AN article has been sent us for our acceptance from the Associated Religious Press, a distinctly National Reform organization, calling for a day of prayer for our public schools. Surely that is proper, proper for every citizen in the United States to pray every day for the public schools, the teachers, and pupils. There is need of prayer, prayer that fact may be taught instead of the misleading hypotheses of infidel science and the myths of pagan tradition; prayer that the public schools may be saved from the insidious poison of National Reform teaching of a union of State and Church, the State an agent for God in teaching His Gospel. Surely there is need of prayer.
The basis of this day of prayer, by this National Reform writer, is multiform, touching "every supreme concern of life." Of course, it would go without saying that in this, above all things else, religion is involved. And this article in question includes in this basis the "moral interest" and "religious interest," and demands that "the Christian morality in our laws must be taught in our schools. The Bible must be open there as containing the only sanctions which can make Christian morals prevalent and effective." In these things the writer hopes for the "future co-operation" of Romanists.
But to any well-instructed Christian, to any clear-headed, right-minded patriot who believes in civil liberty, this teaching must be most repugnant.
1. Any person, be he howsoever much in a majority, has no right whatever to impose his belief on a single soul. The conscience and rights of the Jew or the Catholic or the infidel or the Mohammedan are as sacred in the eyes of the law as those of the orthodox Christian. This is evident when we consider that these rights inhere in every person, not because of any religious belief or non-belief, but because he is a man. It is the rights of men—humanity—as men, and not as religionists of any sort, that governments are ordained to protect or conserve.
2. The teaching of Christianity from the Bible in the schools would involve a decision by a civil tribunal (a) as to which was the right Bible, or right translation; (b) as to which church was the true teacher; or else it would lead to a jelly-fish compromise foreign to every principle of true Christianity and positive Christian character.
3. The teaching of Christian morality on a Bible basis would place the teaching of religion in the hands of irreligious teachers—and nothing could bring religion into greater contempt; or it would necessitate the appointment of a religious examining board by the State to determine the fitness of all teachers to give instruction in religious matters; or a class of teachers would have to be appointed for this purpose. And this would give rise to a class of political religious teachers. A political teacher is reprehensible in a school of any sort, how much more so religiously.
All these considerations clearly show what would be the outcome of a National Reform régime in our public schools. It would inevitably bear the bitter fruit of religious tyranny, persecution, infidelity, and the ultimate destruction of both Church and State,—the Church and the State which entered this illegitimate and monstrous union. Surely it is time to pray that the public schools may be delivered from this insidious, seductive, baleful poison. Religion ought to be taught; but the place to teach it is in the home and the church. If the church were but doing her duty, there would be no appeal to the State. The appeals and demands along National Reform lines are confessions of her backslidden condition. The followers of Him who says to His disciples: "All authority hath been given to Me in heaven and on earth; go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations;" of Him of whom the Spirit says that God "gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all," need no human legislation to aid them in their work. The history of the ages abundantly sustains this truth.
