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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 1

A Lawsuit in America

page 8

A Lawsuit in America

regarding the reading of the bible in a College. The testator had positively enjoined "that all the instructors and teachers should take pains to instil into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of morality, so that on their entrance into active life they may, from inclination and habit, evince benevolence towards their fellow-creatures, and a love of truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting at the same time such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer." The decision of the Court in this case was unanimous in favor of the use of the Bible as a text book, the Chief Justice being a devout Catholic. The Bible, without note or or comment, was recognised by the highest court of the land to be the purest and best source of morality as well as of religion, and to be not sectarian in its character or teachings.

Joseph Cook, in his book on "Socialism," says:—"A sectarian system is not natural—a godless system is not natural. Germany, under the lead of Infidelity, once drove the Bible out of the school, but has since restored it. The most learned land in the globe, incisively divided between Catholic and Protestant, infidel and believer, scouts the idea that the ible is to be excluded from the common schools."

Professor Stowe, in his Report on Elementary Education in Europe, says:—"I enquired of all classes of teachers, and men of every grade of religious faith, instructors in Common Schools, High Schools, and Schools of Act, of Professors in Colleges, Universities, and Professional Seminaries,—in cities and in the country—in places where there was an uniformity of plan, and where there was a diversity of creeds.—and I never found, but one reply, and that was, that to leave the moral faculty uninstructed was to leave the most important part of the human mind undeveloped, and to strip education of almost everything that can make it valuable. Every teacher whom I consulted repelled with indignation the idea that moral instruction is not proper for schools, and spurned with contempt the allegation that the bible cannot be introduced into common schools without encouraging a sectarian bias in the matter of teaching."