Morning journal and courier., 1880-02-16
sects and Schools.

Discourse by Rev. \. Cs Meserve at the
 Davenport Church-MOraIs Should He
 Taught i'm Public Schools, Hut Not
 Sectarianism.
 Last evening Rev. l. c. Meserve, pastor of the Davenport church on Greene street, de- livered the second in the series of his Sunday evening discourses, his subjects being tfSects and Schools Before commencing his dis course MT. Meserve announced that his sub ject for next Sunday evening would be, ''What Type of Religion is Needed in these Times"
 In commencing his discourse he said am to speak to you tonight about Scots and Schools" and the relation of sects to common schools TLs question of the greatest moment is the relation of the different religious bodies to our common school system. We have no warrant that the civilization of our time shall live beyond that of past ages. My fear of the overthrow of American civilization is the constant and increasing foreign immigration
 One of the things that is possible and that may be done to avert such calamity is the enforcement of education. Education tends to morality. A moral man is going to succeed better than an immoral man, and the more he
 studies the great minds of the age the more he will see that it is for his interest to be moral. A person who studies great minds
 will, as natural consequence, be
 led to God. Religion insists upon mor- ality because morality is a part of religion, and because humaa destiny is settled by the morality of the individual. There must not be a divorcement between education
 and morals, and the great bulk of the Ameri- can people will say amen to this whether they be Methodists or otherwise. There is a class who say s'Let the people be informed" but who also say ''Do not put them on any firm basis of morality" There is another class who are opposed to our political institu- tions and this class are opposed to teaching morals. It is not necessary to teach any par ticular dogma. Not one dollar of money or one moment of time should be used in our public schools to teach any dogma. The teachers in our schools should not be per mitted to wear their particular robes or garb of the orders or church they represent while teaching in our schools. The speaker here referred to the conflict in New Britain be- tween the Board of Education and the Catho- lies, and said New Britain had set good ex- ample for others to follow. Continuing, he said: On what shall this dogma of morality rest? On the existence, sovereignty and government of God. This is not sectarian- l ism, and why do not all sects agree on this
 basis? We'll, they all do agree but one, and ! that is the Roman Catholic Church. They say no; if you adopt this plan your public | schools must disgorge all of our children. | They have made the issue and we must meet \ it. The speaker here referred to utterances | of Cardinal Manning as opposed to State schools without Christian teaching or creed. l
 We should, said the speaker, have to agree | with Cardinal Manning if his lan- guage and meaning was just what it appeared to be. But it means that the pc
 culiar religion of the Roman Church must be
 taught in the public schools, and the public | money must be used to support such institu-
 tions. Cardinal Manning will not succeed in | this, as the general public are opposed to it.
 In Belgium the Roman Catholic Church for merly had everything their own way in regard
 to schools, and the State tried to get some
 thing. There came an edict from Rome for bidding absolution to any teacher that
 out of 7,50o teachers, only 100 dared disobey ecclesiastical law and teach in \ the State schools. In America we are free ! people, and have never been under the domi- nation of the Roman Church, and please God
 we never shall be. We have 8 common
 school system that is perfectly fair, and you | cannot improve upon it. The true Roman Catholic owes no allegiance to the United
 States he owes it to Rome, and is only loyal l to this Government as Rome says he may be. The Roman Catholic Church is one and the ! same throughout the world with it's head in
 Rome. In order to control their own they must either control the public schools or they
 must have schools of their own. We'll, let ! them have all the parochial schools they may wish; we will not interfere, it is their right ;
 but they must not be allowed to control the | public schools. What will they teach in the l parochial schools? Not single text book
 used in our schools will be used in theirs.
 Wherever an impression is made in the text books against their Church it will be garbled
 and the truth will not appear. There can be
 but one civilization in this country two can-
 not live together. The vulgar expression
 arises, "What are you going to do about it p | Under the light of our common schools we
 are gaining and they are losing all the time {;
 they know it, and hence their desire to estab-
 fish parochial schools. Make our common
 schools so good that the fathers and mothers of their children will not take them away to send them to the inferior parochial schools. Finally, we must believe in the ld-fashioned doctrine, ''Trustin God" and rest assured that
 He will see the battle to the issue.