their sessions with prayer, and by constituting chaplains, both for themselves and for troops, and manifold other acknowledgments of the Supreme Being and the Christian religion which He has ordained.

And going back to documents still operative, except so far as expressly and by necessary implication repealed, we find the articles of confederation recite that "it has pleased the Great Governor of the world to incline the hearts of the Legislatures of the various States to ratify this perpetual union; " we find the Declaration of Independence asserting the being of God, His Creation and the equality He established among men, appealing to Him as the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of the intentions of its signers, and expressing that they rely on "Divine Providence for protection" in the struggle they initiated; we find Congress after the Revolution passing the celebrated ordinance of 1787, for the government of the territory Northwest of the River Ohio, and declaring certain articles of compact between the original States and the people and States in the territory, forever unalterable save by common consent, in order to "extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty which form the bases whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions are erected, and to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all law and constitutions, and governments which forever shall be formed in the said territory;" and among these articles is the following: 'Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." If these citations, with the practice of the Continental Congress and that which succeeded it, the successive Presidents and the various Departments, Executive and Judicial, all in acknowledgment of the claims of the Christian religion, do not negative the allegation that the Nation, as such, has no religion, it is difficult to say how such a charge can as to any nation be disproved.

The ordinance of 1787, when it mentioned religion and morality and made schools and education having them for its purpose or effect an unalterable compact between the old Thirteen and all its Northwest future, referred to the Christian

religion; that religion which was held by all the people then within the newly-established confederation. That ordinance remained in force, notwithstanding the subsequent Constitution, and by it the government positively declared that it had a religion; that that religion was Christian, and that it was forever to remain and be promoted by schools.

But this argument for the Bible in the schools does not stop with the consideration of the national Constitution. As already said, the subject does not ex natura belong to Congress nor to national matters; it concerns internal police, a topic entirely reserved to the States, and when we consider the question in this light, all doubt dissipates. For those who will study the history of the various Colonies, will find in each that the maintenance and propagation of the Christian religion was one of their chief motives. If this was conspicuously true in New England, it was also true elsewhere, and especially in this our State of New Jersey. The Dutch who peopled Bergen and Somerset, the Quakers who found their home at Salem and Burlington, as well as the English Puritans who settled at Elizabeth, Newark and Woodbridge, and the Scotch who came later direct to Raritan Bay, all brought with them a deep sense of religion and sought its perpetuation. The laws of the early colonists stamped their form of Christianity on the commonwealth, and they have never been repealed. Our latest constitution formally adopts the Common law of which it is part, and in an illustration of it there yet appears upon our statute book a law in the words following: "all impostors in religion such as personate our Saviour Jesus Christ, or suffer their followers to worship or pay divine honors, or terrify, delude or abuse the people by false denunciation of judgments, shall, on conviction, suffer fine and imprisonment." And another "if any person shall wilfully blaspheme the holy name of God, by denying, cursing or contumaciously reproaching His being or providence, or by cursing or by contumaciously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or the Christian religion or the holy word of God (that is, the canonical Scriptures contained in the books of the Old and New Testament) or by profane scoffing at or exposing them or any of

them to contempt and ridicule, any person so offending shall, on conviction, be punished by fine," or in State's Prison. The first constitution of the State, whose date is July 2, 1776, a Declaration of Independence prior to that in Philadelphia, made by a convention convened a month before and in session a century ago this day, declares in Article XIX. that "there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Colony, in preference to another, and that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil rights merely on account of his religious principles, but that all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity enjoyed by others, their fellow subjects."

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The present Constitution, confirmed June 29, 1844, begins with the fitting preamble, "We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution." Succeeding sections secure and perpetuate the fund for free schools for the equal benefit of all the people of the State. Can a reasonable man contend that in endeavoring to secure and transmit civil and religious liberty, a people greatful to Almighty God for it, and looking to Him for a blessing, can begin by driving His word from the schools, the chosen means of securing this security?

