Moreover, though we deny the competency of the state to act as educator, we hold that its duty toward both religion and education is something more than negative. We hold that it has positive duties to perform in regard to each. It cannot decide what religion its citizens shall accept and obey; but it is bound to protect its citizens in the free and full enjoyment of the religion they adopt for themselves. We cannot, for the sake of carrying a point which we hold to be true and certain to be of great importance, ally ourselves with infidels, or lay down as a universal principle what our church has never approved, and what we may in the change of the tide be ourselves obliged to disavow. The state, with all its powers and functions, exists for religion, and is in all its action subordinated to the eternal end of man. As the church teaches, and as the New England Puritans held, this world is never the end; it is only a means to an end infinitely above itself. We will never dishonor truth so much as to concede for a moment that the state is independent of religion; that it may treat religion, as a coördinate power with itself, with indifference, or look down upon it with haughty contempt, as beneath its notice, or to be pushed aside if it comes in its way. It is as much bound to consult the spiritual end of man, and to obey the law of God, which overrides all other laws, as is the individual. We, of course, deny the competency of the state to educate, to say what shall or shall not be taught in the public schools, as we deny its competency to say what shall or shall not be the religious belief and discipline of its citizens. We, of course, utterly repudiate the popular doctrine that so-called secular education is the function of the state. Yet, while we might accept this second solution as an expedient, we do not approve it, and cannot defend it as sound in principle. It would break up and utterly destroy the free public school system, what is good as well as what is evil in it; and we wish to save the system by simply removing what it contains repugnant to the Catholic conscience--not to destroy it or lessen its influence. We are decidedly in favor of free public schools for all the children of the land, and we hold that the property of the state should bear the burden of educating the children of the state--the two great and essential principles of the system, and which endear it to the hearts of the American people. Universal suffrage is a mischievous absurdity without universal education; and universal education is not practicable unless provided for at the public expense. While, then, we insist that the action of the state shall be subordinated to the law of conscience, we yet hold that it has an important part to perform, and that it is its duty, in view of the common weal, and of its own security as well as that of its citizens, to provide the means of a good common school education for