Hilary, Gregory, Jerome, Epiphanius, Cyril, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Anastasius, and the members of the learned council of Laodicea, all rejected the Apocrypha as canonical; and recognized as such only the twenty-two books, which compose the Hebrew canon. The testimony of such men, living at the time when they did, is not to be upset in these days by a bull from the Pope, or a letter from his legate. Romanists are aware that this testimony makes against them, and attempt to degrade the Hebrew Bible by calling it "the canon of the Scribes and Pharisees." But in truth it was the canon of Christ and his apostles. The Saviour refers to it, quoting its authority, under the three divisions recognized by the Jews: The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms," while throughout the New Testament no reference whatever is made to the books of the Apocrypha. Indeed these books have never been found in the Hebrew, and are not believed to have existed at all before the New Testament was closed. They were never claimed as of divine authority, by any council of the Roman church itself, till the council of Trent. "Their original insertion in the Scriptures, is as cribed to the Greek Jews at Alexandria, who were desirous of preserving every document which had any relation to their history and religion. The Latin Bible. was adopted by the early Latin church as a kind of original for the Old Testament, and the translators being unable to discriminate books originally Greek, and those originally Hebrew, received them all with equal veneration." (Marsh, 93-5.)

As to the fidelity of the translation, which has been assailed by Bishop Kenrick, we might well leave it to the recorded opinions of those whose thorough knowledge of the original and freedom from sectarian bias entitle their opinions to the greatest weight. It has stood the test of all the critical learning of Europe for more than two centuries, and has been pronounced not only a scrupulously faithful version, but the standard of the English language, and a lexicon of the Hebrew too. Thousands have concurred with the learned and impartial Selden in the

declaration that "it renders the sense of the original the best of any translation in the world." The more competent the judge the more unqualified has his verdict of approbation been. They who have dissented most have had but little except their pedantry and presumption to recommend their opinions. Their futile amendments have dropped still-born from the press, and found in their abortive vanity a ready grave. There they will rest in spite even of the Bishop's pick-axe and spade.

But there are other tests of the fidelity of the Protestant version of the Scriptures. The Protestants are divided into a great number of religious sects, each with its peculiar forms of faith, and each deriving its authority for those forms from the Bible. Now it is well known that the more closely religious sects approach in their creeds, the more sensitive they become on those points upon which they differ. It was but a metaphysical shadow which separated the Latin and Greek churches, and yet that shadow became a field of controversy where the sharpest weapons were drawn, and where they were for a long series of years most unsparingly plied. But notwithstanding the sensitiveness and jealousy which this close proximity of faith must awaken among the different Protestant sects, they are all united in their profound veneration for the impartiality and faithfulness of the old English version of the Scriptures. They would regard with concern any attempts to improve it, and no such attempt would ever secure, in its result, their united confidence. We have here then all that evidence of fidelity which learning and sectarian jealousy combined can impart. Such a verdict of acquittal no other book ever had, and no one except this ever merited.

We are not surprised then that our forefathers cherished this Bible, and that they gave it their national, legislative sanction. When the war of the Revolution cut off the supply from abroad, the founders of our government, slender as the public means then were, encouraged an edition from our own press. miserable cry of sectarian jealousy, or feigned" embarrassments of conscience,"

No

deterred them from performing what they considered a civil and religious duty. They well knew that the institutions which they were sacrificing their lives and fortunes to establish, if unsustained by the influence and moral power of the Bible, would prove of short duration. Had the proposition been made to them to throw the Bible out of their public schools, they would have met it with the withering rebuke of insulted virtue and patriotism. It is for us, it would seem, who share the fruits of their sufferings and blood, to perpetrate this act of infidelity and crime. Should the Bible actually be cast from our schools, there would be other remonstrances than those which break from living lips, were it not that the laws of mortality impose silence on the dead. Slight the counsels of the living if you will, but turn not away from the pale oracle of the grave.

