Public School Education

holic, that upholds the Pagan system of education which has been adopted in this free country. In all of them Catholic and Protestant children receive religious instruct

idea. Now the assertion that the exclusion of all religion from the schools is truly American, that it is an essential part of our national system, is utterl

early founders of this Republic were not able to understand how they could bring up their children in the knowledge, love, and service of God by banishing the Bible, prayer, and religious exercises of every kind from the school. Hence religion was reverenced

i-American? To make you understand more clearly the origin of the present system of the Public Sc

nciples is Education without Religion. The "International," one of the most powerful of these organizations, has lately put forward a programme, in whi

f the fourteenth year of each child's age.... Separation of the

spread irreligion by means of bad education. The letters of eighty of the Prelates of France are appended to

ken from the late Pastoral of the Bis

IOUS EDUCATION IN FRANCE-D

and formidable weapon of a corrupt system of education. Under cover of an excellent object-and here is the great danger, for we are deluded by this pretext-under the pretext of spreading education and waging war against ignorance, infidelity is spread, war is waged against religion; and thus, whether we will or no, we rush on to the ruin of all order, moral and social. An

the desire of my dear wife." He adds that she had devoted herself to "the great work of spreading education and morality without religion, because she had no faith except in learning and in justice; she was of those who, having once seen and comprehended these truths, can have no other beacon to guide them in life, or at the hour of death." Round that grave, whose occupant had rejected religion and its ministrations in life and in death, stood three hundred girls, pupils of those "professional schools," holding bouquets in their hands, and throwing flowers on the coffin of their mistress. The schools are of a piece with the teachers. Ten hours are spent in them, but all religious instruction is strictly forbidden, under the pretext that they are free schools, "open to children of all persuasions, without religious distinction." The

ng: 'The school is open to children of all persuasions, without religious distinction.' The meaning of which words is no other than that in these schools, where children are kept from the twelfth to the eighteenth year of their age, and for ten

of the education to be given by their association, that 'neither politics nor religion shall have any part in it.' And lest there should be any mistake as to the meaning of this article, one of the leading Masonic journals declares that religion is 'useless as an instrument for forming the minds of children, and that from a certain point of view it is capable of leading them to abandon all moral principles. It is incumbent on us, therefore,' concludes this journal, 'to exclude all religion. We will teach you its rights and duties in the name of liberty, of conscience, of reason, and, in fine, in the name of our society.'[B] And again: 'Freemasons must give in their adhesion en masse to the excellent Educational League, and the lodges must in the peace of their temples seek out the best means of making it effectual. Their influence in this way will be most useful. The principles we profess are precisely in accord with those which inspired that project.'[C] In April of the same year, the same organ of Freemas

asses by means of education, than in the following words of warning, not less applicable to good

in building up this new state of society, from which religion is to be banished. Well may the Bishop of Metz say: 'These persons forget that, like Proteus in the fable, Freemasonry knows how to multiply ad infinitum its transformations and it

s to say, none." And again: "Physicians must not be accomplices of the magistrates and judges, who punish men for acts for which they are not responsible"-pp. 32, 33. Here we have a sample of the teaching of the School of Medicine of Paris, not only the first medical school of France, but among the first schools of Europe. And this sample is, unfortunately, not a solitary one. The Medical Faculty of the University of Paris gave medals in 1866 for two dissertations, in one of which we find a denial of the act of creation and of God the Creator, and a rejection of every metaphysical idea, as useless and dangerous; while human thought is set down as pro

essors of the University of France, in Bordeaux, asserting, that "even among civilized nations moral ideas are so relative, contradictory, and dependent on exterior and individual relations, that it is impossible, and will always be impossible, to find an abs

ust make it: imperceptible elements of the great social organization appearing upon this earth as living beings, fragments of matter agitated by a spirit, we are born, we live, and we die, unconsciou

d the good cause without deceit.... If, by his intelligence or his kindness of heart, he labored in the great work, we say he has paid his part of the common debt, and whether he re

866, Lectures on the Physiology of the Nervous

ehend a certain kind of free-will in the more intelligent animals; and, on the other hand, we may add, that perhaps man is not so free as he would fai

he North of France, applauded such conclusions in a public letter. Several of the infidel Professors of the Faculty of Medicine received ovations from crowded class-rooms; millions of immoral and irreligious books were scattered throughout the countr

w months in the name of liberty in that city, which was looked on as the centre of the civilization of the world. National monuments have been destroyed, peaceable citizens robbed and murdered, the venerable Archbishop, many of the clergy, and leading members of the civil and military authorities, massacred in cold blood. In other cities of France, too, we