It is objected that this fund is for the equal benefit of all, and that if the Bible be in the school, those who deny it, or oppose its inculcation, pay tax without a benefit. I answer, that the context describes the public school as for the equal benefit of all, and so it is if all may, if they please, have advantage from it. Whatever the reason for which I do not choose to use it, it is my fault, if not my loss. I pay taxes for roads which I never use, for sewers with which I will not connect, for gas which I will not introduce. All taxes suppose equal benefit to all the assessed. No one can resist payment if by possibility, living within the district, he may have the benefit he refuses.

It is insisted by some that no use of the Bible can be made

without in some degree teaching the opinions, held by the teacher, and that therefore the rights of sects are involved. The answer is that the risk is nothing to the harin which must occur if anything like morals or religion is excluded from the schools. Beside, the argument would interdict all legal proceedings. Why should it be that the Bible should be acknowledged by oaths taken upon it, its Author daily appealed to as the final Judge of the World; belief in a future state of rewards and punishments made the test of the capacity to speak truth; and yet the Book and the name of the Almighty be excluded from the schools. What is this but to teach irreligion? And what is that but to make education a curse, instead of a blessing? Says wise and good Sir Thomas More in his Utopia: "If you allow your people to be badly taught, their morals to be corrupted from their childhood, and then when they are men punish them for the very crimes to which they have been trained in childhood—what is this, but first to make them thieves, and then to punish them?" Some say divide the cost of public education among the sects, on condition of their maintaining the schools. Such a course would be resigning to others a duty which belongs to the State. Its result would be the abandonment of the fundamental principle of the Republic, expressed by Burke in the oft-repeated saying that "education is the cheap defence of nations;" more directly, that public safety requires the State to see to it that her citizens are fit to rule. In truth, the State ought to compel every child to attend some school. She cannot confide to others a duty so vital.

I should be ashamed, fellow citizens, to apologize for the seriousness of my subject. Its importance and propriety cannot be over estimated. No Fourth of July should be disgraced by bombast and self-adulation by exhilarants or anæsthetics. It is the National Sabbath, and like a sabbath, should be dedicated, not simply to rest and joy, but also to self-improvement. But this Centennial anniversary is a day of peculiar solemnity. Its arrival is a test of our national stability. We have invited the world to meet and rejoice with us. Only through God's mercy does it come to us. We have been snatched as the brands from the very fire. It might have been a day of silence, of

shame and despair. The occasion calls for gravity, self-examination, truth, resolution of amendment, as well as for thankfulness and hope. Honest self-scrutiny forbids unmixed confidence. True, the nation has passed through many dangers. Foreign war has only strengthened it. Out of the terrific civil conflict from which we have just emerged, whose embers still smoke and every now and then almost blaze, it has come, politically, stronger than ever. But while the edifice stands erect, when the people of the earth doubtful through the amazing struggle, are astonished and in view of the great things enacted before their eyes, the great mountain, whose top stone has been brought forth with shoutings, cry, "grace unto it," while we hail the day as a minister of fraternity-a day of hand-shaking that is no longer a bloody chasm-a day of the fatted calf without a jealous brother, there are suddenly revealed signs of evil, occasions of grave anxiety. What timber in our edifice is sound? What stone beyond risk of crumbling? What spikes free from rust? What fastenings wholly secure? How dreadfully are we not illustrating the wisdom of Plato the Divine, when he said "as long as beggars hungering and thirsting for office, rush into the administration of public affairs, political life will be but a fierce contest for shadows, a strife for civil pre-eminence, as though this were in reality the highest good: laws will be but the remedies of quack physicians, giving temporary relief, yet ultimately aggravating what they cannot cure, whilst the rottenness of the foundation will finally bring down the superstructure, whatever may be the external form to which its security may be fondly confided." The passage I quote seems well nigh inspired. Corruption, moral rottenness is the great danger of this Republic. Not in politics alone; far less in the action of one party or the other. What we find there, is but illustrative of what is elsewhere, yea, everywhere, Materialism is so triumphant. It has so eaten into the heart of all good thingsI had almost said, of all good men. The higher life is so unpopular, so derided, so dispised. What is generally desired that is not gilded? How few dispise glitter and sound? How insane is the appetite for success? How dolefully do we all gaze around, searching for men-men such as we have read of—such