The following extract from an address of Prof. Stowe, delivered at Portland in 1844

The Duty of American Women to Their Country by Catharine Esther Beecher, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The following extract from an address of Prof. Stowe, delivered at Portland in 1844, corroborates the views expressed by the author on the subject of moral training.

THE FOLLOWING EXTRACT FROM AN ADDRESS OF PROF. STOWE, DELIVERED AT PORTLAND IN 1844, CORROBORATES THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE SUBJECT OF MORAL TRAINING.

But in this country, in consequence of our unbounded religious freedom, the subdivisions of sect are almost innumerable; it is impossible, in a system of public instruction, to provide separately for them all; and, unless religious instruction can be given without sectarianism, it must be abandoned.

“In this country the rights of all sects are the same, and any denomination that would have its own rights respected must respect the rights of others.

“The time which can be devoted to religious instruction in schools is necessarily very limited; and if there be an honest and sincere desire to do right, the whole of this time certainly can be occupied, with efficiency and profit, without encroaching on the conscience of any sect which really has a conscience.

“Facts show plainly that, notwithstanding the diversity of sects, there is common ground on which the sincerely pious of all sects substantially agree. For example, the most acceptable books of practical piety, which are oftenest read by Christians of all denominations, have proceeded from about all the different sects into which Christendom is divided, and are read by all with scarcely a recognition of the difference of sect. Such are the writings of Thomas à Kempis and Fenelon, who were Roman Catholics; of Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Hall, who were Churchmen; of Baxter, Watts, and Doddridge, who were Presbyterians or Congregationalists; of Bunyan and Andrew Fuller, who were Baptists; of Fletcher and Charles Wesley, who were Methodists. This fact alone shows that there is common ground, and enough of it too, to employ all the time which can properly be devoted to religious instruction in our public institutions.

“All Christian sects, without exception, recognise the Bible as the text-book of their religion. They all acknowledge it to be a book given of God, and replete with the most excellent sentiments, moral and religious. None will admit that it is unfavourable to their peculiar views, but, on the contrary, all claim that it promotes them. To the use of the Bible, then, as the text-book of religious instruction in our schools, there can be no serious objection on the part of Christians of any sect; and even unbelievers very generally admit it to be a very good and useful book.

“But shall it be the whole Bible? or only the New Testament? or selections made from one or both?

“A book of mere selection would be very apt to awaken jealousy; and the exclusion of any part of the Scriptures would, to my mind, be painful. Let every scholar, then, have a whole Bible. The book can now be obtained so cheap, that the expense can be no objection.

“But how can the teacher instruct in the Bible without coming on to sectarian ground? He can teach a great deal in regard to its geography and antiquities, and can largely illustrate its narrations, and its moral, and even religious, beauties. An honest, intelligent teacher can find, in this way, abundant employment for all his time, if he be himself a lover and student of the Bible, without ever passing into sectarian peculiarities, or giving any reasonable ground of offence.

“But, apart from all this, the chief business of instruction in this department may be the committing to memory of portions of the Divine Word. The most rigidly orthodox will not object to this, for they believe every portion of the Bible to be the word of God which liveth and abideth forever, and that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness; and the liberal, though they may not sympathize in the high orthodox view of the divine excellence of the Word, yet regard it as, on the whole, the best of books, and the more of it their children have treasured up in their minds, the better it must be for them. If the parent chooses, he can always himself select the portions to be committed by his child, or he may leave it to the discretion of the teacher, or he may give general directions, as selections from the Gospels, the Proverbs, the Psalms, &c. It is not at all essential that all the children of the same school, or even of the same class, should recite the same passages. Each child may be called upon, in turn, to recite what each one has committed, and the recitation may or may not be accompanied by remarks from the teacher, as circumstances may seem to justify or require.

“But there is another difficulty. The Roman Catholics, it is said, do not desire that their children should be instructed in the Scriptures; they receive the apocryphal book as a part of Scripture, and contend that we have not the whole Bible unless we include the Apocrypha; and they object to our common English translation.

“In reply to this, I remark, in the first place, there are many parts of our land where there are no Roman Catholics, and, of course, the difficulty will not occur in those places.

