subaltern sects, subdivided from the principal divisions.  The Nestorians, Eutychians, Jacobites, Iconoclasts, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Wickliffites, Osiandrians, Manicheans, Pietists, Adamites, the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred others, all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant when weak, hating each other in the name of the God of peace, forming such an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, damning each other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in this world the imaginary hell of the other.”

Can it be doubted for an instant that sentiments like these are derogatory to the Christian religion?  And yet on grounds and reasons exactly these, not like these, but EXACTLY these, Mr. Girard founds his excuse for excluding Christianity and its ministers from his school.  He is a tame copyist, and has only raised marble walls to perpetuate and disseminate the principles of Paine and of Volney.  It has been said that Mr. Girard was in a difficulty; that he was the judge and disposer of his own property.  We have nothing to do with his difficulties.  It has been said that he must have done as he did do, because there could be no agreement otherwise.  Agreement? among whom? about what?  He was at liberty to do what he pleased with his own.  He had to consult no one as to what he should do in the matter.  And if he had wished to establish such a charity as might obtain the especial favor of the courts of law, he had only to frame it on principles not hostile to the religion of the country.

But the learned gentleman went even further than this, and to an extent that I regretted; he said that there was as much dispute about the Bible as about any thing else in the world.  No, thank God, that is not the case!

     MR. BINNEY.  The disputes about the meaning of words and passages;
     you will admit that?

Well, there is a dispute about the translation of certain words; but if this be true, there is just as much dispute about it out of Mr. Girard’s institution as there would be in it.  And if this plan is to be advocated and sustained, why does not every man keep his children from attending all places of public worship until they are over eighteen years of age?  He says that a prudent parent keeps his child from the influence of sectarian doctrines, by which I suppose him to mean those tenets that are opposed to his own.  Well, I do not know but what that plan is as likely to make bigots as it is to make any thing else.  I grant that the mind of youth should be kept pliant, and free from all undue and erroneous influences; that it should have as much play as is consistent with prudence; but put it where it can obtain the elementary principles of religious truth; at any rate, those broad and general precepts and principles which are admitted by all Christians.  But here in this scheme of Mr. Girard, all sects and all creeds are denounced.  And would not a prudent