marble walls.

I now come to the consideration of the second part of this clause in the
will, that is to say, the reasons assigned by Mr. Girard for making
these restrictions with regard to the ministers of religion; and I say
that these are much more derogatory to Christianity than the main
provision itself, excluding them. He says that there are such a
multitude of sects and such diversity of opinion, that he will exclude
all religion and all its ministers, in order to keep the minds of the
children free from clashing controversies. Now, does not this tend to
subvert all belief in the utility of teaching the Christian religion to
youth at all? Certainly, it is a broad and bold denial of such utility.
To say that the evil resulting to youth from the differences of sects
and creeds overbalances all the benefits which the best education can
give them, what is this but to say that the branches of the tree of
religious knowledge are so twisted, and twined, and commingled, and all
run so much into and over each other, that there is therefore no remedy
but to lay the axe at the root of the tree itself? It means that, and
nothing less! Now, if there be any thing more derogatory to the
Christian religion than this, I should like to know what it is. In all
this we see the attack upon religion itself, made on its ministers, its
institutions, and its diversities. And that is the objection urged by
all the lower and more vulgar schools of infidelity throughout the
world. In all these schools, called schools of Rationalism in Germany,
Socialism in England, and by various other names in various countries
which they infest, this is the universal cant. The first step of all
these philosophical moralists and regenerators of the human race is to
attack the agency through which religion and Christianity are
administered to man. But in this there is nothing new or original. We
find the same mode of attack and remark in Paine's "Age of Reason." At
page 336 he says: "The Bramin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the
Mahometan, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the Protestant Church,
split into several hundred contradictory sectaries, preaching, in some
instances, damnation against each other, all cry out, 'Our holy
religion!'"

We find the same view in Volney's "Ruins of Empires." Mr. Volney arrays
in a sort of semicircle the different and conflicting religions of the
world. "And first," says he, "surrounded by a group in various fa