They are to be told
and taught that religion is not a matter for the heart or conscience,
but for the decision of the cool judgment of mature years; that at that
period when the whole Christian world deem it most desirable to instil
the chastening influences of Christianity into the tender and
comparatively pure mind and heart of the child, ere the cares and
corruptions of the world have reached and seared it,--at that period the
child in this college is to be carefully excluded therefrom, and to be
told that its influence is pernicious and dangerous in the extreme. Why,
the whole system is a constant preaching against Christianity and
against religion, and I insist that there is no charity, and can be no
charity, in that system of instruction from which Christianity is
excluded. I perfectly agree with what my learned friend says in regard
to the monasteries of the Old World, as seats of learning to which we
are all indebted at the present day. Much of our learning, almost all of
our early histories, and a vast amount of literary treasure, were
preserved therein and emanated therefrom. But we all know, that although
these were emphatically receptacles for literature of the highest order,
yet they were always connected with Christianity, and were always
regarded and conducted as religious establishments.
Going back as far as the statutes of Henry the Fourth, as early as
1402,[3] in the act respecting charities, we find that one hundred years
before the Reformation, in Catholic times, in the establishment of every
charitable institution, there was to be proper provision for religious
instruction.
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