and through deserted Charlestown, and by all the girls they left behind them, and boys too, if this is not to be the National Hymn, I should like to know the reason why!

III.

A FOLLY IN ISRAEL.

[Motto: At it again !]

HERE is a class of subjects, not innumerous, which nearly concern the interests of the Church, but of which only one side can be easily presented.

You may fill columns of the religious newspapers with the good that is done by Sunday schools, but it is not lawful to recount the evil which they do. You may point out from the narrative of the thief on the cross any moral which the Church has educed and taught, but you may not deviate into lessons of your own learning. You may exhort men to come to Christ, you may even describe his excellences for their imitation, if you will depict only such as the Church has agreed to attribute to him; but if, suspecting that the traditions of men have somewhat overlaid the original manuscript, you should attempt to erase the one and restore the other, you may count on small furtherance in your work. New England Puritanism is very far from Popery, but it is also very

far from a practical acknowledgment, in its true significance, of the right of private judgment.

In one respect the children of light are wise in their generation. The "religious newspapers are probably well acquainted with the tastes and distastes of the "religious public." They know what it will bear, and against what it will rebel; and they doubtless have learned more thoroughly than any others the lesson enunciated by Niebuhr, "How much is there which we may not say aloud for fear of being stoned by the stupid good people!"

But the question is, whether it is not better to be stoned by the stupid good people than to buy them off by pandering to their prejudices. If they are restless under a presentation of opinions differing from their own, shall those opinions be withheld, or shall they be gently instructed in the true nature and uses of opposition? Are leaders given to the blind for the purpose of guiding them, with some difficulty perhaps, along safe paths, or, for the sake of unity and peace, shall they all settle down comfortably together in the ditch?

It is not a question which can be evaded with impunity. If reformatory opposition be not permitted, destructive opposition will come without permission. If the Church will not tolerate free discussion among its members, there will be riotous attacks from without, and a decay of all its forces within. A "be it resolved" cannot change

the face of nature. A community may refuse to tolerate any exposition of the faults in its pet plans or of weakness in its pet beliefs, and then congratulate itself that they are faultless. But facts do not disappear because men refuse to contemplate them. If the Sunday school is working mischief upon our children, its work is mischief, however strenuously we persist in calling it benefit. If it is the glory and beneficence of the age, nothing that even an angel from heaven can say against it will have any other permanent effect than to fasten it still more firmly in the affection and respect of the people. For the Sunday school is not an experiment, struggling up timidly into existence, to be tenderly entreated till a fair trial shall have shown whereunto the thing shall grow. It is an institution, of years and full strength, extending with every month, and enjoying the almost unclouded sunshine of popular favor. It ought to be in a condition to court the freest discussion. If it is what it ought to be, every attack will only bring discomfiture to its foes and advantage to itself. If it is not what it ought to be, it should welcome every suggestion, and carefully consider before deciding upon adoption or rejection. But the fact that an opinion adverse to the common features of the Sunday school and to the current topic of thought regarding it, especially an opinion emanating not from a hostile and inexperienced Gentile, who may be assumed to be ignorant of its

workings, but from an Hebrew of the Hebrews who is, as touching the law, a Pharisee, and concerning zeal, absolutely persecuting the Church,

- that such an opinion should be considered too detrimental to be allowed expression, is an argument against Sunday schools which comprises the essence of every hostile charge. If that which professes to be a plan for good working may not be freely and publicly discussed by the lovers of good works, it must lie under the suspicion of harboring some fatal flaw.

If the religious public does not see this by its own unaided vision, for what are religious periodicals established but to lend themselves to the work of enlightenment? Or is it so that while the customs of the world may be rigidly scrutinized and unsparingly condemned, the customs of the Church shall not be so much as looked into to see whether they deserve condemnation? Then, after the woe and warfare of centuries, we are reverting again to an infallible Church, with the singular and signal disadvantage of having for our Divinity no recognized oracle. What came well-defined, if imperative, from the lips of King Pope, now clamors, discordant and unintelligible, from the hundred mouths of King Mob.

This paper was originally written for an able, catholic, and courteous religious newspaper. The watchman of Zion, a mighty man of war, slumbered at his post, I suspect, and the vanguard