Now for the parallel case.  A member of a Congregational society is employed to teach a school in a district occupied exclusively by Friends—­a case not uncommon.  He is employed there, not as a religious teacher, but for another specific and well-defined object.  It is for the purpose of teaching the children of that district reading, writing, and calculation, and for such other purposes analogous to this as the law providing for the establishment of district schools contemplated.  Now, when he is placed in such a situation, with such a trust confided to him, and such duties to discharge, it is not right for him to make use of the influence which this official station gives him over the minds of the children committed to his care for the accomplishment of any other purposes whatever which the parents would disapprove.  It would not be considered right by men of the world to attempt to accomplish any other purposes in such a case; and are the pure and holy principles of piety to be extended by methods more exceptionable than those by which political and party contests are managed?

There is a very great and obvious distinction between the general influence which the teacher exerts as a member of the community and that which he can employ in his school-room as teacher.  He has unquestionably a right to exert upon the community, by such means as he shares in common with every other citizen, as much influence as he can command for the dissemination of his own political, or religious, or scientific opinions.  But the strong ascendency which, in consequence of his official station, he has obtained over the minds of his pupils, is sacred.  He has no right to use it for any purpose foreign to the specific objects for which he is employed, unless by the consent, expressed or implied, of those by whom he is intrusted with his charge.  The parents who send their children to him to be taught to read, to write, and to calculate, may have erroneous views of their duty as parents in other respects.  He may know that their views are erroneous.  They may be taking a, course which the teacher knows is wrong.  But he has not, on this account, a right to step in between the parent and child, to guide the latter according to his own opinions, and to violate the wishes and thwart the plans of the former.

God has constituted the relation between the parent and the child, and according to any view which a rational man can take of this relation, the parent is alone responsible for the guidance he gives to that mind, so entirely in his power.  He is responsible to God; and where our opinions in regard to the manner in which any of the duties arising from the relation are to be performed, differ from his, we have no right to interfere, without his consent, to rectify what we thus imagine to be wrong.  I know of but one exception which any man whatever would be inclined to make to this principle, and that is where the parent