8



a privilege, if not demanded as a right, by this august imper-
sonation of the supreme intelligence of God.
   But far beyond the range of individual interests; beyond
 the limits of family authority; beyond the reach of organi-
 zed christianity, in any and in all its forms; including all,
 protecting all, subordinate to none; recognized alike by rea-
 son and revelation, and founded in the deepest necessities of
 our social nature, thbre is another power-the Power of the
 State-whose duties spring from its peculiar relations to the
 interests of all, and whose rights and powers are commen-
 surate with its duties.                            A
   It is, indeed, the peculiar glory of that divine religion,
which first taught the dignity of individual man, and inspir-
ed an interest in his welfare as a rational and immortal being,
that she first directed attention to the universal education of
the people, and her humble ministers, as they penetrated our
primeval forests, bore the ark of science and of religion, side
by side, on the foremost wave of our advancing population,
seeking to plant the school house beside the church, and rcar-
ing institutions where science should be the hand-maid of re-
ligion, and religion the patroness of science. To depreciate
the labors and sacrifices of these devoted and truly enlighten-
ed men, would be not ordinary folly but sheer idiocy. I am
not here, to-day, to vindicate the truth of Christianity. But
I will say, as intim itely connected with my subject, that the
man who does not recognize Christianity as a fact and a power
-the great central fact in all human history, the central and
controlling power in all modern civilization-has yet to learn
what be the simplest elements of our modern thought, and is
himself a living exemplification of the necessity for an im-
proved common school instruction. All honor to those no-
ble and heroic men who, in the infancy of our early settle-
ments, marched before into the wilderness, and planted the
germs of our existing institutions; who, when the State was
recreant to her trust, and statesmen thought only of material