Were it in the power of Bishop Kenrick to furnish our schools with a Bible more complete in its canon, or more faithful in its translation than the one now in use, there would be some apology for his censorious interference in this matter. The version used under the sanction of the Papal See, however, does not answer to this description. It is merely a translation of the Latin Vulgate,-the translation of a translation! The sense of the original has only been obscured the more by each new dress which it has been made to assume. Few productions merely literary could survive such a process, and if the Roman version of the Scriptures has met with this good fortune, it is to be ascribed in no small degree to the sanctity of the subject, and the charity of the reader. He who would taste the sparkling freshness of the fountain should drink near the source. The further the current runs, the more the impurities which mingle with it. It is on this principle only that we can account for many of the errors which disfigure the last Roman version of the Scriptures. No one translating freshly from the original, and who should be competent to his task and impartial in its performance, could commit such mistakes. Take one example as a specimen of the whole: "And Jacob worshipped the top of his staff;" instead of Jacob

worshipped leaning on the top of his staff. This is a sample, a pretty strong one however, of that version of the Bible which the Bishop wishes the directors of our public schools to substitute for the one now in use.

It is a singular fact too, but not less instructive than strange, that this very version, thus urged on our directors, has been condemned by a council of the Papal See. It was condemned in advance, it is true, but if the anathema of assumed infallibility be of any weight, the whole burthen of its execration rests upon it. The council of Trent, acting under the direct authority of the supreme pontiff himself, pronounced its anathema upon any version of the Scriptures involving alterations from the one upon which it had conferred its sanction. And yet the version now commended by the Bishop, and authorized by the head of his church, contains no less than two thousand alterations from the copy which the council of Trent sought to protect by its imprecations.

Such are some of the inconsistencies of assumed infallibility; a prerogative which belongs to the Deity, and which no human being can arrogate to himself without the grossest impiety.

Some good, however, has resulted to our Roman Catholic neighbours from an agitation of this subject. Not a few of them have been led, in the absence of their own authorized Bible, to obtain the loan of ours. Language would but faintly picture the interest with which they pored over the borrowed treasure. It was indeed to them a new revelation. Their hands clasped for the first time that volume in which life and immortality are brought to light; a volume to which we trust they will not hereafter be strangers. Should the canons of the Papal See and the obligations of the Bishop continue to withhold from them this inestimable treasure, "sympathy and a sense of duty" will lead us to supply them with it. The shepherd of a flock, however, ought not to leave his lambs to seek a refuge in the bosom of the stranger.

The expulsion of the Bible from our schools would leave our system of education without any of the restraints, responsibilities and inspiring truths, which this

volume contains. It sends our youth out upon the world without the regard for virtue, abhorrence of vice, or reverence for God, which the inspired pages inculcate. What can be expected as the fruit of such an education but infidelity and crime. We send missionaries abroad that this precious volume may be carried to the hearth of the pagan, and then leave our own children to be trained and educated in ignorance of its solemn truths. We tell others that it is the source of all law, the fountain of all authority, the well-spring of all purity and hope in a world of sin and sorrow, and then treat it ourselves as if it were a collection of fables. We proclaim our faith as the richest revelation of God, and then turn its authority into a burlesque. Such is the miserable inconsistency to which we are reduced by a compliance with the requirement of Bishop Kenrick.

But we are told children may read the Bible at home. They may, it is true, but is this a valid reason for ejecting this book from our common schools? What must be the moral effect of this interdiction of the Bible among the exercises of the school-room? The child is taught to believe that he is receiving in these schools the most essential parts of his education, and that whatever is not embraced in these is of only secondary importance to him as an intellectual and moral being. And yet the great truths of the Bible, which lie at the foundation of all virtue and all moral obligation, have been carefully excluded from his lessons and inquiries. His teacher is not allowed to recognize them, or once refer to the solemn sanctions in which they are clothed. Will that child regard in its after years with profound reverence, what you, as its parent, consented should be banished from the elements of its education? Will it respect what you have slighted? Will it bind to its heart what you have betrayed? Its fidelity to that book, under such circumstances, would be little less than a miracle, and would administer the severest rebuke that ever yet chastised parental folly and crime.

