University of Virginia Library

Chapter XII.

ROME AND EDUCATION—WHY DOES THE CHURCH OF ROME
HATE THE COMMON SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES, AND
WANTS TO DESTROY THEM? WHY DOES SHE OBJECT TO
THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL?

THE word EDUCATION is a beautiful word. It comes from
the Latin educare, which means to raise up, to take from
the lowest degrees to the highest spheres of knowledge. The
object of education is, then, to feed, expand, raise, enlighten and
strengthen the intelligence.

We hear the Roman Catholic priests making use of that
beautiful word education as often, if not oftener, than the Protestant.
But that word "education" has a very different meaning
among the followers of the pope than among the disciples of the
Gospel. And that difference, which the Protestants ignore, is
the cause of the strange blunders they make every time they try
to legislate on that question, here, as well as in England or in
Canada.

The meaning of the word education among Protestants is as
far from the meaning of that same word among Roman Catholics
as the southern pole is from the northern pole. When a Protestant
speaks of education, that word is used and understood in
its true sense. When he sends his little boy to a Protestant
school, he honestly desires that he should be reared up in the
spheres of knowledge as much as his intelligence will allow.
When that little boy is going to school, he soon feels that he
has been raised up to some extent, and he experiences a sincere
joy, a noble pride, for this new, though at first very modest
raising; but he naturally understands that this new and modest
upheaval is only a stone to step on and raise himself to a

higher degree of knowledge, and he quickly makes that second
step with an unspeakable pleasure. When the son of a Protestant
has acquired a little knowledge, he wants to acquire more.
When he has learned what this means, he wants to know what
that means also. Like the young eagle, he trims his wings for
a higher flight, and turns his head upward to go farther up in
the atmosphere of knowledge. A noble and mysterious ambition
has suddenly seized his young soul. Then he begins to feel
something of that unquenchable thirst for knowledge which God
Himself has put in the breast of every child of Adam; a thirst
of knowledge, however, which will never be perfectly realized
except in heaven.

When God created man in His own image, He endowed him
with an intelligence and moral faculties worthy of the high, I
was going to say the divine, dignity of His own beloved children.
He Himself put in us aspirations and instincts by which
we were to be constantly longing after the oceans of light, truth
and knowledge, whose waves wash His eternal throne. It is
that thirst after more knowledge, that constant longing after
more light, which constitutes the difference between man and
brute. Man has received from God an intelligence which,
though clouded now by sin, is to him what the helm is to the
noble ship which crosses the boundless ocean; he has a conscience,
an immortal soul which binds him to God, and he feels
it. His destinies are glorious, they are incommensurable, they
are infinite, and he knows it. Though a dethroned king, he
feels that he is still a king. The six thousand years which have
passed over him since his fall have not yet effaced the kingly
title which God Himself wrote on his forehead when He told
him, "Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Gen.
i: 28). With that glorious, that divine mission of subduing the
air and the light, the wind and the waves, the seas and the earth,
the roaring thunder and the flashing lightning constantly before
his eyes, man marches to the conquest of the world with the
calm certitude of his power and the glorious aspirations of his
royal dignity.

The object of education, then, is to enable man to fulfill that

kingly mission of ruling, subduing the world, under the eyes of
his Creator. Let us remember that it is not from himself, nor
from any angel, but it is from God himself that man has
received that sublime mission. Yes, it is God himself who has
implanted in the bosom of humanity the knowledge and aspirations
of those splendid destinies which can be attained only by
"Education."

What a glorious impulse is this that seizes hold of the newly
awakened mind, and leads the young intelligence to rise higher
and pierce the clouds that hide from his gaze the splendors of
knowledge that lie concealed beyond the gloom of this nether
sphere! That impulse is a noble ambition; it is that part of
humanity that assimilates itself to the likeness of the great
Creator; that impulse which education has for its mission to
direct in its onward and upward march, is one of the most
precious gifts of God to man. Once more, the glorious mission
of education is to foster these thirstings after knowledge and
lead man to accomplish his high destiny.

It ought to be a duty with both Roman Catholics and
Protestants to assist the pupil in his flight toward the regions of
science and learning. But is it so? No. When you Protestants
send your children to school, you put no fetters to their
intelligence; they rise with fluttering wings day after day.
Though their flight at first is slow and timid, how happy they
feel at every new aspect of their intellectual horizon! How
their hearts beat with an unspeakable joy when they begin to
hear voices of applause and encouragement from every side
saying to them, "Higher, higher, higher!" When they shake
their young wings to take a still higher flight, who can express
their joy when they distinctly hear again the voices of a beloved
mother, of a dear father, of a venerable pastor, cheering them
and saying, "Well done! Higher yet, my child, higher!"

Raising themselves with more confidence on their wings,
they then soar still higher, in the midst of the unanimous concert
of the voices of their whole country encouraging them to the
highest flight. It is then that the young man feel his intellectual
strength tenfold multiplied. He lifts himself on his eagle

wings, with a renewed confidence and power, and soars up still
higher, with his heart beating with a noble and holy joy. For
from the south and north, from the east and the west, the echoes
bring to his ears the voices of the admiring multitudes—"Rise
higher, higher yet!"

