t same old array of the natural virtues or
qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the
heathen nations of old. It must, then, be evident to every man of common
sense that the reading of the Bible alone, though it be the Word of God,
will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education. Indeed the
reading of the Bible alone is by no means an adequate remedy to stem the
torrent of the evils in our country. What impurities have not been
committed under the sanction of those words of the Lord, "Increase and
multiply"! A host of sectarians, following in the wake of the
Anabaptists of Munster, in Germany, have, on the authority of those
words, dared to legitimate polygamy. On such misapplication of a text
from the Gospel, Luther, Bucerus, and Melanchthon have permitted Philip,
the Landgrave of Hesse, to have two wives.

In the name of the Bible, of the Word of God, Luther at first incited
the German peasantry to revolt against their rulers, and then,
frightened at his own work, he persuaded the princes to massacre the
peasants. John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he
should marry eleven women at once. Herman felt himself clearly
designated, in the Bible, as the Envoy of the Lord. Nicholas learned
from it that there was no necessity of anything connected with faith,
and that we must live in sin in order that grace may abound. Sympson
pretends to find in the Scriptures an ordination that men should walk in
the streets stark naked, to teach the rich a lesson that they must
divest themselves of everything. Richard Hill justified, with the Bible
in hand, adultery and manslaughter as deeds never failing to work out
some good purpose, especially when joined to incest, in which case more
saints are added to the earth and more blessed to the heavens. Even on
the avowal of honest Protestants, no crime or abomination has ever
failed to find its pretended justification in some scriptural text.

What, then, must we think of the reading of the Bible, when its reading,
without note or comment, leads to such consequences? Indeed what has
been said on the evil consequences of the Public School system on
society proves sufficiently that the reading of the Bible is no adequate
means at all to stem the torrent of crimes in our country. Nowhere has
the Bible been read more frequently, during school-hours, than in the
Public Schools of the New England States, and yet nowhere have the
results of