Had Bishop Kenrick called upon the Board of Control to dismiss from our public schools all works establishing and

illustrating the present recognized laws of our solar system, he might have plead precedent for his extraordinary demand. It would have been in harmony with the decisions of that papal tribunal which intimidated the philosopher of Pisa, contrary to his convictions, into a disclaimer of the earth's motion, and sentenced him to the darkness of a dungeon for having discovered the laws of light. Poor Galileo! forced by ecclesiastical tyranny to give the lie to the truth of that magnificent discovery, on which rested his last hope of immortal fame. Had papal infallibility been infallible, our globe would still be regarded as a flat plain, and the idea of sailing round it would be deemed but the figment of a disordered fancy. Papal infallibility, when it touches the physical laws of the universe, seems to be as deeply in error as when it attempts to define its moral obligations. But the Bishop is not altogether without precedent and authority in his interdict of the scriptures. The Papal See has often placed under its ban that restless impiety which has sought a free circulation of the Bible. It has visited with its severest pains and penalties those who have presumptuously endeavoured to make men think for themselves, and shape from their own conceptions of truth abiding rules of duty. Nothing so endangers the supremacy of an overshadowing hierarchy as that moral courage which a man evinces when he turns from the thunders of the Vatican to the whispers of his own conscience. There is a power in those whispers against which no outward force can prevail; a power which sustains the sufferer amid the agonies that may lay in ruins his mortal form. We do not much wonder then that they who are connected with this hierarchy, and who act under its authority, should seek to suppress that freedom of thought and force of individual conscience, which a free study of the Scriptures is so eminently calculated to impart. Our greater wonder is, that the Roman Catholics, as a community, will submit to such ecclesiastical despotism. Tyranny is sufficiently odious when it seeks to trammel our limbs; it is intolerable when it throws its chain on the soul. Whether any portion of this Pro

testant community will consent to be the passive instruments of riveting this tyranny upon us, remains to be seen; but if they consent to the expulsion of the Bible from our public schools, they will have taken the first eventful step toward its consummation. The bolt will have slipped the cloud!

Bishop Kenrick objects, in the second place, to the teachers allowing the children to open or close the school with a devotional hymn. The reason assigned for this objection, is an alleged embarrassment of conscience. But how the moral sense of a child can be invaded by being allowed to celebrate, in this most simple form, its Maker's praise, surpasses our comprehension; and we think it would puzzle the Bishop, even with all his metaphysical adroitness, to give a satisfactory explanation. The great British statesman placed the moral effects of the national ode above the influence of law. If the power of unsanctified poetry can awaken a patriotism which no legislative enactments can rival, it is but reasonable to expect some beneficial results from those hymns where the glory and goodness of the Creator is the inspiring theme. If the one can make a youth willing to die for his country, perhaps the other may make him willing to live for his Maker. Many a man has owed his conversion from a life of sin and shame, to one of purity and honour, to those simple hymns to which his pious mother first attuned his infant voice. The celestial harmony may have slumbered long in his heart, but at last awoke. What for instance arrested John Newton, while engaged in kidnapping his fellow beings on the coast of Africa? Those sacred hymns, breathing of celestial love, taught him, in his early childhood, by his mother. Their recollection awoke with a power that overwhelmed him amid the triumphs of his accursed traffic. The pang which strikes deepest into the callous sinfulness of age, is often that which recalls those infantile and long forgotten numbers in which childhood first lisped its Maker's praise.

We can hardly conceive of a greater moral absurdity, than the suppression of these devotional hymns in our juvenile

schools, from an alleged embarrassment of conscience. Impiety might indeed cast its sneer upon them, but how parental duty and christian love can raise an objection, is to us utterly inexplicable. They have not a shade of sectarianism about them. No one ever thought to inquire for the religious persuasion of their authors. It is enough for us to know that they embody those feelings which become children who are trained up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. To us, one of the most delightful spectacles in the world, is a collection of children closing their school hours with one of these hymns. Take the following as a sample of the whole, as sung by our children:

Almighty Father, heavenly King

Who rules the world above;
Accept the tribute children bring
Of gratitude and love.

To Thee, each morning, when we rise,
Our early vows we pay;

And ere the night hath closed our eyes
We thank Thee for the day.