He has now reached what he thought, at first, to be the
highest regions of thought and knowledge; but he hears again
the same stimulating cries from below, encouraging him to a
still higher flight toward the loftiest dominion of knowledge and
philosophy, till he enters the regions where lies the source
of all truth, and light and life. For he has also heard the voice
of his God, speaking through His Son Jesus Christ, crying,
"Come unto me! Fear not! Come unto me! I am the light,
the way! Come to this higher region where the Father, with
the Son and the Spirit, reign in endless light!"

Thus does the Protestant scholar making use of his intelligence
as the eagle of his wing, go on from weakness unto
strength, from the timid flutter to the bold, confident flight,
from one degree to another still higher, from one region of
knowledge to another still higher, till he loses himself in that
ocean of light and truth and life which is God.

In the Protestant schools no fetters are put on the young
eagle's wings; there is nothing to stop him in his progress, or
paralyze his movements and upward flights. It is the contrary:
he receives every kind of encouragement in his flight.

Thus it is that the only truly great nations in the world are
Protestants! Thus it is the truly powerful nations in the world
are Protestants! Thus it is that the only free nations in the
world are Protestants! The Protestant nations are the only
ones that acquit themselves like men in the arena of this world;
Protestant nations only march as giants at the head of the
civilized world. Everywhere they are the advance guard in
the ranks of progress, science and liberty, leaving far behind the
unfortunate nations whose hands are tied by the ignominious
iron chains of Popery.

After we have seen the Protestant scholar raising himself,
on his eagle wings, to the highest spheres of intelligence,

happiness and light, and marching unimpaired toward his
splendid destinies, let us turn our eyes toward the Roman
Catholic student, and let us consider and pity him in the supreme
degradation to which he is subjected.

That young Roman Catholic scholar is born with the same
bright intelligence as the Protestant one; he is endowed by his
Creator with the same powers of mind as his Protestant neighbor;
he has the same impulses, the same noble aspirations
implanted by the hand of God in his breast. He is sent to
school apparently, like the Protestant boy, to receive what is
called "Education." He at at first understands that word in its
true sense; he goes to school in the hope of being raised,
elevated as as high as his intelligence and his personal efforts will
allow. His heart beats with joy, when at once the first rays of
light and knowledge come to him; he feels a holy, a noble pride
at every new step he makes in his upward progress; he longs to
learn more, he wants to rise higher; he also takes up his wings,
like the young eagle, and soars up higher.

But here begin the disappointments and tribulations of the
Roman Catholic student; for he is allowed to raise himself—
yes, but when he has raised himself high enough to be on a
level with the big toes of the Pope, he hears piercing, angry,
threatening angry cries coming from every side—"Stop! stop!
Do not raise yourself higher than the toes of the Holy Pope! .
. . . Kiss those holy toes, . . . . and stop your upward flight!
Remember that the Pope is the only source of science, knowledge
and truth! . . . . The knowledge of the Pope is the ultimate
limit of learning and light to which humanity can attain
. . . . You are not allowed to know and believe what his Holiness
does not know and believe. Stop! stop! Do not go an
inch higher than the intellectual horizon the Supreme
Pontiff of Rome, in whom only is the plenitude of the true
science which will save the world."

Some will perhaps answer me here: "Has not Rome produced
great men in every department of science?" I answer,
Yes; as I have once done before. Rome can show us a long
list of names which shine among the brightest lights of the

firmament of science and philosophy. She can show us her
Copernices, her Galileos, her Pascals, her Bossuets, her Lamenais,
etc., etc. But it is at their risk and peril that those giants
of intelligence have raised themselves into the highest regions of
philosophy and science. It is in spite of Rome that those eagles
have soared up above the damp and obscure horizon where the
Pope offers his big toes to be kissed and worshipped as the ne
plus ultra of human intelligence; and they have invariably been
punished for their boldness.

On the 22nd of June, 1663, Galileo was obliged to fall on his
knees in order to escape the cruel death to which he was to be
condemned by the order of the Pope; and he signed with his
own hand the following retractation: "I abjure, curse and detest
the error and heresy of the motion of the earth," etc., etc.

That learned man had to degrade himself by swearing a
most egregious lie, namely, that the earth does not move around
the sun. Thus it is that the wings of that giant eagle of Rome
were clipped by the scissors of the Pope. That mighty intelligence
was bruised, fettered, and, as much as it was possible to
the Church of Rome, degraded, silenced and killed. But God
would not allow that such a giant intellect should be entirely
strangled by the bloody hands of that implacable enemy of light
and truth—the Pope. Sufficient strength and life had remained
in Galileo to enable him to say, when rising up, "This will not
prevent the earth from moving!"

The infallible decree of the infallible Pope, Urban VIII.,
against the motion of the earth, is signed by the Cardinals Felia,
Guido, Desiderio, Antonio, Bellingero, and Fabricicio. It says,
"In the name and by the authority of Jesus Christ, the plenitude
of which resides in His vicar, the Pope, that the proposition that
the earth is not the center of the world, and that it moves with
a diurnal motion is absurd, philosophically false, and erroneous
in faith."

