and I hope we
never shall. We are not Pagans, nor Mahometans, nor Russians. We have
not sold out, and don't intend to! We are free, for with a great price
our forefathers have bought this freedom; and better still, we are made,
through the mercy of our Divine Author, Christians, and heirs to a
heavenly kingdom. Our children, too, are free; they belong by the order
of nature to their parents, and by the order of grace to our Lord Jesus
Christ. They are children of God and heirs to His heavenly kingdom. It
is not on the State, but on parents, that God imposed the duty to
educate their children, a duty from which no State can dispense, nor can
fathers and mothers relieve themselves of this duty by the vicarious
assumption of the State. They have to give a severe account of their
children on the Day of Judgment, and they cannot allow any power to
disturb them in insisting upon their rights and making free use of them.
The State has no more authority or control rightfully over our
children, than over a man's wife. The right to educate our children is a
right of conscience, and a right of the family. Now these rights do not
belong to the temporal order at all; and outside of this the State has
no claim, no right, no authority. When the State has children, it will
be time enough to teach them. How long will it take our enlightened age
to learn this simple but important truth?

Nothing shows better the absurdity of the State in claiming the right of
education, than its incompetency for the task. The State is forbidden
any interference with religion.

I have shown that the whole system is infidel in principle. The State
says we want no religion taught in the Public Schools, because, as we
cannot teach you religion without inculcating some form or other
professed by some sect or other, and as we do not wish to give offence,
we will teach you none. Let the child believe anything or nothing, so as
it is not some form of "sectarianism." I worship in the "Pantheon;" all
are alike to me, of course. In all this the State is perfectly
consistent, and cannot do otherwise. It has undertaken a part _it is not
competent to perform_. The State, as State, professes no form of
belief. Its gods, its worships, its altars, its victims, its rewards,
its punishments, its heaven, its hell--are here. It teaches no religion,
because it don't profess any. It was not born, it will not die, it has
no soul, it was not created, it will not be judged in t