What book or books contain the best code of morals?  We answer, the Bible.  For the excellency of the morality of the Bible has been admitted by the most distinguished men who have opposed its supernatural revelation, among whom are Gibbon, Byron, Carlyle, Lord Bollingbroke, Napoleon Bonaparte, Goethe and Renan.  Thomas Jefferson, speaking of Christ as a teacher, said:  “He set forth the sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality.”

Catholicism says:  “No Bible shall be taught in the public schools,” but demands that she be allowed to proclaim her dogmas.

Benjamin Franklin, five weeks before his death, said of Christ:  “I think His system of morals, and His religion, as He left them, are the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.”  The services of the Bible in behalf of human rights and freedom, and in reforming and purifying jurisprudence and politics, have been recognized by many of the most distinguished historians, jurists and statesmen.

As the makers of our laws and the founders of our government have accepted the moral code of the Bible as the basis of our jurisprudence, and have forbidden the union of church and state, and have left every citizen free to “worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience,” so long as he does not interfere with the rights of others or violate the moral code common to all citizens, for the law cannot allow a person to murder or steal, or burn human sacrifices, or be a polygamist, or commit any other public crime, even if the dictates of his conscience should lead him into such a form of religion, because the moral code of the Bible is the basis of our jurisprudence, and it forbids such things.

Therefore, we demand that the “book of books” be kept where the rising generation shall come under its moral teaching without party or sectarian comment, so that all may understand the fundamental principles upon which the science of our common law rests, and thus one of the objects of the order is “to maintain the public school system of the United States and to prevent sectarian interference therewith, and upholding the reading of the Holy Bible therein.”

The argument that the reading of the Bible in the public school should be abolished because it is objectionable to the conscience of some comes only from the Church of Rome, and applies with equal force against the moral code of jurisprudence, because it is objectionable to the conscience of the anarchist, and the conscience of the anarchist is just as sacred and entitled to as much respect, under the law, in this free country of ours as the conscience of any one else.

We have just as much right to take the moral code out of our common jurisprudence as to take the Bible out of our public schools, because the moral code of the Bible is the moral code of our common law.