ause worn out with all these burdens, how
shall the father or mother of a family, huddled into a single room, do
what the rich and the educated, in their spacious houses, and with
abundant leisure, never dream of attempting?

Moreover, as I have shown in a preceding chapter, it must be admitted
that a mother not educated in religious and moral principles cannot
inform the mind and heart of the young child; this fully disposes of the
argument that domestic teaching alone will supply what is acknowledged
to be wanting in the "Public Schools." It is to be hoped that we shall
hear no more of this heartless talk.

"Well, then," some will say, "let our children receive, _in
Sunday-schools_, that amount of religious culture and instruction which
the State says shall not be given in the school, and which is believed
to be so essential in the education of the young."

Now it is in vain to open our Sunday-schools and expect to cure, on one
day of the week, or rather a few hours of that day (when this even
depends, in a great part, on the weather), the work not only of the
other six, but the fruits of years of an ill-directed and godless State
education. The Sunday-schools are nothing but so many "_Poor-man's
soothing plasters_" on Christian consciences. The want of religious
training for six days in the week, added to the positive knowledge of
error on all religious subjects which youths may acquire during that
time, will more than counterbalance the best-directed efforts of parents
and the clergy to give any definite knowledge on the truths of
revelation. The question whether or not religious education is
compatible with Public School education, has been tried in all
English-speaking countries, and in parts of Germany, with this result:
that, a class, the Public School children are without any adequate
religious knowledge or training. The clergy may have Sunday-schools, as
they have, in all their churches; but what can children learn, in a few
hours, of a subject which took three years from the Saviour of man to
teach even to the apostles? And then the apostles, after three years of
instruction from the lips of Christ, did not understand the Christian
religion; they were slow to understand, and, after His resurrection,
Christ upbraided them with incredulity and hardness of heart. Even the
children of the Public Schools, as far as experience goes, lose all
taste for the study of religion, which is developed among the children