readily yield to any one in my admiration of the "Assembly's Catechism," as a manual of early Christian instruction, but were I reduced to the sad alternative of choosing between this great New England Classic and the "Divine and Moral Songs" of Dr. Watts, I should choose the poetry, and give up the theology. Were the great Teacher of mankind to appear again among men to correct the abuses that have grown up among his disciples, I can easily imagine that he would soon be seen, now as he was eighteen hundred years ago, where perhaps he would least be expected, visiting our Sabbath Schools as he once visited the temple, and removing from them the various "Guides," "Question Books," "Manuals," "Abridgements," &c., which an injudicious but well disposed zeal has introduced there, and saying with an authority which none could resist, "Take these things hence, -suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me." It is true that the instructions of our Saviour were not given in the form of poetry, but they nevertheless often breathe a large portion of its spirit.

I should leave this part of my subject quite imperfect, if I were to close without recognizing the claims of the Bible as a controlling instrumentality in intellectual and moral culture. Of its philosophy, its poetry, its history, I need not further speak. As a classic, however, I may say that it takes hold of the human soul with greater power; that it touches human sympathies at a greater number of points; that it penetrates more deeply into the affections, and more completely invests our whole spirit

ual being, than all human compositions. And, more than this, it claims supreme control over the conscience. Produced upon the borders of the two principal types of civilization, it presents all the gorgeous exuberance of eastern imagination together with the severer habits of thought which mark the European mind. In the Jew and the Greek, in the Roman and the Briton, it has proved an instrument no less of temporal than of eternal salvation. As it would be impossible for us to estimate the advantages which we have derived from it, so, also, we cannot overrate our obligations to preserve and transmit it in its simplicity and purity, as the guardian and glory of our schools. I am quite conscious of the objection which meets us on the very threshold of this subject, that its free use is not compatible with the religious freedom which is the glory of our land. The demand has already been made in some quarters, that it be dismissed from a place in our schools. In some places it retains but a nominal position, and is looked upon rather as a relic of the past than as giving life to the present and hope to the future. Far be it from me to utter a word in behalf of sectarianism in our schools. There is no duty which the American teacher is more sacredly bound to observe than the duty of solemnly respecting the religious belief of his pupils. Of the trinity or unity of the Godhead we may not speak, but we may speak of "Jesus of Nazareth, as a man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him." Of the "doctrine of baptisms and laying

on of hands;" of " general or particular election;" of the nature of the atonement, and of the numerous other tenets which mark the various sects of Christendom, we need not speak; nor need we insist offensively upon the peculiarities of Protestantism. We may, and we must, observe a respectful silence on all these matters within the precincts of our school-rooms. But when you have taken away from the teacher the right to make the Bible the means of promoting his own sectarian views, how ample and how luxuriant is the field which is still open for moral and even for Christian culture. How prone we are to magnify the peculiarities of our own particular faith, and forget the great principles which are held in common by all believing souls. I believe, indeed, that it is all the better for the interests of religion itself that it should not be formally taught in our public schools. There are other agencies which may and which do answer this end, and, if we may judge from the testimony of those who have had the opportunity of observing the operations of those schools in which religious doctrines are systematically taught, our own schools will not suffer in the comparison, either in a moral or a religious point of view. But while we cheerfully concede and earnestly defend the right of all to intellectual and moral education, without exposure to any sectarian bias, let us not for one móment surrender our right and our privilege to the free use of the Bible as the most efficient instrument of Classical Culture. Let us rather return to the practice of our fathers, so far as it is compatible

with the principles which I have just stated. Our obligations to this volume are too great to be easily forgotten. The Bible was pre-eminently the classic of our early New England history. "In the case of our fathers," remarks a philosophic writer, "it seems probable that nothing but the strong pillars of high Calvinism held them up, or could have held them up, until the critical point of their history was passed. Nothing could hold them up but a strong internal force, such as they had in these doctrines,doctrines that were incorporated in their souls as the spinal column in their bodies. Thus, when their manners were grown wild, their sentiments course, and their ill-trained understandings generally incapable of nice speculation, still the tough questions of their theology kept them always in action; still they could grasp hold of the great iron pillars of election, reprobation, and decrees, and their clumsyhanded thoughts were able to feel them distinctly. Whoever could distinguish a thunderbolt could surely think of these, and it mattered not so much whether they thought exactly right, as that they kept thinking, and, in their thinking, brought down God upon their souls. So they took hold of the iron pillars that held up the theologic heavens, and climbed and heaved in huge surges of might, and kept their gross faculties in exercise till the critical hour of their trial was passed. The themes which they handled kept them constantly before God. They dwelt in the summits of the Divine Government. They looked upon the throne, they heard the thunders roll below, and felt the empyrean shake

above at the going forth of God's decrees. Such a religion as they had could not be distant, or cold, or feeble. It had power to invest the coarse mind with a divine presence, and make Jehovah felt as an element of power and experience. Never was there a better foundation for a grand and massive character in religion. And now God means to finish out this character by uniting in it the softer shades of feeling, and the broader compass of a more catholic and genial spirit." What was it but the Bible that brought our fathers to these shores? What else was it that smote this icy and rock-bound soil of New England, and bade the waters of civilization flow in fertilizing streams over the broad expanse of this vast continent? The Bible has given to the greater portion of the population of this country a unity, a force and symmetry of character, as marked as that which the poems of Homer gave to the Greeks. In fact, what I have already said respecting its influence on the Jew, is almost equally true in regard to the Puritan and the Huguenot. Diversities of race and of national culture, it is true, manifest themselves where the same moral temper controls and animates the whole character.

Is it not in the highest degree desirable, and in the highest degree practicable, to derive in our schools from the use of this blessed volume a far higher degree of moral power than we at present experience? Have we not permitted the Bible to retire too far from its appropriate sphere in the American school-room? How can we better produce that Titanic strength of character which was