"Thirty Years In Hell" Or, "From Darkness to Light"

by Bernard Fresenborg

There must be no sectarianism, whether political or religious, in our public schools, but there must be truth and duty there. The unchanging and undying maxim of moral rectitude should be taught to every child. It is not enough that a boy or girl should be educated mentally. The safety of our nation, as well as his own usefulness and happiness, demand that they should be trained to habits of truthfulness and develop a fine standard of honor. They should be inspired to form exalted ideals of manhood and womanhood, charity, rectitude and godliness, and made strong in the resolution to defend the truth, which is never found in parochial schools, as the Catholic doctrine always tends to humiliate her followers.

The time has come when the pupils of our public schools must be taught the love of country, and Catholicism does not teach this, but the reverse. The children of this nation must learn to love their native land. To whom shall we look for the inculcation of those patriotic sentiments which should inspire the heart of every American citizen? Not to Catholicism, by any means, but to the three hundred thousand teachers of our public schools.

Over every school house in hamlet and city, in country and town, in the North and in the South, in the East and in the West, the American flag should kiss the morning breeze. Place it where twenty millions of children will see it every day, and learn to love it as the emblem of all that is great and good. It will represent to us and to all the world, in a new and peculiar manner, the great fundamental truth that the bulwark of our liberties is in the education of our people.

The war of the revolution was fought to establish our nationality. Incalculable blood and treasure have been spent to establish and keep our national life intact, and the national policy with relation to our public schools is part and parcel of that all-absorbing determination to secure the perpetuity of the state. Men make better citizens for being educated. The higher the popular intellect is raised the more intelligent and independent will be its vote. The stronger the source of government, the stronger the government. If the "bayonets that think" are the most potent, the "ballots that think" are the most beneficent.

Every victory which our nation has won has been a victory of the public schools and a death knock to Catholicism. They have been the nursery not only of our statesmen, but of our patriots and soldiers. They are an American institution and are destined to live as long as the republic survives. There is no other American institution that American people would sooner fight for and die for than that which secures an educated and intelligent nationality. Let us maintain inviolate our public schools to the end that our nation may ever be the home of liberty, "the land of benedictions."

In the unbounded universe of God's domain there are manifold diversities, and yet there is an essential unity that binds the world together; there is a common point where all matter unites.

As there is great freedom and diversity permitted in the unity of nature, so, in our country of religious and political freedom, we must grant the greatest latitude possible to the individual conscience in personal, religious and civil rights consistent with good government. But that there must be a code of morality common to all as the basis of our civilized jurisprudence, in which the rights of all center or unite and are equally protected, every reasonable mind must admit. But where do we get our ideas of what is morally right, and what is morally wrong, as the basis of our common law and jurisprudence? What book or books contain the best code of morals? We answer, the Bible. For the excellency of the morality of the Bible has been admitted by the most distinguished men who have opposed its supernatural revelation, among whom are Gibbon, Byron, Carlyle, Lord Bollingbroke, Napoleon Bonaparte, Goethe and Renan. Thomas Jefferson, speaking of Christ as a teacher, said: "He set forth the sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality."

Catholicism says: "No Bible shall be taught in the public schools," but demands that she be allowed to proclaim her dogmas.

Benjamin Franklin, five weeks before his death, said of Christ: "I think His system of morals, and His religion, as He left them, are the best the world ever saw or is likely to see." The services of the Bible in behalf of human rights and freedom, and in reforming and purifying jurisprudence and politics, have been recognized by many of the most distinguished historians, jurists and statesmen.

As the makers of our laws and the founders of our government have accepted the moral code of the Bible as the basis of our jurisprudence, and have forbidden the union of church and state, and have left every citizen free to "worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience," so long as he does not interfere with the rights of others or violate the moral code common to all citizens, for the law cannot allow a person to murder or steal, or burn human sacrifices, or be a polygamist, or commit any other public crime, even if the dictates of his conscience should lead him into such a form of religion, because the moral code of the Bible is the basis of our jurisprudence, and it forbids such things.