All this talk, however, about secularizing education means nothing more nor less than the divorcement of religion from all public education; and it remains to be seen how far the descendants and the heirs of that people who asserted that liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God (even in the school-room) meant something, and are paramount, will tolerate this "new departure."
The Catholic barons of England wrung from King John at Runnymede the famous Magna Charta, and the Catholic settlers of Maryland gave the first constitution recognizing equal rights for all men; and the "Church of Rome," as a British Presbyterian writer has said, "has always been an 'independent, distinct, and often opposing power'; and that civil liberty is closely connected with religious liberty—with the church being independent of the state." Every school-boy might and ought to be taught these and other like facts, for history mentions them; and the assailants of the Catholic Church ought to be ashamed to ignore or deny them. And yet such ignorance and such denials are the capital in trade of the bigots and the fanatics who fear and affect to see in the spread of Catholicism a menace to our liberties.
On page 5 of this "Document No. 4" we are told that "the moment the state takes under its protection any church, by appropriating public money or property to the uses or support of that church, or the teaching of its peculiar tenets or practices, it in that act, and to that extent, unites church and state. The union of church and state, in all ages and in all countries, has led to oppression and bloodshed." Now, if this is not arrant nonsense, what is?
The practice of "appropriating public money or property" to churches, so called, is coeval with our national birth. And in this country church and state have, according to the logic of this statement, been very much united—very much married, like Brigham Young and his multitudinous wives—and yet the "oppression and bloodshed" sure to follow have not yet come upon us—in fact, "churches" and state have always in this country been united, and we did not know it! Through what unknown dangers have we passed!
This "Document No. 4" is not honest in this kind of talk—the union of church and state means a form of religion established by law, and pains and penalties inflicted upon dissenters.
Not a great many years ago, in Prussia, of which we hear so much upon the "educational question," by command of the king, the "Prussian Calvinist and Lutheran, who had quarrelled for three hundred years about the real presence and predestination, abandoned their disputes, denied their faith, and became members of the 'Evangelical Church of Prussia'"—a church whose simple creed is thus stated: "Do ye believe in God? then must ye believe in Christ. Do ye believe in Christ? then must ye believe in the king. He is our head on earth, and rules by the order of God. The king has appeared in the flesh in our native land!" This was a state religion—a union of church and state, and is about as likely to be established here as that the "Document No. 4" is to be adopted as a text-book in our public schools. This union of church and state is about as sensible a cry, and quite as malignant, as the old "No Jews, no wooden shoes!" addressed to the mob in England, and is framed and uttered in the spirit of the same "sectarian" and bigoted hate.
Now, one word as to "secular education"—there is no such thing, if God's work is our work. If his glory requires the dedication of all the powers he has given us, it is preposterous to talk about an education from which he and his existence, and the knowledge of him and his purposes and laws, are excluded. We may endow, and send our children to colleges where no priest or clergyman shall ever come, and no creed shall be taught or even mentioned, and call the education there received secular and unsectarian, as was intended to be done at the "Girard College" at Philadelphia, and yet we shall find the education unsatisfactory, and no "state" has yet adopted the plan.
In conclusion, we demand, in the language of the resolutions "unanimously adopted" and appended to the report in "Document No. 4," "... free of cost, to every child in the state, a generous and tolerant education—such an education as qualifies him for the duties of citizenship"; and, moreover, such an education as shall recognize and protect the first and most important of all the rights of citizenship—the right of conscience, which is grossly violated by the system of atheistical education.