Mohammedan, or infidel superstitions
or opinions. They will not, through the whole course of instruction,
hear a prayer, a lecture, or a single advice, lesson, or precept of the
Church; they will, as far as the State plan of teaching extends, remain
ignorant of the "holy name of God," or the Blessed Trinity, or the
Lord's Prayer, or the Ten Commandments, or the Gospels, or the death and
sufferings of our Lord, or the resurrection of the body, or a future
state of reward and punishment. _No prayer_ is offered up or even
permitted to be taught to those little ones whom our Lord loves so
tenderly. The teacher is not even permitted by law to explain what is
meant by the term "our Saviour," "our Redeemer"!

Should a child ask, in a reading-lesson, what "our Lord and Saviour"
meant, the teacher must tell him: "Hush! if you want to know that you
must ask somebody out of school! We don't teach anything about religion
here! We have no Lord, or God, or Saviour here!"

In reference to this manner of educating the youth of America, the
Protestant Bishop of Tennessee said some time ago:

"The secular system took no notice of God or of Christ, or of
the Church of the Living God, or, except in the most incidental
way, of God's Holy Word. The intellect was stimulated to the
highest degree, but the heart and the affections were left
uncultivated. It was a system which trained for the business of
life, not for the duties of life. As there were differences of
opinion about Christianity, it was not allowed to be spoken of,
and a knowledge of it was not one of the qualifications for a
teacher. A man might be a Mohammedan or a Hindoo if he were
only a proficient in geography, arithmetic, or the exact
sciences. The teachers in the normal schools might be infidels
provided they did not openly inculcate their scepticism; and,
in point of fact, in the schools which were designed to train
teachers only, a vast majority were not Christians."

The school-books must be made unchristian lest they give offence to the
countless sects of Protestantism. Voltaire, Paine, or Renan may be read
in the Public Schools, but nothing of God.

If our Public Schools differ in any degree from the ancient heathen, it
is to our greater shame and confusion, and to their advantage. They
taught piety to "_their gods_;" we ignore the _true God altogether_, and
bring the false gods of the heathens d