"Let us test this specious plea of neutrality. What does it imply? If carried strictly out to the exclusion of every thing religious, or having a religious tendency, it must consistently demand a like exclusion of every thing that in the least manifests the opposite tendency, under whatever specious disguises it may be veiled. It does not alter the case in the least that opinions, regarded as irreligious, or as undermining or in any way weakening the grounds of belief, take to themselves the specious names of literature, or politics, or political economy, or phrenology, or the philosophy of history. No such sham pass-words should give to Buckle and Combe admittance where Butler and Chalmers are shut out. Every thing that makes it less easy for the child to believe his catechism, 'taught at home,' as they say, is a break of the supposed concordat. The mere objection is to be heeded. It is enough that things seem so to serious men, as capable of correct reasoning as any on the other side; or that it is the opinion, the prejudice, if any choose so to call it, of a devout ignorance. The thoughtful religious man might be willing to forego his objection if there were or could be real impartiality. He might trust a true moral and religious training as fully able to counteract any thing of an opposite tendency. But to let in the enemy, and then take away the weapon of defence--this is a neutrality hard to be understood. "Now, there can be no doubt of the fact that there is admitted into our schools, our colleges, our educational libraries, into the reading-rooms connected with them, much that is thus _deemed_ irreligious in its tendency--at least, by the holders of our stricter creeds. There is much that is silently alienating the minds of their children from the doctrines held sacred by their fathers. We might go further: there is much that tends to undermine all religious belief, even of the freest cast. What young man can have his mind filled with the atheistical speculations of Mill and Spencer, or be exposed to the uncounteracted theories of Darwin and Huxley, and yet retain unimpaired his belief in a providence as taught by Christ--a providence that 'numbers the very hairs of our heads'--or listen as before to the prayer that ascends from the family altar? These writers profess a kind of theism, it is said; but wherein, as far as any moral power is concerned, does it differ from a belief in quadratic equations, or the dogmas of heat and magnetism?