has not thought; for by that Christian world, throughout its broadest extent, it has been, and is, held as a fundamental truth, that religion is the only solid basis of morals, and that moral instruction not resting on this basis is only a building upon sand.  And at what age of the Christian era have those who professed to teach the Christian religion, or to believe in its authority and importance, not insisted on the absolute necessity of inculcating its principles and its precepts upon the minds of the young?  In what age, by what sect, where, when, by whom, has religious truth been excluded from the education of youth?  Nowhere; never.  Everywhere, and at all times, it has been, and is, regarded as essential.  It is of the essence, the vitality, of useful instruction.  From all this Mr. Girard dissents.  His plan denies the necessity and the propriety of religious instruction as a part of the education of youth.  He dissents, not only from all the sentiments of Christian mankind, from all common conviction, and from the results of all experience, but he dissents also from still higher authority, the word of God itself.  My learned friend has referred, with propriety, to one of the commands of the Decalogue; but there is another, a first commandment, and that is a precept of religion, and it is in subordination to this that the moral precepts of the Decalogue are proclaimed.  This first great commandment teaches man that there is one, and only one, great First Cause, one, and only one, proper object of human worship.  This is the great, the ever fresh, the overflowing fountain of all revealed truth.  Without it, human life is a desert, of no known termination on any side, but shut in on all sides by a dark and impenetrable horizon.  Without the light of this truth, man knows nothing of his origin, and nothing of his end.  And when the Decalogue was delivered to the Jews, with this great announcement and command at its head, what said the inspired lawgiver? that it should be kept from children? that it should be reserved as a communication fit only for mature age?  Far, far otherwise.  “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart.  And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

There is an authority still more imposing and awful.  When little children were brought into the presence of the Son of God, his disciples proposed to send them away; but he said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”  Unto me; he did not send them first for lessons in morals to the schools of the Pharisees, or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read the precepts and lessons phylacteried on the garments of the Jewish priesthood; he said nothing of different creeds or clashing doctrines; but he opened at once to the youthful mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source of eternal