in harmony with the menacing conclusion. as are the intermediate statements and claims with each other. The Bishop says: Sympathy for a respectable lady, who has been deprived for months of her only means of support, for following the dictates of her conscience, and a solemn sense of duty to the Catholic community, whose religious interests are entrusted to my guardianship, prompt me to submit, respectfully, to you the conscientious objections of catholics to the actual regulations of the public schools." The sufferer for conscience sake here referred to, and whose case is made the prime occasion of this letter, is a female who had been employed in the capacity of a teacher in one of the public schools, and who chose to relinquish her situation sooner than read the Protestant version of the Scriptures to her pupils or allow them to read it in their classes. This is the sum and substance of the grievance complained of in this case. While this teacher consulted her own conscience so nicely she should have bestowed a thought on the conscience of her pupils and their parents. But freedom of conscience with some people, like their charity, begins and ends at home.

The Bishop asks the Board, in view of this case of alleged hardship to cast the Bible out of the public schools, and to suppress all religious exercises. How the case of this lady is to be relieved by the expulsion of the Bible, by the suppression of these devotional exercises, we are not informed. We had supposed the exercises of religion a relief in difficulty, a consolation under bereavement, but here they are made only a fresh source of calamity. The cry of the young raven is considered as only enhancing its famine. Whether the community will consider it their duty to grant the relief sought, in the shape suggested, remains to be seen. But if they do, they will inflict the deepest dishonour on the pledges of religion and offer the last indignity to the claims of its divine author. But waiving for the present this case of alleged grievance, and the impiety of the proposed remedy, we proceed to consider the objections of the Bishop to the present rules and regulations of our public schools.

His first objection is levelled against the authority and claims of the Bible now in use; and is couched in these terms: "We are persuaded that several books of divine scripture are wanting in this version, and that the meaning of the original text is not faithfully translated." Now granting that this Bible might, with propriety have in it the books claimed as canonical by the Bishop, and that the translation might in some instances be improved, still is this a valid insurmount able objection to its use? Is it a bar over which no other considerations can prevail? Does it justify a loss of all the influences it can exert? Will it warrant the ignorance, scepticism and infidelity which must make up the alternative? Moral influences in their effects are never perfect on man; they are always partial. They may make him wiser and better, but they will never make him an angel. He will still carry with him the evidences of his fallen nature. As these results then are to be only partial, though of infinite moment, why should we cast them aside, because their source may have been in the conception of some slightly disturbed, or because it has not the utmost amplitude assigned it in some forms of belief. Because the moon is not full orbed, does the benighted traveller spurn its light; or because the sun may have a spot upon it, does the uncertain mariner refuse to take his observations?

But the Bishop objects to the use of this translation, “inasmuch as Catholic children," as he affirms "may be led to view it as authoritative." They may be led to regard the Bible itself as authoritative, its spirit, precepts and injunctions as obligatory, but the language will be with them much the same as it is with their seniors, the medium through which the thoughts are conveyed. No child will trouble itself with the nice distinctions to which the Bishop refers, nor would it be able to comprehend them, even if explained. What childhood seeks in all matters is the plain and intelligible; the intricate and abstruse, lie as much beyond its curiosity as its scope. We doubt if the Bishop, with all his solicitude on this subject, can interest a child in the question whether the books which

we regard as apocryphal, are of divine authority, or not, or whether the version which we use has every subtle shade of thought, which belongs to the original. These are questions for the learned, or at least for those of a maturer age, and it would be alike vain and unprofitable to crowd them on childhood.

But why should the Bishop be so solicitous on these nice points, since the circulation of the Scriptures themselves is discouraged, if not interdicted, by the canons of his own church. If the book as a whole be of so little concern to the general reader, or so difficult of interpretation, that it may with propriety be withheld from him, why be so alarmed about the possible misconception of a few passages. If a few partial errors of translation be fatal to the pupil, what must ignorance of the whole be? Can a man walk more safely in utter darkness than in the light, imperfect though it be? He is perhaps more easily led, if he cannot see his own path, and if this dependence be the object sought, it is undoubtedly best achieved in this form. But the Protestant clergy seek no such advantage. They do not believe that their influence is to be overthrown by the intelligence of the great mass, or that ignorance is the parent of devotion. They believe that their power to do good is in harmony with a spirit of investigation, and the progress of religious truth. Hence they put the Bible into the hands of every man, and invite to it the most free, searching and anxious inquiry. They ask no deference to their own opinions any farther than these opinions are sustained by the plain declarations of that book. They will not themselves submit to an arbitrary rule of faith, deriving its authority from man, nor will they exact this from others. They believe in no human infallibility, and set aside even the decision of the Pope, whenever that decision fails to harmonize with their own conceptions of truth and duty. They lose it is true, in this way, that exact unity of belief on all points which characterize Roman Catholics. But they gain in freedom of thought and force of individual conscience more than they lose by the absence of such a Procrustean faith.

Were then the version of the Bible in general use, open to the objections made by Bishop Kenrick, still there would be no valid reason for ejecting it from our public schools; nothing that would sanctify the act. But this version is not open to these objections. The Bishop affirms that" several books of Divine Scripture are wanting in this version." Now in regard to the books of the New Testament both Roman Catholics and Protestants are agreed that all is complete and perfect here; the originals with both are the same; they differ only on the claims of the Apocryphal books, which the Roman Catholics attach to the Old Testament, and which are not recognized as canonical by Protestants. The claims of some of these have been regarded as doubtful by many of the Roman Catholics themselves, and the claims of others rest mostly on their fancied importance to the completeness of the sacred canon.

The

We can adduce authority on this subject but we must do it briefly, which must be regarded as more impartial than that of either of the parties in the controversy, the authority of the Jewish Rabbies. For though they made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions, it was not through these books. They had their Talmuds and Mishnas, but they never received the Apocrypha. Josephus enumerates but twenty-two books as received by them; and these twenty-two may easily be proved to be the same as the twenty-nine which are found in our version. Jews reckoned Judges and Ruth as one, the two books of Samuel as one, the two of Kings as one, the two of Chronicles as one, Ezra and Nehemiah as one, the Lamentations as part of Jeremiah, and the books of the twelve minor Prophets as one. This reduces them to twenty-two, which correspond to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and which were the Alpha and Omega of the Old Testament. The Jews and early Christians are agreed on this point though wide as the poles asunder on others. To their concurrent testimony, is to be added the authority of the ancient fathers. Melito Bishop of Sardis, living in the second century, Origen, Athanasius,