THROUGH BAD EDUCATION

olleges has been occupied since their foundation by a gentleman, who, in a published work, extolled the first French revolution, and, in another place of the same book, compared our Saviour, whose name be praised forever, to Luther and to Mahomet! Again: In Trinity College one of the Fellows denies the fundamental truth of Christianity respecting the eternity of the punishment of sin; and others call in question the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, o

l direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence in all departments-moral, intellectual, and material. Consequently they exclud

een a Woman and a Priest of Humanity,' and the doctrines cont

lace of God, but she does not forget the servic

F REV. PROFE

act that infidelity, or doubt as to the first principles of the Christian religion, nay, of belief in God, is wide-spread in the Universities of England, and especially among the most intellectual of the students; and that this sad result is due in a great measur

influence of the Final School' (the examination for degrees with honors)

ver it is one of the main causes

ose, is a comparati

in the Honors School of liter? humaniores. It is mainly the one-sided s

gement which produces this state of things, or

tial to the nature of the school, as i

o Question 706, the

d have been earnest Christians up to the time of beginning to read philosophy for the Final School, but who, during the year and a half or two years employ

n who has no religion, and, consequently, no knowledge of his duties? What confidence can you place in a man who never feels himself bound by any obligation of conscience, who has no higher motive to direct him than his self-love, his own interests? The pagan Roman, though enlightened o

id of kings and rulers, they must prove that they have a heart, and it may also be said of the man who has

nity, without really knowing what these doctrines are. He sneers at the doctrines and practices of religion, because he cannot refute them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and e

Church by the infidels of former and modern times; but he takes good care to omit all the excellent answers and complete r

he horrid phantom of blind chance or inexorable destiny. He is a man who obstinately refuses to believe the most solidly-established facts in favor of religion, and yet, with blind

great talker, always shallow and fickle, skipping from one subject to another without even thoroughly examining a single one. At one moment he is a Deist, a

wful, who designates the most shameful crimes by the refined name of innocent pleasures? What virtue can that man have who knows no other law than his passions; who believes that God regards with equal eye truth and falsehood, vice and virtue? He may indeed practise some natural v

all religion. He is a man who scrapes together all the wicked and absurd calumnies he can find against the Church. He falsely accuses her of teaching monstrous doctrines which she has always abhorred and condemned, and he

n order to make people believe that they are strong-minded, that they are independent. Poor deluded slaves of human respect! They affect singularity in order to attract notice, and

ness of the infidel is wilful, while the madness of the poor lunatic is entirely involuntary

er. Let him be in imminent danger of death, or of a considerable loss of fortune, and you will see how quick, on such occasions, he lays aside the mask

very occasion, his perverse principles, hoping that he may meet with some of his fellow-men who may approve of his impious views, and that thus he may find some relief for his interior torments. He resembles a timid night-traveller. A timid man, who is obliged to travel during a dark night, begins to sing and to cry in order to keep away too great fear. The infidel is a sort of night-traveller; he certainly travels in the horrible darkness of his impiety. His interior conviction tells him that there is a God, who will certainly punish him in the most frightful manner. This fills him with great fear, and makes him extremely unhappy every moment of his life. He cannot bear the sight of a Catholic church, of a Catholic procession, of an image of our Lord, of a picture of a saint, of a pra

, you would find the sight of the devil more bearable than that of the infidel. For St. James the Apostle tells us, that "the devil believes and trembles."

Education in America; or, The O

. VII. and VIII., gives us the following information

was brought up in the utilitarian principles of Jeremy Bentham. She visited this country in 1824. Returning to England in 1825, she wrote a book in a strain of almost unbounded eulogy of the

ral world at New Harmony, Frances Wright came with him, not as a full believer in his crotchets, but to t

epared to engage in earnest for the abolition of slavery. On more mature reflection she came to the conclusion that slave

it from superstition, from its subjection to the clergy, and its fear of unseen powers, to withdraw it from the contemplation

t, a system of State schools, in which all the children from two years old and upward shou

She thought that she possessed advantages in the fact that she was a woman; for there would, for that reason, be a greater curiosity to hear her,

prive, as well as to relieve, parents of all care and responsibility of their children after a year or two years of age. It was assumed that parents were, i

and immortality, free from all regard for the invisible, and make them look upon this life as their only life, this earth as their only home, and the promotion of their earthly interests and enjoyments as their only end. The three great enemies to earthly happiness were held to be religion, marriage, or fami

em to be adopted only by a future generation, trained and prepared in a system of schools founded and sustained by the Public. They placed their depen

their power, each in his own locality, to form public opinion in favor of education by the State at the public expense, and to get such men elected to the Legislatures as would be likely to favor their purposes. This secret organizat

artford, Lowell, Providence, Cincinnati, etc.; Thomas H. Gallaudet, James G. Carter, and Walter R. Johnson, made great efforts through the press; there were established the 'American Journal of Education,' in January, 1826, and the 'American Annals of Education.' Conventions were held throughout New England from 1826 to 1830, in behalf of Public Schools; lectures were delivered in every precinct in the States, on the subject

e as their only life, this earth as their only home, and the promotion of their earthly interests and enjoyments as their only end-a generation that looks upon religion, marriage, or family and private property as the greatest enemies to worldly happiness-a generati

ng about dogmas; in other words, they wish for a religion of which a certain poet says: "My religion is to have no religion." The object, then, of these godless, irreligious Public Schools is to spread among the people the worst of religions, the no religion, the religion which pleases most hardened adulterers and criminals-the religion of irrational animals. How far this diabolical scheme ha

TNO

Jean

Monde Maconnique, Octob

Le Monde Maconnique, F

le Mate

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