“As to the objection, that the use of the Bible in schools makes it too common, and subjects it to contempt, as well might it be objected that the sun becomes contemptible because he shines every day and illumines the beggar’s hovel as well as the bishop’s palace. Where is the Bible most respected, in Scotland and New-England, or in Italy and Austria? The works of man, the robed monarch, may make themselves contemptible by being too often seen; but never the works of God. The children may, and ought to be, taught to treat the book with all possible reverence, and to preserve it as nice and unsullied as the Catholic preserves his crucifix; and in this way, I am sure, on all the principles of human nature with which I am acquainted, that the Bible will be no more likely to suffer from the habit of daily familiarity than the crucifix. “Let no one say that the religious instruction here proposed for schools is jejune and unprofitable. I do not so view the words of God. In any view, if the child faithfully commit to memory so much as the single Gospel of Matthew, or the first twenty-five Psalms, or the first ten chapters of Proverbs, or portions of the book of Genesis, those divine sentences will be in his mind forever after, ready to be called up to check him when any temptation assails his heart, to cheer him when any sorrow oppresses his soul, to be a lamp to his feet and a light to his path; to be in all respects of more real and permanent value to him than any creed, or catechism, or system of theology, or rules of ethics, of merely human origin, ever can be. “Why should we prevent so great a good by claiming what we have no right to claim? Are we not willing to trust the Word of God to cut its own way? Or can we claim to be Christians at all, while we consent to have the Word of God and all Christian teaching banished from our institutions of public instruction? Let not _infidel coldness_, _jesuitical intolerance_, or _sectarian jealousy_, rob our schools of their greatest ornament and most precious treasure, the Bible of our fathers. Let not denominational feeling so far prevail as to lead us to destroy the greatest good while attempting to secure the less, as has so often been done in the Christian world heretofore. We are willing to give up much for the sake of peace and united effort; but the Bible, the word of God, the palladium of our freedom, the foundation of all our most precious hopes, we never can, we never will give up. Let all who love the Bible unite to defend it, to hold on upon it forever.” FOOTNOTES [1] The following is the mode of obtaining the facts stated above: