obnoxious. According to my experience, a layman is just as likely to
launch out into sectarian views, and to advance clashing doctrines and
violent, bigoted prejudices, as a professional preacher, and even more
so. Every objection to professional religious instruction applies with
still greater force to lay teaching. As in other cases, so in this, the
greatest degree of candor is usually found accompanying the greatest
degree of knowledge. Nothing is more apt to be positive and dogmatical
than ignorance.

But there is no provision in any part of Mr. Girard's will for the
introduction of any lay teaching on religious matters whatever. The
children are to get their religion when they leave his school, and they
are to have nothing to do with religion before they do leave it. They
are then to choose their religious opinions, and not before.

MR. BINNEY. "Choose their tenets" is the expression.

Tenets are opinions, I believe. The mass of one's religious tenets makes
up one's religion.

Now, it is evident that Mr. Girard meant to found a school of morals,
without any reference to, or connection with, religion. But, after all,
there is nothing original in this plan of his. It has its origin in a
deistical source, but not from the highest school of infidelity. Not
from Bolingbroke, or Shaftesbury, or Gibbon; not even from Voltaire or
D'Alembert. It is from two persons who were probably known to Mr. Girard
in the early part of his life; it is from Mr. Thomas Paine and Mr.
Volney. Mr. Thomas Paine, in his "Age of Reason," says: "Let us devise
means to establish schools of instruction, that we may banish the
ignorance that the ancient _regime_ of kings and priests has spread
among the people. Let us propagate morality, unfettered by
superstition."

MR. BINNEY. What do you get that from?

The same place that Mr. Girard got this provision of his will from,
Paine's "Age of Reason." The same phraseology in effect is here. Paine
disguised his real meaning, it is true. He said: "Let us devise means to
establish schools to propagate morality, unfettered by _superstition_."
Mr. Girard, who had no disguise about him, uses plain language to
express the same meaning. In Mr. Girard's view, _religion_ is just that
thing which Mr. Paine calls _superstition_. "Let us establish schools of
morality," said he, "unfettered by religious tenets. Let us give these
children a system of pure morals before they adopt any religion." The