of some one or other of the listeners. "The Father and I are
One." "The Father is greater than I." Here at once we have the Unitarian
and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock! "This is My Body." "It is the spirit
which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." Here we have
the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real presence
(consubstantially), and his Calvinistic coadjutor in reform, squarely at
issue! "Unless you be born again of water and the Holy Ghost," etc. Here
we have the Baptist and the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion.
Nevertheless, widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a
fundamental assimilation between all the Protestant sects which may
render it possible for them to unite in one educational organization;
and yet we find many of the most enlightened and earnest among the
Protestant clergy of America now zealously advocating the denominational
system, such as we find it in the European countries. They believe that
education should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion, and they
are liberal enough to insist that, by natural right as well as by the
constitutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine adverse to
the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or surreptitiously imposed
upon his child. It is well known, however, that between the Catholic
faith and all Protestant creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged
over. It would, therefore, be simply impossible to adopt any religious
teaching whatever in mixed schools, without at once interfering with
Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule,
we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we
have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility
and barrenness of which must be evident to every one. Catholics,
agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe
that secular education, administered without religion, is not only vain,
but exceedingly pernicious; that it is fast undermining the Christian
faith of this nation; that it is rapidly filling the land with
rationalism; that it is destroying the authority of the Holy Scriptures;
that it is educating men who prefix "Reverend" and affix "D.D." to their
names, the more effectually to preach covert infidelity and immorality
to Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the
Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural
gifts, it is offering us tha