The simple reading of the Bible in schools is not the teaching of sectarian or peculiar religious belief simply because it is used to establish religious creeds and forms. The schools should never be shut against the Bible. Our law is perfectly just. Its words are, "that it shall not be lawful for any teacher, trustee, or trustees, to introduce into, or have performed in, any school receiving its pro

portion of the public money, any religious service, ceremony, or forms whatsoever, except reading the Bible and repeating the Lord's Prayer." This gives the Bible a fair chance in its influence upon civil character and duty to the Creator, while an exclusion of it is a terrible stride in making the State Godless. Also, for the good of society and citizenship, the State, in selecting the objects of taxation, can well afford to, and should, leave untouched by the Assessor, all edifices for religious worship, and the land upon which they stand, actually necessary for their convenient use, and so exclusively used."

While, however, we regret to be obliged to differ radically from the President's proposal, utterly to de-christianize, nay, to de-religionize, the schools, and especially the proposal to effect this result by a compulsory clause in our national constitution, we most cordially assent to his other proposition, to deny the privilege of voting to all who cannot read and write after the year 1890. Such a provision would every way work good, and not evil; it would at once discourage illiteracy, and elevate the qualifications of voters-a great desideratum.

As we survey the kind of population, civilization, and religion which overspreads our Rocky Mountain Territories and States, Mormonism and polygamy here, a threatened majority of "heathen Chinese" there, and in the regions acquired from Mexico, the degraded forms of Romanism, which have ruined republican institutions in Central and South America, saying nothing of barbarous Indian tribes, we confess it is a grave question, whether the safety of the nation does not require some constitutional or legislative provisions which shall guard against giving Mormonism, heathenism, barbarism, or the lowest style of Romanism, the control of the education, civilization, the social and political life of those vast regions, so soon to teem with peoples that are to enter in as constituent and formative elements of our national life. We certainly, at first, looked askance at the sweeping amendments proposed to secure unsectarian elementary education to all the children of the country, and we cannot sanction the proposition to make it wholly non-religious, for reasons already given; but it may turn out that the nation must take action to prevent-what have hitherto been only unassimilated warts and wens, which disfigure without destroying-the body-politic from developing into malignant cancers that shall eat out its vitals. So it has been necessary to exorcise slavery, which was rending and de

stroying us. To what other alien elements our national salvation will require the application of some heroic remedies remains to be seen, and will soon task the minds of earnest Christians and patriots.

Art. II.-BENEFICIARY EDUCATION: HISTORICAL

SKETCH.

By Rev. A. D. BARBER, Clarendon, Vt.

THE Education Boards and Societies of the church have of late been most unjustly and injuriously assailed. It has been asserted, with much confidence, as of a thing proved, that they tend to make, and do make, of the young men they aid, a set of mendicant weaklings and craven dependents. These aspersions have been embodied and earnestly presented in popular journals and magazines, and even by eminent ministers in the Church of Christ. Now, all this implies ignorance of the divine sanctions these societies have from the first received, and of the venerable history they have had; also, want of sympathy with the excellent character of the young men assailed. Educational societies, charitable and beneficiary, are not a thing of yesterday, so that their principles and practice are unobserved, and their influence unknown; nor have these young men lived in a corner. Both have been set on high.

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in times past unto the Fathers by the Prophets, and unto us, in these last days, by his Son, has not left the knowledge and practice of the revelation he has so graciously made to chance or any uncertainty. He has embodied in institutions, and put in permanent forms, means to preserve and perpetuate this revelation. In the patriarchal dispensation, the provision for this purpose was simplest and purest-the father being the

ordained teacher and priest. Following this in the Mosaic, a whole tribe-that of Levi-was set apart to be the priests and ministers, and largely the teachers, counselors, judges, and rulers of God's people.

Jehovah specifically defined the duties of the Levites, and as specifically made provision for their instruction, training, and support. The tribe of Levi received no inheritance at the distribution of Canaan among the several tribes. They were maintained, with their families, upon certain fees, dues, and perquisites, all appointed for them, and arising from the public service which they performed. "As well to the great as to the small "—" their little ones, their wives, their sons, and their daughters "-are specified in the provision made for the Levites. Each had "his daily portion" appointed. An officer was assigned to see that this portion was given to each and all. The sons of the priests, who attended with them, "from three years old and upward," to learn the work of the sanctuary before the time of their officiating, had provision made for them. (See 2 Chron. xxxi: 14-19.) Thus, it appears that the maintenance of the priests included the maintenance and instruction of their sons, and the training of them to take the places of their fathers, when those fathers could no longer

serve.

Besides the abundant testimony of Scripture on this point, we have the additional testimony, in the way of comment, of both Josephus and Philo. The latter vindicates the propriety of such a provision. "It is exceedingly becoming," he says, "that the man who is consecrated to the service of the Father of the world, should also bring his son to the service of Him who has begotten him."

For the better teaching and training of the priests and ministers of religion in Israel of old, institutions and schools were established. As these schools are first mentioned in the time of Samuel; it is natural to suppose that he was their author. "There were institutions for training prophets," says Hengstenberg; "the senior members instructed a number of pupils, and directed them." These schools had been first established by Samuel (1 Sam. x: 8: xix; 20); and at later times there were such institutions in different places, as Bethel and Gilgal (2 Kings : 3; iv: 38; vi: 1)." Samuel himself had been

"The pu

brought up under the tutelage and training of Eli. pils of the prophets," continues Hengstenberg, “lived in fellowship united, and were called 'Sons of the Prophets; whilst the senior, or experienced, prophets were considered as their spiritual parents, and were styled Fathers (comp. 2 Kings ii: 12; vi: 21). Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, are mentioned as principals of such institutions. From them the Lord generally chose His instruments. Amos relates of himself (vii: 14, 15), as a thing uncommon, that he had been trained in no school of prophets, but was "a herdsman when the Lord took him to prophesy unto the people of Israel." "The spiritual fathers traveled about to visit the training schools; the pupils had their common board and dwelling; and those who married and left ceased not, on that account, to be connected with their colleges, but remained members of them. The widow of such a pupil of the schools of prophets, who is mentioned in 2 Kings iv: I, seq., considered Elisha as the person bound to care for her. The offerings which, by the Mosaic law, were to be given to the Levites, were, by the pious of the Kingdom of Israel, brought to the schools of the prophets (2 Kings iv: 42)." Hengstenberg in Kittos' Cyclopedia of Bib. Lit., vol. ii., p. 565. The learned Dr. Lightfoot also gives us the conclusions of his studies on this subject:

"It has been the way of God," he says, "to instruct his people by a studious and learned ministry, ever since he gave a written word to instruct them in. Who were the standing ministry of Israel all the time from the giving of the law till the captivity in Babylon? Not prophets and inspired men, for they were but occasional teachers, but the priests and Levites who became learned in the law by study (Deut. xxxiii: 10; Matt. ii: 7). And for this end they were dispersed into forty-eight cities, as so many universities, where they studied the law together, and from thence were sent out into the several synagogues to teach the people. They had also contributions made for the support of these students while they studied in the universities, as well as afterward, when they preached in the synagogues. There were among the Jews authorized individual teachers of great eminence, who had their Midrashoth, or divinity schools, in which they expounded the law to their scholars or disciples. Of these divinity schools there is frequent mention made among the Jewish writers, more especially of the schools of Hillel and Shammai. Such a divinity professor was Gamaliel, at whose feet the great apostle to the Gentiles received his education." (Lightfoot's Works, vol. i., pp. 557–574.)

To leave the old and come down to the new and more per

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