“But did you not say, Mr. Midith, that ministers, too, often feel the burden of narrowness brought to bear upon them by their congregations? They are not under the control of the state. How, then, do you reconcile these facts?” asked Rev. Dudley. “In the first place, they are partly under state monopoly, because church property is exempt from taxation, while other property is taxed. In the church there is a wide range of latitude in the thought and belief between the most primitive Catholic, who believes himself to be under the guidance and paternalism of an infallible pope, and the most liberal Unitarian or Universalist, who is free nearly to believe as he likes. As a minister, then, nearly every one can find a gradation of individual freedom corresponding with his intellectual advancement, and when he is ready to step out of the church beyond all sectarian dogmas, he is at liberty to do so at any time. He is not now forced by the state, like formerly, to be a member of a particular church, or of any church, nor is he forced to contribute toward the support of any church more than the increase of his taxation caused by the exemption of church property. But with your public school and your teacher it is altogether different. You are taxed to support them whether you are in sympathy with them or not; whether you send your children to the public school, or to a private one where you pay tuition. The state-prescribed course of study and mode of discipline are nearly alike everywhere. There is but one narrow channel in which your intellectual activity must be confined. In your state-schools, you as an individual can not, like a minister and a church member, pass, step by step, as you grow intellectually, through a wide range toward the more liberal, and even pass entirely beyond all sectarian doctrines, like the tendency of your present theological movement clearly indicates. A minister, under your present _regime_, can preach any doctrine he desires from an independent pulpit, but an independent school is taxed out of existence by the state, because the private teacher can not get the required number of pupils as long as the parents of the pupils must first pay taxes to support the public school and then pay tuition to the private teacher.