The State, by the very

unoccupied territory, left entirely open to all who choose to enter it. The territory which it does occupy comes within the scope of its powers; and the occupancy furnishes sufficient advantages to the whole people to justify it at the public expense. 5. If parents, for religious or other reasons, do not choose to use the advantages for a secular education afforded by the State, then this is and must be their own matter. terms of the case, puts nothing into the public school in conflict with any right of religious conscience which they possess; and if, nevertheless, they do not like the school, then they are at liberty to dislike it, and, if they thus choose, to educate their children elsewhere, at their own charges. This is their privilege; and if they avail themselves of it, then so be it. Let them, however, not stul tify common sense by saying that their religious rights are outraged, because they are taxed to support a public school whose single object is secular education-an object in which all the people, including themselves, have a common interest.

The conclusion that we reach from this examination of the question is this: A public school system planned on the principle of secular education, and, hence, excluding all religious teaching and religious worship is, in a community indiscriminately taxed for its support and in which there are diverse forms of religious faith, the only State school system that is just, that does not

violate the fundamental theory of the Saviour in respect to the propagation of his Gospel, and that accords with the golden rule of doing to others as we would have them do to us. It respects the rights of all, and commits no encroachment upon the rights of anybody. Accepting this conclusion, we necessarily accept another, which is this: those who demand religious teaching and religious worship in the public schools of this country are justly amendable to the charge of seeking a good end by an unchristian method. We bring this charge not against their motives, but against what they propose.

IX.

GOVERNMENTAL JURISDICTION.

Jurisdiction is a law term used to denote the idea of governmental authority over persons and things within the scope of its action. No such authority is absolutely universal as to the persons subject to it, or as to the territory over which it extends, or as to the matters which it embraces. Many things are so entirely private in their nature or so little concern the general public that they are by universal consent left exclusively to individual choice, without any attempt to regulate

them by law. Governments exist for particular purposes, which by no means include the entire bulk of human affairs.

How, then, is it with religion considered as a faith or a worship, as a spiritual exercise or a social expression thereof? Does it come within the rightful jurisdiction of human government? Does it properly belong to any such government to regulate, administer, propagate, or in any way take charge of the religion of the people? The answer given by history is that most of the governments of the world have assumed that religion lies within the scope of their regulating and administrative agency. The legislation consequent upon the assumption, whether more or less liberal, or more or less oppressive, will be according to the general civilization of the people. Pains and penalties, discriminations on religious grounds, special immunities granted or denied on these grounds, compulsory taxation for the support and propagation of religion, the appointment and control of religious teachers, religious tests as qualifications for civil office or to testify in a court of justice-these are among the things which the assumption carries along with it, and by which it makes itself operative. The principle is the same in all cases, varying only in the extent to which it is applied.

It seems not a little strange that a principle fraught with so much evil and so essentially false,

as well as absurd, should have lasted so long and spread so extensively among the nations of the earth, and that even now the discovery of its falseness should be limited to so small a portion of the human family. Its victims usually perceive the wrong when they feel its burden; yet it has often happened, as was the case with our Puritan Fathers, that they no sooner cease to be victims than they are ready to become oppressors-forgetting, "as victors, the lessons which as victims they had learned." One would think that so simple a proposition as that which affirms the existence and inalienable character of the rights of a religious conscience as above and beyond all human authority ought to have been among the earliest and most widely-extended discoveries of the race. The fact, however, is sadly the reverse. Of all the forms of wrong which men have suffered from each other, none have been less reasonable or more merciless and unrelenting than those of religious zeal armed with the civil power. There is no darker chapter in the history of governments than that which chronicles their misdeeds in the attempt to administer and propagate religion. The attempt is essentially a horrible human tyranny begun, and every step of the process is that tyranny continued.

The doctrine of a personal God, related to men as their Creator and Preserver, being received into the mind as the objective basis of religion, natu

rally connects itself with the idea of this God as a supreme lawgiver, to whose authority we are directly subject and from whose administrative control no power can release us. His will, no matter how ascertained is the final law. Peter and John were simply true to universal thought when they said : "We ought to obey God rather than men." Daniel was true to the same thought when he disregarded the edict of a king rather than violate that of his God. The martyrs who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods and cheerfully died at the stake for what they regarded as obedience to God were true to the doctrine that God, and not man, is the supreme ruler, and that the authority of the latter -whether that of the parent, the magistrate, the legislative assembly, or the king-when in conflict with that of the former, is not for a moment to be regarded. No human law can outlaw the law of God. There is but one supreme authority in the universe, and this is exclusively vested in God himself. No one disputes this proposition who believes in the existence of a personal God. It is one of the first truths of all religion.

Now, as to the question whether there is such a God, thus related to each individual man, and, if so, as to what are His laws and what duties He requires us to perform; and as to the further question whether this God has made a supernatural revelation of His will to men, and, if so, as to what that revelation contains-as to these