What a glorious thing for the Pope of Rome to be infallible!
He infallibly knows that the earth does not move around the
sun! And what a blessed thing for the Roman Catholics to be
governed and taught by such an infallible being. In consequence

of that infallible decree, you will admire the following
act of humble submission of two celebrated Jesuit astronomers,
Lesueur and Jacquier: "Newton assumes in his third book the
hypothesis of the earth moving around the sun. The proposition
of that author could not be explained, except through the
same hypothesis: we have, therefore, been forced to act a character
not our own. But we declare our entire submission to the
decrees of the Supreme Pontiffs of Rome against the motion of
the earth." (Newton's "Principia," vol. iii., p. 450.)

Now, please tell me if the world has ever witnessed any degradation
like that of Roman Catholics? I do not speak of the
ignorant and unlearned, but I speak of the learned—the intelligent
ones. There you see Galileo condemned to gaol because
he had proved that the earth moved around the sun, and to
avoid the cruel death on the rack of the holy Inquisition if he
does not retract, he falls on his knees and swears that he will
never believe it—in the very moment that he believes it! He
promises, under a solemn oath, that he will never say it any more,
when he is determined to proclaim it again the very first opportunity!
And here you see two other learned Jesuits, who have
written a very able work to prove that the earth moves around
the sun; but, trembling at the thunders of the Vatican, which
are roaring on their heads and threaten to kill them, they submit
to the decrees of the Popes of Rome against the motion of
the earth. These two learned Jesuits tell a most contemptible
and ridiculous lie to save themselves from the implacable wrath
of that great light-extinguisher whose throne is in the city of the
seven hills.

Lamenais, a Roman Catholic priest, who lived in this very
century, was one of the most profound philosophers and eloquent
writers which France has ever had. But Lamenais was publicly
excommunicated for having raised himself high enough in the
regions of Gospel light to see that "liberty of conscience" was
one of the great privileges which Christ has brought from
heaven for all the nations, and which He has sealed with His
blood! No man has ever raised himself higher in the regions
of thought and philosophy than Pascal; but the wings of that

giant eagle were clipped by the Pope. Pascal was an outcast in
the Church of Rome. He lived and died an excommunicated
man! Bossuet is one of the most eloquent orators which Rome has
given to the world. But Veuillot, the editor of the Univers
(the official journal of the Roman Catholic clergy of France)
assures us that Bossuet was a disguised Protestant.

If, at any step made by the Protestant through the regions
of science and learning, he asks God or man to tell him how he
can proceed any further without any fear of falling into some
unknown and unsuspected abyss, both God and man tell him
what Christ said to His apostles—that he has eyes to see, ears
to hear, and an intelligence to understand; he is reminded that
it is with his own eyes, and not with another's eyes, he must
look; that it is with his own ears, and not with another's ears,
he must hear; and that it is with his own intelligence, and not
another's intelligence, he must understand. And when the
Protestant has made use of his own eyes to see, and his own
ears to hear, and his own intelligence to understand, he nevertheless
feels again his feet uncertain on the trembling waves of
the mysterious and unexplored regions of science and learning
which spread before him as a boundless ocean, all the echoes of
heaven and earth bring to his ears the simple but sublime words
of the Son of God: "If a son shall ask bread of any of you that
is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will
he, for a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg,
will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall
your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
him?"

Emboldened with this infallible promise of the Saviour,
which has ennobled and almost divinized him, the Protestant
student ceases to tremble and fear, a new strength has been
given to his feet, a new power to his mind. For he has gone to
his Father for more light and strength. Nay, he has boldly
asked not only the assistance and the help of the Spirit of God,
but the very presence of His Spirit in his soul to guide and
strengthen him. The assurance that the great God who has

created heaven and earth is his Father, his loving Father, has
absolutely raised him above himself; it has given a new, I dare
say a divine impulse, to all his aspirations for truth and knowledge.
It has put into his breast the assurance that, sustained by
the love, and the light, and the help of that great infinite,
eternal God, he feels himself as a giant able to cope with any
obstacle. He does not any more walk, on his way to eternity,
as a worm of the dust; a voice from heaven has told him that
he was the child of God! Eternity, and not time, then becomes
the limits of his existence; he is no more satisfied with touching
with his hands and studying with his eyes the few objects which
are within the limited horizon of the eyelid-vision. He stretches
his giant hands to the boundless limits of the infinite, he boldly
raises his feet and eyes from the dust of this earth, to launch
himself into the boundless oceans of the unknown worlds. He
feels as if there was almost nothing beyond the reach of his
intelligence, nothing to resist the power of his arms, nothing to
stop his onward progress toward the infinite so long as the
infallible words of Christ shall be his compass, his light, and his
strength. He will then touch the mountains, and they will melt
and bow down before him to let his iron and fiery chariot pass
over the Rocky Mountains, 8,000 feet above the level of the
sea. He will boldly ascend to the regions where the lightning
and the storms reign, and there he will place his daring hands
into the roaring clouds, and wrench the sparkle of lightning
which will carry his message from one end of the world to the
other. He will force the oceans to tremble and submit, as
humble slaves, before those marvelous steam-engines which, like
giants, carry "floating cities" over all the seas in spite of the
winds and the waves.

