The herald., 1896-01-12

! vate and public life of our citizens and soil
| and sully the character of our nation. More
uality and less intellectually, more Bible
and less science will cure these diseases, will
heal all the boiis aud sores of our body So
clal and polite and remove and eradicate
these virulent and malignant evils from
our blessed soil.
These seven charges, exaggerated as
| they seem to be, and true as they are, need
| not alarm us, for they do not reflect upon
the jew and his character. Jewish life, as
rule, is exempt from all those evils which
oeset modern society. The Jew as an hab-
| itual drunkard or professional gambler is
an anomaly. Tramps and outcasts, luna
tics and suicides are ever scarce among us.
And of the many thousands and ten thou
sands OF criminals and convicts that tenant
our jaiis and prisons, you will find but an
infinitessimal percentage to be of Jewish
extraction. Sound and safe, hale and
healthy, as ever, is our moral constitution.
we need no guardians; we are fully able
to take care of our children, in the future
as we'll as we have done in the past for the
last 5000 years and longer.
Bnt what abou the proffered cure itself?
A patent medicine, advertised and en-
dorsed by 80 and SO many quacks, the in
falllbie nostrum for every sort of disorder,
and the efi1cacious remedy r none! The
Bible in our public schools will increase
religious evils. 1t will make us hypocrites
and fanatics II will produce irreverencee
and Intolerance. 1t will SOW hatred and
enmity. 1t will spread dissent and dissen-
sion. 1t will set brother against brother.
It will separa q man from man. 1t will
disrupt and dsunite this, our grand repub-
lie. For who will deny that such must be
the final result when teachers of different
beliefs and convictions, and some of none
at all, leach children of various deuomina-
tions a particular Bible and particular
creed?
No, ye Jealous servants of the Lord This
is not the way to effect better order of
things, to correct society. to reform the
masses, to uplift the nations character
and to remove the grievous maladies wi h
which the commonwealth is afflicted. Ii
you are in earnest, if you really have your
peoples welfare at heart and want to bene-
lit your country, as you claim, rather than
chrlstlanize and sectarianize our public
schools. try to broaden and to liberalze
your churches. You have thus far been
preaching the people, by the myriads, out
OF your churches, try now to preach them
back into your churches. Dogmatize less
and humanze more; preach them less of
the 'creed" and more of the "deed." Thus
yod will bring them back into your fold,
and so you will regain their confidence and
influence their homes; you will elevate and
uplif their lives and characters and those
of their children and be a power for good
in this land.
Our respective churches for our respec-
tive creeds; our common schools for our
common education! Our respective Sum
day schools for our various ''isms;" our
public schools for our common American
ism! You may sing your hymns in your
churches, you may real your prayers in
your homes, you may leach your Bible in
your Sunday schools, but you must not
tamper with our public schools! They are,
and must remain, non-sectarian. They are
the bulworks of Americanism, the bastions
of our freedom OF thought and liberty of
conscience, and we cannot afford to have
them transformed into medieval ecciesi-
astic institutions. They are the common
property of all tax-paying American citi-
zens-Catholic5 or Protestants, Jews or
Unitarians, agnostics or infidels, with
out distinction-and no sect nor de-
denomination has the right to establish its
own special creed within our secular insti-
tutions. They are our children's CON mon
meeting place, where our future citizens
learn to live and work together in peace
and harmony. nay, to love and to respect
one another, and we cannot afford to have
them metamorphosed into sectarian Sum
day schools, into hot-beds of narrow
mindedness and Observation-Disclosures, of
hatreds and enunities. of bgotry, fanati-
cism and intolerance. They are the
sacred heritages, bequeathed to us by the
fathers of our constitution and the found
ers of our grand republic, and, as such, it
is the duty of every true American to keep
them inviolabie, to maintain them in tact
and to perpetuate them unchanged; to
guard over them, to watch over hem with
Argus eyes, "For eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty.'