they could bring up their
children in the knowledge, love, and service of God by banishing the
Bible, prayer, and religious exercises of every kind from the school.
Hence religion was reverenced, and its duties attended to in all
institutions of learning in the country. The American system of
education, in its incipiency, and for a long while, was one founded on
Bible-teaching and religious exercises. The present system is
un-American, anti-American.

Now how did it happen that the primitive Christian system of education
became unchristian and anti-American? To make you understand more
clearly the origin of the present system of the Public Schools, I must
first show you how _Secret Societies seek to spread Irreligious
Education in Europe_.

These societies profess the most irreligious and anti-social doctrines.
Among the chief means employed by them for pushing forward their
diabolical principles is _Education without Religion_. The
"International," one of the most powerful of these organizations, has
lately put forward a programme, in which the following points are laid
down as most necessary to be insisted upon in the agitation conducted by
the socialist democratic party in Switzerland:

"... _Compulsory and gratuitous education_ up to the completion
of the fourteenth year of each child's age.... Separation of
the Church from the State, _and also of the schools from the
Church_."

About three short years ago a pamphlet was published in which we find
detailed the efforts made in France to spread irreligion by means of bad
education. The letters of eighty of the Prelates of France are appended
to the pamphlet. Alas! the sad forebodings of that noble episcopate
have been too soon and too terribly fulfilled!

The following lengthy extracts are taken from the late Pastoral of the
Bishops of Ireland on Christian Education:

"EFFORTS TO SPREAD IRRELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN FRANCE--DISASTROUS
RESULTS IN FRANCE.

"'I see,' says the most reverend author, 'that for some time
past the most extraordinary efforts are made in France to
spread impiety, immorality, the most anti-social theories,
under the pretext of spreading education. No longer as
formerly, it is in newspapers and books that religion,
morality, and the eternal principles of good order are attacked
with the most deceitful and formidable weapon of a corrupt
system of education. Under cover of a