Our Saviour, ever good and kind,

To us his Word hath given;
That children, such as we, may find
The path that leads to heaven.

O Lord, extend thy gracious care
To lead our souls above,
That we may all thy goodness share,
In that sweet land of love.

As this hymn is gushing from the hearts of our children, is it quite amiable in the Bishop to come in and impose silence; and throw the dark pall of ecclesiastical authority over such a collection of bright and beaming faces. Even the children of his own flock look up and wonder what it means. Nor is their wonder less when he attempts to explain his interference by alleging an "embarrassment of conscience." They feel no such embarrassment, nor do their parents feel any, and they cannot comprehend how the Bishop should. Still they must obey the mandate, and stop singing. But that song will break out again in heaven, in spite of papal prelates.

There is an absurdity about this interdiction of Bishop Kenrick's, that almost disarms criticism of its rebukes. It is

like taking solid weapons to contend against some grotesque phantom of the brain. We should quite doubt the sincerity of the Bishop in this interdiction, did we conceive him capable of trifling with the feelings of the community. We must therefore suppose him honest, how ever much such a conclusion may detract from that respect which considerate wisdom and Christian liberality inspire.

Bishop Kenrick's third objection is directed against opening a public school with prayer. The reason assigned for this objection is the same as that brought against the use of hymns-namely, an "embarrassment of conscience." This devotional exercise, where observed, has been brief and appropriate.

No compulsion has been used on the subject; the teacher has been left to follow his own sense of duty and propriety. No complaint has been made by child, parent, or guardian. All seemed well pleased wherever this devotional exercise was attended to. But the Bishop has discovered that it embarrasses conscience, a discovery which no one else has made, even in his own case. If a person has discovered himself no infringement upon the rights and scruples of his conscience, the reasonable inference would seem to be, that there has been no very grievous invasion in that quarter. It may be that the Bishop can tell when a man's conscience is embarrassed better than the individual himself; still we should expect to see some slight symptoms of uneasiness in the alleged sufferer. Few people so utterly surrender the keeping of their conscience to another, as to be insensible themselves to its injury. It is an attribute of this moral property to retain some things always in its possession; and one of these is the capacity of discovering its own wrongs. If the Bishop, through his official position or otherwise, has taken possession of this faculty, so be it. We have nothing to do with a man's conscience out of his own breast; while it is there, where God placed it, we shall respect its rights; but if it be in the possession of another, we shall not recognize the transfer, much less the claims which its new possessor may set up in its behalf.

Where this transfer of conscience has

not taken place, where it is in the possession of the individual to whom it rightfully belongs, we cannot comprehend how it should be injured, offended or embarrassed by a habit of prayer. We had supposed this habit consonant with its nature, and in harmony with its deci sions, whether observed in the schoolroom or the closet. We were aware indeed that a bad conscience, one that has been perverted and warped from its original purpose, might be embarrassed by the performance of this religious duty; but we take it for granted that this is not the kind of conscience to which the Bishop refers, and which he is so anxious to protect. We are to suppose he has reference to a good conscience, and the offence alleged to be given it by the devout exercise of prayer. The relief asked for in this case is that this exercise of prayer be discontinued. Whether the Board of Control will grant this relief to a good conscience, remains to be seen; but if they do not, then let the cry of persecution be raised, and let it be told in tones of indignation through the land, that this wicked and tyrannical body of men do not consider the worship of God a violation of a man's moral sense!

In solemn verity, this complaint of the Bishop is too absurd for grave comment, and at the same time relates to a subject too serious for irony. It disparages and dishonours its source. It is itself a severer reflection on its author than any animadversions which even a sectarian intolerance could inflict. Had we uttered any thing ourselves so disparaging to the common sense and religious sincerity of the Bishop, we should consider him entitled to an apology. We bear him no ill will, and regard much more in a spirit of grief than gratification these self-inflicted wounds.

The fourth objection of Bishop Kenrick to the present regulations of our public schools, refers to religious books in the libraries attached to them; the complaint is that these books contain misrepresentations of the tenets of the church to which he belongs, when the fact is, they contain no representations whatever on the subject. We may safely challenge the Bishop to find the distinctive