Had the Newtons, the Franklins, the Fultons, the Morses
been Romanists, their names would have been lost in the
obscurity which is the natural heritage of the abject slaves
of the Popes. Being told from their infancy that no one
had any right to make use of his "private judgment," intelligence
and conscience in the research of truth, they would
have remained mute and motionless at the feet of the modern

and terrible god of Rome, the Pope. But they were Protestants!
In that great and glorious word "Protestant," is the secret of the
marvelous discoveries with which they have changed the face of
the world. They were Protestants! Yes, they had passed
their young years in Protestant schools, where they had read a
book which told them that they were created in the image of
God, and that that great God had sent His eternal Son, Jesus, to
make them free from the bondage of man. They had read in
that Protestant book (for the Bible is the most Prostestant book
in the world) that man had not only a conscience, but an intelligence
to guide him; they had learned that that intelligence and
conscience had no other master but God, no other guide but
God, no other light but God. On the walls of their Protestant
schools the Son of God had written the marvelous words:
"Come unto me; I am the Light, the Way, the Life."

But when the Protestant nations are marching with such giant
strides to the conquest of the world, why is it that the Roman
Catholic nations not only remain stationary, but give evidence of
a decadence which is, day after day, more and more appalling
and remediless? Go to their schools and give a moment of
attention to the principles which are sown in the young intelligences
of their unfortunate slaves, and you will have the key to
that sad mystery.

What is not only the first, but the daily school lesson taught
to the Roman Catholic? Is it not that one of the greatest
crimes which a man can commit is to follow his "private judgment?"
which means that he has eyes, but cannot see; ears, but
he cannot hear; and intelligence, but he cannot make use of it in
the research of truth and light and knowledge, without danger
of being eternally damned. His superiors — which mean the
priest and the Pope—must see for him, hear for him, and think
for him. Yes, the Roman Catholic is constantly told in his
school that the most unpardonable and damnable crime is to
make use of his own intelligence and follow his own private
judgment in the research of truth. He is constantly reminded
that man's own private judgment is his greatest enemy. Hence
all his intellectual and conscientious efforts must be brought to

fight down, silence, kill his "private judgment." It is by the
judgment of his superiors—the priest, the bishop and the pope—
that he must be guided in everything.

Now, what is a man who cannot make use of his "private
personal judgment?" Is he not a slave, an idiot, an ass? And
what is a nation composed of men who do not make use of their
private personal judgment in the research of truth and happiness,
if not a nation of brutes, slaves and contemptible idiots?

But as this will look like an exaggeration on my part, allow
me to force the Church of Rome to come here and speak for
herself. Please pay attention to what she has to say about the
intellectual faculties of men. Here are the very words of the
so-called Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit
Society:

"As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every
point—in execution, in will, in intellect, doing which is enjoined
with all celerity, spiritual joy and perseverance; persuading ourselves
that everything is just, suppressing every repugnant
thought and judgment of one's own in a certain obedience; and
let every one persuade himself, that he who lives under obedience
should be moved and directed, under Divine Providence, by his
superior, JUST AS IF HE WERE A CORPSE (perinde acsi cadaver
esset) which allows itself to be moved and led in every direction."

Yes! Protestants, when you send your child to school, it is
that he may more and more understand the dignity of man.
Your object is to enlighten, expand and raise his intelligence.
You want to give more light, more strength, more food, more
life to that intelligence. But know it well, not from my pen,
but from the solemn declaration of Rome. The young Roman
Catholic goes to school, not only that his intelligence may be
fettered, clouded and paralyzed, but that it may be killed. (You
have read it.) It is only when he will be like a corpse before
his superior that the young Roman Catholic will have attained
to the highest degree of perfect manhood! Is not such a
doctrine absolutely anti-Christian and anti-social. Is it not
diabolical? Would not mankind become a flock of brute beasts

if the Church of Rome could succeed in persuading her hundred
of millions of slaves to consider themselves as cadavers—
corpses in the presence of their superiors.

Some one will, perhaps, ask me what can be the object of
the popes and the priests of Rome in degrading the Roman
Catholics in such a strange way that they turn them into moral
corpses? What can be the use of those hundred of millions of
corpses? Why not let them live? The answer is a very easy
one. The great, and the only object of the thoughts and workings
of the Pope and the priests is to raise themselves above the rest
of the world. They want to be high! high! high! above the
head not only of the common people, but of the kings and
emperors of the world. They want to be not only as high, but
higher than God. It is when speaking of the Pope that the Holy
Ghost says: "He opposeth and exalteth himself above all that
is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in
the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thess.
ii. 4). To attain their object, the priests have persuaded their
millions and millions of slaves that they were mere corpses;
that they must have no will, no conscience, no intelligence of
their own, just "as corpses, which allow themselves to be moved
and led in any way, without any resistance." When this has
been once gained, they have made a pyramid of all those motionless,
inert corpses, which is so high, that though its feet are on
the earth, its top goes to the skies, in the very abode of the old
divinities of the Pagan world, and putting themselves and their
popes at the top of that marvelous pyramid, the priests say to
the rest of the world: "Who among you are as high as we are?
Who has ever been raised by God as a priest and a pope?
Where are the kings and the emperors whose thrones are as
elevated as ours? Are we not at the very top of humanity?"
Yes! yes! I answer to the priests of Rome, you are high, very
high indeed! No throne on earth has ever been so sublime, so
exalted as yours. Since the days of the tower of Babel, the
world has not seen such a hugh fabric. Your throne is higher
than anything we know. But it is a throne of corpses!!!

