deprive of their birth-right
as members of a Christian community. There are tens of thousands in our
own heaven-blessed New England, and hundreds of thousands in these
United States, who receive no religious instruction whatever at home,
and whose parents are connected with no religious denomination. What is
to be done? We can neither compel ignorant and graceless fathers and
mothers to teach their children the fear of the Lord, nor to send them
to any place of worship or Sabbath-school. I ask again, what is to be
done? These neglected children are in the midst of us. Our cities swarm
with them. They are scattered every where over our beautiful hills and
valleys. Grow up they will among our own children, without principle and
without morals, to breathe mildew upon the young virtues which we have
sown in our families, and to prey upon the dearest interests of society,
unless somebody cares for their moral and religious education. And where
shall they receive this education, if not in the school-house? You will
find them there, if in any place of instruction, and multitudes of them
you can reach nowhere else.

"A more Utopian dream never visited the brain of a sensible man than
that which promises to usher in a new golden age by the diffusion and
thoroughness of what is commonly understood by popular education. With
all its funds, and improved school-houses, and able teachers, and
grammars, and maps, and black-boards, such an education is essentially
defective. Without moral principle at bottom to guide and control its
energies, education is a sharp sword in the hands of a practiced and
reckless fencer. I have no hesitation in saying, that if we could have
but one, moral and religious culture is even more important than a
knowledge of letters; and that the former can not be excluded from any
system of popular education without infinite hazard. Happily, the two
are so far from being hostile powers in the common domain, that they are
natural allies, moving on harmoniously in the same right line, and
mutually strengthening each other. The more virtue you can infuse into
the hearts of your pupils, the better they will improve their time, and
the more rapid will be their proficiency in their common studies. The
most successful teachers have found the half hour devoted to moral and
religious instruction more profitable to the scholar than any other half
hour in the day; and there are no teachers who govern their schools with
so