“Secondly, if Roman Catholics choose to exclude their children from a knowledge of the Bible, they have a perfectly legal right to do so, and we have no legal right to prevent it; nor should we desire any such legal right, for the moment we desire any such legal right, we abandon the Protestant principle and adopt the Papal. Catholic parents are perfectly competent to demand that their children should be excused from the Bible recitation, and this demand, if made, should be complied with; but they have no right to demand that the Bible should be withheld from the schools because they do not like it, nor do their objections render it necessary or excusable for Protestants to discard the Bible from schools.

“Again, if Roman Catholics desire that their children take their Bibles into the schools, and recite from them, by all means let them do so; and so of Jews, let them recite from the Old Testament, if they choose, to the exclusion of the New. We allow to others equal rights with ourselves; but we claim for ourselves, and shall insist upon having, equal rights with all. I am perfectly willing to give to the Roman Catholics all they can justly claim, but I am not willing to encroach on any one’s rights, or the rights of any Protestant denomination, for the sake of accommodating the Roman Catholics. Nor do I suppose that the Romanists have a claim to any special accommodation, for they have never yet manifested any particular disposition to accommodate others. Let them have the same privileges that our Protestant sects have—that is enough; and they have no right to demand, our legislators have no right to grant, any more; and we Protestants will be perfectly satisfied when Protestants can enjoy as great privileges in Italy as Roman Catholics now enjoy in the United States. In judicious practice, I am persuaded there will seldom be any great difficulty, especially if there be excited generally in the community anything like a whole-hearted honesty and enlightened sincerity in the cause of public instruction.

“It is all right for people to suit their own taste and convictions in respect to sect; and by fair means and at proper times, to teach their children and those under their influence to prefer the denominations which they prefer; but farther than this no one has any right to go. It is all wrong to hazard the well-being of the soul, to jeopardize great public interests for the sake of advancing the interests of a sect. People must learn to practise some self-denial, on Christian principles, in respect to their denominational preferences, as well as in respect to other things, before pure religion can ever gain a complete victory over every form of human selfishness.

“Happily, there are places where religious instruction that is purely denominational can be freely given, so that there is no need whatever of introducing it into our public schools. The family and the Sunday school are the appropriate places for such instruction; and there let each denomination train its own children in its own peculiar way, with none to molest or to find fault. It is their right, it is their duty.

“As to the objection, that the use of the Bible in schools makes it too common, and subjects it to contempt, as well might it be objected that the sun becomes contemptible because he shines every day and illumines the beggar’s hovel as well as the bishop’s palace. Where is the Bible most respected, in Scotland and New-England, or in Italy and Austria? The works of man, the robed monarch, may make themselves contemptible by being too often seen; but never the works of God. The children may, and ought to be, taught to treat the book with all possible reverence, and to preserve it as nice and unsullied as the Catholic preserves his crucifix; and in this way, I am sure, on all the principles of human nature with which I am acquainted, that the Bible will be no more likely to suffer from the habit of daily familiarity than the crucifix.

“Let no one say that the religious instruction here proposed for schools is jejune and unprofitable. I do not so view the words of God. In any view, if the child faithfully commit to memory so much as the single Gospel of Matthew, or the first twenty-five Psalms, or the first ten chapters of Proverbs, or portions of the book of Genesis, those divine sentences will be in his mind forever after, ready to be called up to check him when any temptation assails his heart, to cheer him when any sorrow oppresses his soul, to be a lamp to his feet and a light to his path; to be in all respects of more real and permanent value to him than any creed, or catechism, or system of theology, or rules of ethics, of merely human origin, ever can be.

“Why should we prevent so great a good by claiming what we have no right to claim? Are we not willing to trust the Word of God to cut its own way? Or can we claim to be Christians at all, while we consent to have the Word of God and all Christian teaching banished from our institutions of public instruction? Let not infidel coldness, jesuitical intolerance, or sectarian jealousy, rob our schools of their greatest ornament and most precious treasure, the Bible of our fathers. Let not denominational feeling so far prevail as to lead us to destroy the greatest good while attempting to secure the less, as has so often been done in the Christian world heretofore. We are willing to give up much for the sake of peace and united effort; but the Bible, the word of God, the palladium of our freedom, the foundation of all our most precious hopes, we never can, we never will give up. Let all who love the Bible unite to defend it, to hold on upon it forever.”

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