And if you want to know what other use is made of those

millions and millions of corpses, I will tell it to you. There is
no manure so rich as dead carcasses. Those millions of corpses
serve to manure the gardens of the priests, the bishops and the
popes, and make their cabbages grow. And what fine cabbages
grow in the Pope's garden!

Is it not a lucky thing for the world in general, and for the
Roman Catholics in particular, that though they are taught to
become like corpses, to have no will, no understanding, no
judgment of their own in the presence of their superiors, there
are many who can never attain to that perfection of intellectual
degradation and death! Yes, in spite of the efforts, in spite of
the teachings of their Church, a few Roman Catholics retain
some life, some will, some intelligence, some judgment of their
own which prevents them from becoming complete brutes.
Many now and then refuse to descend to the damp, dark and
putrid abode of the corpses. They want to breathe the fresh
and pure air of liberty which God has given to man. They
raise their humiliated forehead from the ignominious tomb which
their church has dug for them, and they give some signs of life.
But at every such signs of life given by an individual or by a
people in the Church of Rome, be sure that you will see the
flashing light and hear the roaring thunder of the Vatican
directed against the rebel who dares to refuse to become a corpse
before his superiors. It is for having shown such signs of life
and independence of mind that Galileo was sent to gaol and
threatened to be cruelly tortured on the racks of the Inquisition
in Italy, three hundred years ago. It is for having shown those
symptoms of life that not long ago the honest Kenna, one of the
most respected Roman Catholics of the day, was excommunicated
the day before his death, and had to be buried as a dog in
his own field, for having refused to take away his children from
an excellent grammar school to obey the priest. It is for having
dared to think for himself that a few days before his death the
amiable and learned Montalembert was considered as an outcast
by the Pope, who refused him the honor of public prayers in
Rome after his death.

But that you may better understand the degrading tendencies

of the principles which are as the fundamental stone of the
moral and intellectual education of Rome, let me put before
your eyes another extract of the Jesuit teachings, which I take
again from the "Spiritual Exercises," as laid down by their
founder, Ignatius Loyola: "That we may in all things attain
the truth, that we may not err in anything, we ought ever to
hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be
black, if the superior authorities of the Church define it to be so."

You all know that it is the avowed desire of Rome to have
public education in the hands of the Jesuits. She says everywhere
that they are the best, the model teachers. Why so?
Beeause they more boldly and more successfully than any other
of her teachers aim at the destruction of the intelligence and
conscience of their pupils. Rome proclaims everywhere that
the Jesuits are the most devoted, the most reliable of her teachers;
and she is right, for when a man has been trained a sufficient
time by them, he most perfectly becomes a moral corpse. His
superiors can do what they please with him. When he knows
that a thing is white as snow, he is ready to swear that it is
black as ink, if his superior tells him so. But some may be
tempted to think that these degrading principles are exclusively
taught by the Jesuits; that they are not the teachings of the
Church, and that I do an injustice to the Roman Catholics when
I give, as a general iniquity, what is the guilt of the Jesuits
only. Listen to the words of that infallible Pope Gregory
XVI., in his celebrated Encyclical of the 15th of August, 1832.
"If the holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own
opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams
of our imagination, and the most sublime attainments of the
human understanding."

It is when considering those anti-social principles of Rome
that our learned and profound thinker, Gladstone, wrote, not
long ago: "No more cunning plot was ever devised against the
freedom, the happiness and the virtues of mankind than Romanism."
("Letter to Earl Aberdeen.") Now, Protestants, do
you begin to see the difference of the object of education
between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic school? Do you

begin to understand that there is as great a distance between
the word "Education" among you, and the meaning of the
same word in the Church of Rome, than between the southern
and the northern poles! By education you mean to raise man
to the highest sphere of manhood. Rome means to lower him
below the most stupid brutes. By education you mean to teach
man that he is a free agent; that liberty, within the limits of the
laws of God and of his country, is a gift secured to every one;
you want to impress man with the noble thought that it is
better to die a free man than a live a slave. Rome wants to
teach that there is only one man who is free, the Pope, and that
all the rest are born to be his abject slaves in thought, will and
action.

Now, that you may still more understand to what a bottomless
abyss of human degradation and moral depravity these antiChristian
and anti-social principles of Rome lead her poor blind
slaves, read what Liguori says in his book, "The Nun Sanctified":
"The principal and most efficacious means of practicing
obedience due to superiors, and of rendering it meritorious
before God, is to consider that in obeying them we obey God
himself, and that by despising their commands, we despise the
authority of our Divine Master. When, thus, a religious
receives a precept from her prelate, superior or confessor, she
should immediately execute it, not only to please them but
principally to please God, whose will is made known to her by
their command. In obeying their command, in obeying their
directions, she is more certainly obeying the will of God than if
an angel came down from heaven to manifest his will to her.
Bear this always in your mind, that the obedience which you
practice to your superior is paid to God. If, then, you receive a
command from one who holds the place of God, you should
observe it with the same diligence as if it came from God himself.
Blessed Egidus used to say that it is more meritorious to
obey man for the love of God than God himself. It may be
added that there is more certainty of doing the will of God by
obedienee to your superior than by obedience to Jesus Christ,
should He appear in person and give His commands. St.

