on sand. And at what age of the Christian era
have those who professed to teach the Christian religion, or to believe
in its authority and importance, not insisted on the absolute necessity
of inculcating its principles and its precepts upon the minds of the
young? In what age, by what sect, where, when, by whom, has religious
truth been excluded from the education of youth? Nowhere; never.
Everywhere, and at all times, it has been, and is, regarded as
essential. It is of the essence, the vitality, of useful instruction.
From all this Mr. Girard dissents. His plan denies the necessity and the
propriety of religious instruction as a part of the education of youth.
He dissents, not only from all the sentiments of Christian mankind, from
all common conviction, and from the results of all experience, but he
dissents also from still higher authority, the word of God itself. My
learned friend has referred, with propriety, to one of the commands of
the Decalogue; but there is another, a first commandment, and that is a
precept of religion, and it is in subordination to this that the moral
precepts of the Decalogue are proclaimed. This first great commandment
teaches man that there is one, and only one, great First Cause, one, and
only one, proper object of human worship. This is the great, the ever
fresh, the overflowing fountain of all revealed truth. Without it, human
life is a desert, of no known termination on any side, but shut in on
all sides by a dark and impenetrable horizon. Without the light of this
truth, man knows nothing of his origin, and nothing of his end. And when
the Decalogue was delivered to the Jews, with this great announcement
and command at its head, what said the inspired lawgiver? that it should
be kept from children? that it should be reserved as a communication fit
only for mature age? Far, far otherwise. "And these words, which I
command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them
diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest
in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down,
and when thou risest up."

There is an authority still more imposing and awful. When little
children were brought into the presence of the Son of God, his disciples
proposed to send them away; but he said, "Suffer little children to come
unto me." Unto _me_; he did not send them first for lessons in morals
to the schools of the Pharisees, or to the unbelieving Sadd