Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-03-18
REVIVAL OF THE OLD PRESCRIPTION.

The tendency of civilization is manifestly to
reconcile hostlities, to harmonic differences,
and to smooth the rough edges which our hui
manity brought out of its early barbarism.
Sometimes, for long period, our progress will
be marked and constant, and our sailing upon
a summers sea. Old enmities, which have
survived since the catacombs were built, seem
to retreat into history. Feuds, whose origin is
traditional, waste away and vanish like ghosts
before daylight. Quarrelsome religions, which
have filed the world with trouble for centuries,
lay down their profane armor, and pursue their
various methods of Christian proselytism side
by side. But fair weather isS not constant.
Clouds no bigger than mans hand have fill
ed the whole empyrean with tempests. Little
difficulties which ought to be composed and
might be, if men were always charitable, will
awaken the sleeping devil of partialism, and
destroy the effect of whole generations of pro-
gress.
We seem to be threatened with such disas-
ter at this time The refusal of a few school
children to chant King James's translation of
the Lords Prayer has been magnifed into an
offence of the most serious and alarming
character. How easy, natural, and humane,
it would have been for the master of the
Elliot school, whose "irmness" has been so
loudly and SO hastily praised, when the first
manifestation of religious feeling was made
by the Catholic boys under his charge, to have
said to them, eff your parents and spiritual
teachers have taught you that the Catholic
version of the commandments and prayer are
true, and you SO believe, repeat them in the
manner and form which the rules of the school
require" There the rebellion would have
ended. And whatever sanctifying power there
is in the sublime expression and the holy sem
timent of those fragments of sacred literature,
would have been felt by that school infinitely
more thar if those Catholic children had been
forced to use form OF prayer, associated in
their minds with a form of religious belief
which they had been taught, wrongly we
think, but still taught to believe to be wrong
No such pacific and tolerant policy, however,
appears to have entered into the conception of
either teachers or committees. With 'ifirm-
ness" which amounted to absolute cruelty,
those recusant boys were driven into the street
by platoons. Many parents who were too
poor to send their children to private schools,
or who could not bear the shame of having
them expelled, have chosen to submit. 9th
ers are still firm.
But the simple fact of this unfortunate diff
ference, is not half so melancholy as is that
spirit of malice and hatred which makes use
of il to revive a disantrous and anti-christian
journals have made upon it would have been
unworthy of the violent bigots who provoked
the religious wars of the seventeenth century.
Their denunciations could not have been more
excessive and malignant if the Scarlet Woman
herself had been suddenly throned in our
midst They would revive the spirit of pro-
scripton which has attended the alternate
successes and defeats of contestants since the
Reformation. They make their inconsiderate
warfare, not upon formidable and growing
sect, hut upon one comparatively powerless,
composed mainly Of servant girls and laborers,
and depending for recruits on the precarious
contingency OF immigration. They exemplify
that spirit OF moral cowardice which Sidney
Smith chastised, when he spoke of the luxury
of selecting particular set Of Christians
and worrying them as boy worrie,
dog Cruelty and injustice must Of course
exist But why connect them with danger 2
Why torture bull dog when you can get a
frog or rsbbitq It a spirit to be depreca
ted and rebuked whenever and wherever Il
appears. Among people living under thu
same institutions and sharing the same bless
ngs attending the same schools, trading in