much ease as this class. Though punishment is sometimes necessary
where moral influence has done its utmost, the conscience is, in all
ordinary cases, an infinitely better disciplinarian than the rod. When
you can get a school to obey and to study because it is right, and from
a conviction of accountability to God, you have gained a victory which
is worth more than all the penal statutes in the world; but you can
never gain such a victory without laying great stress upon religious
principle in your daily instructions.

"There is, I am aware, in the minds of some warm and respectable friends
of popular education, an objection against incorporating religious
instruction into the system as one of its essential elements. It can
not, they think, be done without bringing in along with it the evils of
sectarianism. If this objection could not be obviated, it would, I
confess, have great weight in my own mind. It supposes that if any
religious instruction is given, the distinctive tenets of some
particular denomination must be inculcated. But is this at all
necessary? Must we either exclude religion altogether from our common
schools, or teach some one of the many creeds which are embraced by as
many different sects in the ecclesiastical calendar? Surely not. There
are certain great moral and religious principles in which all
denominations are agreed; such as the ten commandments, our Savior's
golden rule--every thing, in short, which lies within the whole range of
duty to God and duty to our fellow-men. I should be glad to know what
sectarianism there can be in a schoolmaster's teaching my children the
first and second tables of the moral law; to 'love the Lord their God
with all their heart, and their neighbor as themselves;' in teaching
them to keep the Sabbath holy, to honor their parents, not to swear, nor
drink, nor lie, nor cheat, nor steal, nor covet. Verily, if this is what
any mean by sectarianism, then the more we have of it in our common
schools the better. 'It is a lamentation, and shall be for a
lamentation,' that there is so little of it. I have not the least
hesitation in saying, that no instructor, whether male or female, ought
ever to be employed who is not both able and willing to teach morality
and religion in the manner which I have just alluded to. Were this
faithfully done in all the primary schools of the nation, our civil and
religious liberties, and all our blessed institutions, would be
incomparably