Philip de Neri used to say that religous shall be most certain of
not having to render an account of the actions performed
through obedience; for these the superiors only who commanded
them shall be held accountable." The Lord said once to St.
Catherine of Sienne, "Religious will not be obliged to render an
account to me of what they do through obedience; for that I
will demand an account from the superior. This doctrine is
conformable to Sacred Scripture: Behold, says the Lord, as
clay is in the potter's hands, so are you in my hand, O Israel!
(Jeremiah xviii: 6.) A religious man must be in the hands of
the superiors to be molded as they will. Shall the clay say to
him that fashioneth it, What art thou making? The potter
ought to answer, `Be silent; it is not your business to inquire
what I do, but to obey and to receive whatever form I please to
give you.' "

I ask of you, American Protestants, what would become of
your fair country if you were blind enough to allow the Church
of Rome to teach the children of the United States? What
kind of men and women can come out of such schools? What
future of shame, degradation and slavery you prepare for your
country if Rome does succeed in forcing you to support such
schools. What kind of women would come out from the
schools of nuns, who would teach them that the highest pitch of
perfection in a woman is when she obeys her superior, the
priest, in everything he commands her! that your daughter will
never be called to give an account to God for the actions she
will have done to please and obey her superior, the priest, the
bishop or the Pope? That the affairs of her conscience will be
arranged between God and that superior, and that she will never
be asked why she had done this or that, when it will be to
gratify the pleasures of the superior and obey his command that
she has done it. Again, what kind of men and citizens will
come out from the schools of those Jesuits who believe and
teach that a man has attained the perfection of manhood only
when he is a perfectly spiritual corpse before his superior; when
he obeys the priest with the perfection of a cadaver, that has
neither life nor will in itself.

But some will be tempted to think that this perfect blind
obedience to the priest, which is the corner-stone of the
Roman Catholic education, is required only in spiritual matters.
Yes; but you must not forget that in the Church of Rome
every action of the public or private life belongs to the spiritual
sphere, which the superior only must rule. For instance, a
Roman Catholic has not the right to select the teacher of his
boy, nor the school where he will send him; he must consult
his priest, and if he dares to act in a different way from what
his priest has told him in the selection of that teacher or that
school, he is excommunicated and damned, as Mr. Kenna has
been lately. If he votes according to his own private judgment
for Mr. Jones, instead of Mr. Thompson, the selected member
of the bishop and the priest, he is damned and considered as a
rebel against his holy Church, out of which there is no salvation.

The Church of Rome's only object in giving what she calls
education is to teach her slaves that they must obey their
superiors in everything, as God himself. All the rest of her
teaching is only a mask to conceal her plans. History is never
taught in her schools; what she calls history is a most shameful
string of falsehoods. Of course she does not dare to say a word
of truth about her past struggles against the great principles of
light and liberty, when she covered the whole of Europe with
tears, blood and ruins. Writing, reading, arithmetic, geography
and grammar are taught to a certain degree in her schools, but
all these teachings are nothing else but covered roads through
which the priest wants to reach the citadel of the heart and
intelligence of his poor victim, and take an absolute possession
of them. Those things are taught every day only to have a
daily opportunity to persuade the pupil that he must never
make any use of his private judgment in anything, and that he
must submit his intelligence, his conscience, his will to the
intelligence, conscience and will of his superior, if he wants to
save himself from the eternal fire of hell. He is constantly told,
what I have been told a thousand times myself, when studying
in the college of Nicolet, that those who obey their superiors
in everything will not be called to give an account of their

actions to their Supreme Judge, even if those actions were bad
in themselves; for, as Liguori told you a moment ago, "Whosoever
obeys his superior for the love of God, obeys God himself,
and that there are more merits to obey one's own superior
than God himself."

The Church of Rome shows her great wisdom in enforcing
that dogma of the entire and blind subjection of the will and
intelligence of the inferior to the superior. For the very
moment that a Roman Catholic thinks that it is his right and
sacred duty to follow the dictates of his own conscience and
intelligence, he is lost to the church of Rome. It is only when
a man has entirely silenced and absolutely killed his intelligence,
it is only when he has become a perfect moral corpse, that he
can believe that his priest, even his drunken priest, has the
power to change a wafer, or any other piece of bread, into the
great God, for whom and by whom everything has been created.
It is only when the intelligence of man has become a dead
carcass that he can believe that a miserable sinner has the
supreme power to force the Son of God to come, in His divine
and human person, into his vest or pant's pockets to follow him
everywhere he wants to go, even to the bar of the low tavern,
that He may become his companion of debauch and drunkenness.
Do you see, now, why the Church of Rome cannot let
her poor young slaves go to your schools? In your schools,
the first thing you inculcate to the pupil is that his intelligence
is the great gift of God, by which man is distinguished from
the brute; that he must enlighten, form, feed, cultivate his
intelligence, which is to him what the helm is to the ship,
Christ, with His holy Word, being the pilot. You see, now
why the Church of Rome abhors your schools. It is because
you want to make men, and she wants to make brutes. You want to raise men to the highest sphere to which his intelligence
can allow him to reach; she wants to keep him in the dust, at
the feet of the priests; you want to form free citizens, she wants
to form abject and obedient slaves of the priests; you teach man
to keep his sacred promises and stand by his oath, she teaches
him that the Pope has the right to dissolve the most sacred

