bring out some of those principles upon which the whole matter must ultimately be adjusted.

The question before us does not relate to the Divine authority of the Bible, nor to the propriety of giving religious instruction to the young. It is admitted that the sacred Scriptures came from God; it is also conceded that children should, very early, be made acquainted with their Divine teachings. The simple question which we have to answer is, whether this instruction should be wholly left to the parents, the church, the special religious teachers of the child, or whether it should be incorporated as a fixed element in a public and secular system of education. Ought the Bible, as the word of God, to be read in our public schools? Ought the doctrines and the duties of the Bible to be taught in our public schools? These are the only points now be fore us.

In discussing this subject, however, a wide field has to be surveyed. How shall we determine what ought to be done, in a system of public education? The OUGHT is never a question of expediency, but always of duty. It is not therefore to be settled by a calculation of questionable and changing advantages, but only by the attainment of unquestioned and unchanging principles. To determine what an individual, in any given case, ought to do, we must first attain some general principle for his action, and then settle the particular conduct in conformity to this. So also of a society, a community, a state. Whenever we speak of duty, or of something which ought to be done, we settle it, or at least should do so, not by any balancing of consequences, or drawing the line between different expediencies, but by fixing upon some principle which shall control all results, while itself shall be controlled by none. The principles which should regulate the conduct of a state, are essentially different from those which should control the action of an individual man, because the state and the man have each a radically different end. The end of the state is the highest freedom of its subjects, the end of the man is the most perfect union with God. The principles, therefore, which will establish the duty of the

one, need not necessarily settle the duty of the other, for the standard of right in the two cases is not the same. Much difficulty has been experienced in discussing the question respecting the Bible in schools, from assuming that that which is right for the man, is therefore and necessarily right for the state. The duty of the two may coincide, but it is to be determined, in both cases, upon different principles. Without inquiring, now, what ought to be the conduct of the individual, in reference to the teaching and circulation of the Scriptures, we shall seek only to attain those principles which shall establish clearly the duty of the state upon this point.

We start by affirming the position, that the state can only exist on the basis of some form of religion. "Government," says Burke," is a contrivance of human wisdom for the protection of human rights." This definition, if it be designed to express a full theory of government, is imperfect, but as a partial statement it cannot be disputed. It is certainly one end of government to protect the rights of its subjects. We may call that government a failure, which allows the unchecked and undisputed sway of wrong within its borders. Every government must provide itself with some machinery by which its laws for the protection of rights shall be faithfully enforced. Thus a system of police becomes necessary; officers, courts, prisons, and other instruments of judicial and executive procedure, are required as means by which the great end shall be secured. All these are undoubtedly within the province of government. It would be folly to say that these means may not be used; they must be used, or the government must abandon one of the very objects for which it was formed. We cannot protect human rights simply by legislating; we must, in the present condition of the race, have a force also to execute, or legislation would be but a waste of words. Now it is this necessity for an executive force, grounded as it is in the very nature of government, which demands some religion for the state. No state can perfectly execute its laws for the protection of rights, except through the aid of religious sanctions. We may have penalties

which shall be of unmitigated severity, courts that shall be altogether impartial in adjudging them, officers and a police system as perfect in watchfulness and fidelity as anything human can be, and yet the vices and crimes which we would check by these means alone, will run riot and trample beneath them all these restraining influences. There must be an unseen principle in the government, which shall appeal to the unseen and spiritual being of its subjects; there must be something which shall lay hold upon the religious susceptibility of man, which shall control the conscience and sway the soul, by bringing in the constant supervision of a Sovereign who can see where no human eye can penetrate, who can punish where no human arm can restrain, and who has an eternity for his just and unavoidable retributions. No human control can be omnipresent in its influence; no system of police espionage can be omniscient; no force which human authority wields, can be omnipotent; and yet a government, in order to its perfect success, needs something which shall be everywhere present, all-seeing, and almighty. It needs some kind of a religion, and it must have this, or it is powerless.

