I now come to the consideration of the second part of this clause in the will, that is to say, the reasons assigned by Mr. Girard for making these restrictions with regard to the ministers of religion; and I say that these are much more derogatory to Christianity than the main provision itself, excluding them.  He says that there are such a multitude of sects and such diversity of opinion, that he will exclude all religion and all its ministers, in order to keep the minds of the children free from clashing controversies.  Now, does not this tend to subvert all belief in the utility of teaching the Christian religion to youth at all?  Certainly, it is a broad and bold denial of such utility.  To say that the evil resulting to youth from the differences of sects and creeds overbalances all the benefits which the best education can give them, what is this but to say that the branches of the tree of religious knowledge are so twisted, and twined, and commingled, and all run so much into and over each other, that there is therefore no remedy but to lay the axe at the root of the tree itself?  It means that, and nothing less!  Now, if there be any thing more derogatory to the Christian religion than this, I should like to know what it is.  In all this we see the attack upon religion itself, made on its ministers, its institutions, and its diversities.  And that is the objection urged by all the lower and more vulgar schools of infidelity throughout the world.  In all these schools, called schools of Rationalism in Germany, Socialism in England, and by various other names in various countries which they infest, this is the universal cant.  The first step of all these philosophical moralists and regenerators of the human race is to attack the agency through which religion and Christianity are administered to man.  But in this there is nothing new or original.  We find the same mode of attack and remark in Paine’s “Age of Reason.”  At page 336 he says:  “The Bramin, the follower of Zoroaster, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the Protestant Church, split into several hundred contradictory sectaries, preaching, in some instances, damnation against each other, all cry out, ’Our holy religion!’”

We find the same view in Volney’s “Ruins of Empires.”  Mr. Volney arrays in a sort of semicircle the different and conflicting religions of the world.  “And first,” says he, “surrounded by a group in various fantastic dresses, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black, and speckled garments, with heads shaved, with tonsures, or with short hairs, with red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the standard of the Roman Pontiff.  On his right you see the Greek Pontiff, and on the left are the standards of two recent chiefs (Luther and Calvin), who, shaking off a yoke that had become tyrannical, had raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested half of Europe from the Pope.  Behind these are the