promises and to annul all his oaths, even to the oath of allegiance
to his country. You tell your pupils that so long as they will
keep themselves within the limits of the laws of their country
they are responsible only to God for their consciences. They
tell their pupils that it is not to God, but to the priest that he
must go to give an account of his conscience. You teach your
pupils that the laws of God only bind the conscience of man;
they tell him that it is the laws of the Church, which means the
ipse dixit of the Pope, which binds their consciences. You
teach the student that every man has the right to change his
religion according to his conscience; she positively says that no
man has the right to change his religion according to his
conscience. It is evident that the Church of Rome would be
dead to-morrow, if, to-day, she would allow her children to
attend schools where they would learn to follow the dictates of
their conscience and listen to the voice of their intelligence.
But she is too shrewd to avow before the world the real reasons
why she wants, at any cost, to prevent her children from
attending your schools. And it is here she shows her profound
and diabolical cunning. Though she is the most deadly enemy
of liberty of conscience, though she has, time after time, anathemized
liberty of conscience as one of Satan's schemes, she
suddenly steps on, as the great friend and apostle of liberty of
conscience, and under that new mask she approaches your
legislators with great airs of dignity, and says, "We are happy
to live in a country where liberty of conscience is secured to
every citizen. It is in its sacred name that we respectfully
approach your honorable legislature to ask: First, to be
exempted from sending our children to the Government schools.
Second, to have the money we want from the public treasury in
order to support our own schools. For two reasons: First, you
read the Bible in your schools, and it is against our conscience to
let our children read the Bible. Second, you have some
prayers at the beginning and some religious hymns sung at the
end of the hours of school, and it is against our conscience to
allow the children of the Church of Rome to join you in those
prayers and hymns." The legislators, who, for the greater part
are too honorable men to suspect the fraud, are won by the air
of candor and honesty of the Roman Catholic petitioners.
Considering the great benefit which will come to the country if
all the children are taught in the same school, they are soon
ready to make any sacrifice in order to have the Roman Catholic
and the Protestant children under the same roof, to receive the
same light and the same moral food and same instruction. As
true patriots, the legislators understand that if they wish their
beloved country to be strong and happy, the first thing they
must do is to make the young generation one in mind, in heart.
If the Protestant and Roman Catholic children are taught in
the same school, they will know each other and love each other
when young, and those sacred ties of friendship which will bind
them in the spring of life, will be strengthened when their
reason will be matured and enlightened by a good education
under the same respected and worthy teachers. As Christian
men, the legislators would perhaps like to keep the Bible, and
have short prayers in the schools; but as patriots, they feel that
those things, though good and sacred, are an insurmountable
barrier to the Roman Catholic. The delicate conscience of the
bishops and priests cannot allow such things in the school
attended by their lambs! Through respect for the sacred rights
of the Roman Catholic conscience, the legislators in many
places throw the Bible overboard, and they say to God: "Please
get out from our schools, and do excuse us if we order our
teachers to ignore your existence!" They say to Jesus Christ:
"We have not forgotten your sublime and touching words,
`Suffer little children to come unto me.' No doubt you would
like to press our dear little ones on your loving heart and bless
them for a moment in the schools; but we cannot allow them to
go so near you in the school, we cannot even allow them to
speak to you a single word there. Please be not offended if we
turn you out from those very schools where you were so welcome
formerly. We are forced to that sad extremity through
the respect we owe to the tender consciences of our fellow-citizens
of the Church of Rome. You know that they cannot
allow their children to speak to you together with ours." But
when those awful, not to say sacrilegious, sacrifices have been
made by the Protestant legislators to appease the implacable
god of Rome—when, through respect for the scruples of the
bishops and priests of Rome, the great God of Heaven, with
His Son, Jesus Christ, have been unceremoniously turned out
from the schools—when the Word of God has been prohibited,
and the Bible is thrown overboard, is the Moloch god appeased?
Will the Roman Catholic bishops and priests tell their children
that they may unite with yours to go and receive education from
the same teacher? No! But assuming, then, a sublime
air of indignation, they turn against you as mad dogs; they
call your schools godless schools! good only to form thieves,
infidels and atheists!