But there is a profounder principle on which this connection of the state with religion may be affirmed: The state is not a mere aggregation of the individuals who represent it; just as the man is something more than the sum of the particles which compose his body. Neither do these individuals, together with the laws which connect them under one government, constitute the state, any more than do the particles of a man's body, in their union through dynamic agencies, make up the man. There is a spirituality which is the man; and it is this same spirituality, in a broader sense, which is the state. There is in human nature a principle of authority, a reason, a conscience, a will, which is not only valid to control the individual in whom we first find it, but can utter universal maxims and principles, which have authority in the actions and sentiments of men. The state is the actual exhibition, it is the real carrying out and maintaining of these universal principles which the reason, the

spirituality of every man announces. They are not accidental, they are not invented, they are not forced upon us, but they spring up necessarily with human nature itself, and without them human nature could not be conceived. They are like those Divine commands of which Sophocles says, in the Antigone, "they are not of yesterday, or to-day; no: they live without end, and no one knows how they came or when they came." The state is, at the same time, the embodiment of these universal principles, as they come out in the institutions of any people; and it represents, also, that true and substantial spirituality in man, from which these principles spring; just as to Minerva, among the Athenians, belonged the twofold significance of bearing the name of the people as a whole, and being also the goddess who represented their inner character and spirit.

The state is thus essential to human society. It is not the result of any agreement or compact among individuals, as though it would not exist were the compact wanting. No one has any more right or power to say that he will not grow up under the sway of some state, than to say that he will not grow up into his own manhood. The state is as necessary to him as his own manhood, and he can therefore no more throw off the one than the other. "It is manifest," says Aristotle, "that the state is one of the things which exist by nature, and that man is, by nature, an animal living in states."

All this brings out the intimate and necessary connection of the state with religion: the two grow out of the same element in the human soul. It is the reason, the conscience, the will of man, which makes him a subject of God, and it is this which constitutes him a citizen of the state. It is this spirituality by which he can hold communion with his Maker; and it is this, also, which gives him a real community with his kind. Public law, if it shall be established and defined, must spring from that same spirituality where religion itself has its seat. Religion, in order to its full exhi1 πολιτικὸν ζῶον.—Polit. I. 1.

bition, needs a social relation, among men and the state; in order to its valid existence, needs a religious condition in man. The state cannot be conceived without religion; for it is the essence of the state to be an arrangement and exposition of ethical principles; and this would be inconceivable without a religious ground. The state and religion form, together, one ethical whole, which, though they may sometimes be spoken of as separate, are yet ever united in one germ, in one common and living root; just as the soul, in the individual man, is one undivided whole, though we sometimes speak of its separate faculties, as understanding, suscepțibility, and will. We can no more separate, in the present condition of man, religion and the state, and consider the one as independent of the other, than we can any two faculties of the human soul.

But we need not dwell upon these philosophical principles. If we turn to the actual condition of things, we find that religion and the state have always been connected in the history of the world. No state has ever yet existed without resting on the basis of some religion. The earliest state constitution of which we have any clear record is the Egyptian, and this was distinctively a theocracy. The Hebrew state was, at first, theocratic; and when God gave this people a king, the religious element in their constitution was not withdrawn. The old kingdoms of Assyria, Phenicia, Media, and Persia, all made use of some special religion as an auxiliary to their civil rule. India was, and still is, a priestly aristocracy. In China, the emperor of the state has ever been the highpriest of the religion. The Roman state regarded its emperor as the representative of its god. Cesar not only reigned by the will of Jove, but he was considered as occupying the same position among mortals as Jupiter among the immortals. The Saracenic empire sprang up, of course, in a religious interest, and had its whole character and conduct shaped by its religion. Among modern states, not a single one will be found where the civil rule is dissociated from religion. France tried it once. She wrote on her palaces and gateways, There is no God; but the atheistic inscription was