The historic facts, showing that the open Bible has been the corner-stone of the American public school system, have been so interesting and suggestive to the author, as to lead him to take the initiative, in effecting and maintaining a local Bible society in Fonda, and to make the distribution of the Scriptures among the people, a special feature of his ministry there, and later at Oak Hill Academy. The hope is indulged, that the following facts, relating to the place accorded the Bible in the schools of the colonies, will prove of interest to every reader, especially among the Freedmen.

Our fore fathers and the stalwart statesmen of their day, were not led astray by the "higher" or more properly called destructive criticism and infidelity, that is now permeating much of the literature of our day to the great injury of all who are influenced by it. Indebted to the Scriptures for their ideas of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and, prizing them as the foundation of their civil and ecclesiastical privileges, they manifested both their sense of obligation to them and dependence upon them, by making them the corner stone of every institution they established. The word of God in their hand, like a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, led them to locate in this land, awakened in them the spirit of heroism amid all their privations and sufferings, and served as their common guide and comforter, in all their struggles and progress.

If there are any who have the right to judge and to have their judgment respected, as to the nature of the education needed in this republic, surely those men of sagacity, patriotism, piety and comprehensive statesmanship, who founded both the system of education and the Republic, are among the number.

During the Colonial period the towns were little republics, with the Bible for their foundation, and their schools were established for general instruction in that book. The exclusion of the Bible from those early schools would have been repugnant to their founders. They regarded the Bible not merely as an authoritative book in all matters of conscience, but as the charter of their liberty and their guide to the independent ownership of land.

MASSACHUSETTS

The Colony of Massachusetts Bay, as early as 1647, less than twenty years from the date of their first charter, made provision by law, for the support of schools at the public expense; for instruction in reading and writing in every town containing fifty families, and grammar schools in those containing one hundred families. This noble foundation suggests the religious foresight that laid it. The preamble to this school law contained the following motives: "It being one chief object of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in unknown tongues, therefore, that learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore fathers, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is ordered," etc.

Horace Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, has left on record this noble testimony for all the teachers of our country. "As educators, as friends and sustainers of the common school system, our great duty is to impart to the children of the commonwealth the greatest practicable amount of useful knowledge; to cultivate in them a sacred regard for truth, to keep them unspotted from the world; to train them to love God and also their fellow men; to make the perfect example of Jesus Christ lovely in their eyes; to give to all so much religious instruction, as is compatible with the rights of others and the gains of our government, so that, when they arrive at the years of maturity, they may intelligently enjoy the inviolable prerogatives of private judgment and self-direction, the acknowledged birthright of every human being."

Rufus Choate, the eminent statesman and jurist in one of his orations very emphatically exclaimed: "Banish the Bible from our public schools? Never! So long as a piece of Plymouth Rock remains big enough to make a gun-flint." This is an expression of true patriotism on the part of one, who knew well the history and cost of American freedom. "He is the freeman, whom the truth makes free."

CONNECTICUT

In the Colony of Connecticut as early as 1656, explicit laws were added to the general law by which the schools were first established, and constables were required to take care, "That all their children and apprentices, as they grow capable, may through God's blessing attain at least so much as to be able to read the Scriptures, and other good books in the English tongue."