Do you see now that all those dignified scruples of conscience
about reading the Bible, praying with you, etc., were only a
mask to deceive you, and make you fall into a snare? Do you
not perceive now that they did not care a straw for the Bible
and the prayers in the schools? but they wanted your legislators
to compromise themselves before the Christian world, lose their
moral strength in the eyes of a great part of the nation, divide
your ranks, your means, your strength, and beat you on that
great question of education. They will take such airs of martyrs
when you will try to force their children to your schools that
many honest and unsuspecting Protestants will be completely
deceived by them. At first, they could not, they said, trust the
children to your hands, because you read the Word of God; you
prayed and blessed God in the school. But now that the Bible
and God are turned out from the schools, they baptize them by
the most ignominious names which can be given—they call them
"godless schools!" Have you ever seen a more profoundly
ignominious and sacrilegious trick? Will not your legislators
open their eyes to that strange act of deception, of which they
are the victims? Will they not come out quickly from the
traps laid before them by the bishops and the priests of Rome?
Yes! let us hope that your patriots and Christian legislators
will soon understand that they owe a reparation to God and to
their country; with unanimous voice they will ask pardon from

God for having expelled him from the very place where He has
most right to reign supremely—the school.

For what is a school without God in its midst to sit as a
father, and to form the young hearts and evoke the young
intellect? What is a boy, what is a girl, what is a woman or a
man without God? what is a family, what is a people without
God? It is a monstrosity, it is a body without life, it is a world
without light, it is a cistern without water. Let us hope that,
before long, your patriotic and Christian legislators will remember
that the Bible is the foundation of the greatness of
Protestant nations. It is to the Bible the United States, as
well as Great Britain, owe their liberty, power, prestige and
strength. It is the Bible that has ennobled the hearts of your
heroes, improved the minds of your poets and orators, and
strengthened the arms of your warriors. Yes! it is because
your soldiers have brought with them everywhere, the Bible
pressed on their hearts, that they have conquered the enemies of
liberty. So long as the United States will be true to the Bible,
their glorious banners will fly respected and feared all over the
seas, and over all the continents of the world. Let the disciples
of the Gospel, the children of God, and the redeemed of Christ
all over the fair and noble country you inhabit, hasten to request
their legislators to invite the Saviour of the world to come back
and bless their dear children in the school. For it is not only in
your homes and in your churches that Jesus tells you "Suffer little
children to come unto me." It is particularly in the school.
Oh! give two or three minutes to those dear little ones, that
they may press themselves on His bosom, bless him for having
saved them on the cross, and proclaim his mercies by singing
one of those hymns which they like so much. By this noble
act of national reparation you will take away from the hands of
the priests the only weapon with which they can hurt you; you
will destroy the only argument they use with a true force
against your schools when they call them godless schools. Do
not fear any more the priests and the prelates of Rome. Do
not yield any more and give up your privilege to please them
and reconcile them to your schools. You will never be able to

reconcile them to your schools; for there is light in your schools,
and they want the darkness. There is freedom and liberty in
your schools; they want slavery! There is life in your schools,
and it is only on dead corpses that their church can have a chance
to live a few years more. You see, by a sad experience, that
their scruples of conscience against the Bible and the prayer of
the school are mere hypocrisy just thrown into the eyes of the
public. Do not say with some honest but deluded Protestants:
Is it not enough that that child should learn his religion at
home? No, it is not enough; for it is in our nature that we
want two witnesses to believe a thing. What comes to our
mind only through one witness remains uncertain; but let two
good witnesses confirm a fact, and then we accept it. Your
child wants two witnesses to believe the necessity of the sacredness
of religion. His Christian home is surely a good witness
to your child, but it is not enough; what he has heard from you
must be confirmed by his school teacher. Without this second
witness, nine times out of ten your children will be skeptics and
infidels. Besides that, the very idea of God brings with it the
obligation to bless, love and adore Him everywhere. The
moment you take your child to a place where not only he cannot
love, bless and adore God, but where the adoration and the
praise of God are forbidden, you entirely destroy the idea of
God from the mind and from the heart of your child. You make
him believe that what you have told him, when at home, of God
is only a fable to amuse and deceive him.

Do you see that noble ship in the midst of that splendid
harbor, how she is tossed by the foaming waves, how she is
beaten by the furious winds? What does prevent that ship
from flying before the storm and running ashore, a miserable
wreck? What does prevent her from being dashed on that
rock? The anchor! Yes, the anchor is her safety. But let a
single link of the chain that binds the ship to her anchor break,
will she not soon be dashed on the rock and broken to pieces,
and sink to the bottom of the sea? It is so with your child!
So long as his intelligence and his heart are united to God by the
anchor of faith, he will nobly stand against the furious waves,

he will nobly fight his battles; but let the school teacher be
silent about God, and here is a broken link, and the child will
be a wreck. Do not fear the priest, but fear God! Do not try
any more to please the priests, but do all in your power to please
your great and merciful God, not only in your homes, but also
in your schools, and those schools will become more than ever a
focus of light, an inexhaustible source of intellectual and moral
strength—more than ever your children will learn in the school
to be your honor and your glory and your joy. They will learn
that they are not ignoble worms of the dust, whose existence
will end in the tomb, but that they are immortal as God, whose
beloved children they are. They will learn how to serve their
God and love their country. Be not ashamed, but be proud to
send your children to schools where they will learn how to be
good Christians and good citizens. When you will have finished
your pilgrimage they will be your worthy successors, and the
God whom they will have learned to fear, serve and love in the
school will help them to make your country great, happy and
free.