THE NATIONAL BAPTISM.-It is often said that the few have to think for the many, and there certainly appears good foundation for the remark. Witness the action of the comparatively few minds, who, thinking out the then mystified problem of the rights of man, laid the foundation for America's compact as a nation. They, realizing in man an inherent right to self-government, not only as an individual but as a people, yearned to free themselves alike from the tyranny of despotism and the thraldom experienced under monarchical rule. But it was with uplifted eyes that mentally, ay, prayerfully, the aid of their Maker was invoked, and man must ever be thankful that God heard the prayer. What a grand retrospect is there to those who perceive their noble, generous aim of individual advancement, to be obtained only through the common weal; good to self through good will to all!

Were they men imbued simply with feelings of humanity? Nay, they were beings in the image of God, beaming with enlightened intelligence, evincing that his laws were written in their hearts. Philanthropy thus rose as a beacon-light in the Western World, bidding the nations rejoice in hope for the future release of mankind from not only temporal, but also from spiritual bondage. Hope? Yes, hope; for there was still to be a fearful struggle that awful baptism of fire and sword through which the pioneers of liberty had to pass, in order to regenerate and bind themselves in the brotherhood that should constitute them a distinct and independent nation. 'Twas passed, and they became Americans, brothers in one family, children in liberty, and no longer a mixed body, claiming different fatherlands. Patriots became they, loving their country, the country for which they had just fought, and whose elevation among the nations of the earth had been achieved.

will towards their fellow-man, without endangering the liberties so dearly purchased? Such were the questions presented to the intelligence of the founders of this noble republic; and although the American mind had been developed, yet that it might possibly degenerate through neglect, or otherwise become overpowered by the enmixing of extraneous views, were their reflections, and, as such, should always prompt Americans to cherish the all-wise admonition of the great father, "beware of foreign influence." It is only by cultivating and nurturing similar fundamental convictions to those entertained by their forefathers, and by giving to them tone and expression throughout the land, that the children may hope to avoid withholding the privilege of citizenship from foreigners, (yet to arrive,) or the necessity of struggling against them for the maintenance of present liberties.

It has been said that foreigners fought for this country, and consequently that foreigners have a right to enjoy equal rule in it. Curious logic! An equally pertinent question would be, against whom did they fight? Was it against foreigners? If so, then, since those who fought for the country and remained steadfast therein, became Americans, it naturally follows that their children and children's children should have the right of election, to avoid getting wolves and sheep into the same fold.

The benefits resulting from that trying baptism through which their sires and grandsires passed, should be preserved by them inviolate against the inroads of all foreign powers; always remembering, that that baptism which assimilated minds and tested their fidelity has passed; and may God forbid that there should ever be need of a renewing through a civil strife, or that the safeguard of an oath of allegiance, from which a foreign potentate may grant absolution, should ever prove too frail a Bond for the safety of Ame

EDUCATION AND RELIGION.-The squabbles that have been and are still going forward in the Political Church, on the subject of popular education, have afforded a correspondent materials for the following pleasant dialogue.

RESULTS OF EDUCATION.-From the letter of "A Roman Catholic," and the answers thereto made by the Boston Pilot, we frame this dialogue. The Romanist correspondent (R. C.) refers to the Irish exodus as having been "excited through no other means than the lack of that education which has made this country what it is, and what Ireland would be, were it possessed of the same godlike element."

The reply of the Boston Pilot (B. P.) is, that "Irishmen are not exiled through the want of education. Ignorance rather tends to keep people at home;" that "Education has not made this country what it is. Its magnitude, vast resources, newness, and distance from Europe, concur with education in being principal causes of the present apparently prosperous state of things in America."

R. C. Example and experience teach us that the elevation of the Irish population, in this country, consists in becoming educated, and availing themselves of the free and liberal institutions so providentially open to them."

is a

B. P." Example and experience teach no such thing.... Look at the sons of Catholic Irishmen who have received the training given in our common schools. There are among them many excellent Catholics, . . many' 'fine fellows;' but there are also many who are 'educated' to be ashamed of [the abounding ignorance of] their fatherland, of their religion, of the Paddy Church. There are many who secretly feel ashamed [of the ignorance] of their fathers and mothers; some who openly avow their shame. How many of them get the finely-sounding names of Edward, Henry, Caroline, and Emma! how few the names of Patrick and Bridget! How many Patricks sign themselves P., which may mean Patrick or Popopoodle! These are little asses, by the way. And how many Bridgets sign themselves B., which may mean Bridget or Ba doura! Well, this shame [of ignorance] . direct effect of the State education you talk of. One ignorant but pious Patrick or Bridget, in these calamitous times, is worth more to the republic than a whole drove of your Popopoodles, or your Badouras. [Oh!]... Who are the freesoilers of the North, the disunionists of the South, the Cuban pirates, manifest destiny men, native anarchists? They are the victims of State education. And who are the most crazy supporters of freesoilism, Kossuth, and other dangerous humbugs! Your ministers, your Parkers and Beechers; your graduates of State colleges. And look again: Who saved Carolina and Massachusetts from revolution at the last elections?... Precisely the recently naturalized Irish Catholics, the very men whom you propose to elevate. God keep them from the elevation you recommend for them! No, sir, example, experience, and faith, teach that the elevation of Irishmen consists in keeping them good, pious [ignorant?] Catholics."

R. Č.—“In that unhappy country, [Ireland,] I ask, were they possessed of such a system of edu

cation as I have so far hinted at, would they be, as they are, so enslaved ?"

which cannot be judged by common rules.” B. P. "We cannot tell, for Ireland is a country

R. C.-"No, education forbids it; ignorance is the slaveholder. The land is trodden down under its polluting foot. . . . The records of the overflowing poor-houses in Ireland, of our prisons and courts of justice here, all answer, Ignorance !"

B. P. "This is mere schoolboy declamation, very proper in the mouth of a graduate of State schools, however."

R. C. "I consider it [the Boston Pilot] as only having half done its duty, in not giving parents in general sound advice as to the education of their children, in not interesting itself in the cause of their intellectual development, which is the polish of religion, and their only antidote against their becoming in this country to as low an ebb as that of their ancestors in Ireland."

B. P.-"The sound advice you want (and we grant that you sadly need it) is readily obtained. Ask it of your bishop, of your pastor. They were sent to teach you and us about these things; to give us, not only sound advice, but a sound commandment."

R. C.-"It is only in the full development of their faculties that we can secure them against the depredations of ignorance, and secure to future generations a pervading influence in favor of virtue and goodness."

B. P.-"Wrong again. Virtue and goodness are not the result of a full development of the faculties. He, and only he, who obeys the law of God, as expounded by the Church, is virtuous and good."

R. C.-"Knowledge, so far as it is true in every branch or science, is so much of divine religion."

B. P. "Where is your catechism? Where did you learn that human knowledge is a part of divine religion? Did the saints possess divine religion? How many of them knew nothing of human science!"

R. C. "And what do they mean by 'mixed' education? Nothing more than the impropriety of those of different persuasions pursuing together their researches after knowledge."

B. P.-"Another shocking mistake. It is the in-dependence of secular learning from [sectarianism, not from] revealed truth, [nor] from theology, that constitutes mixed education. It is [not] the denial of the supremacy of revealed truth over human knowledge, of theology over science-[being harmonic therewith-but] of the Church over the school, of the Pope over the professor."

R. C.-"If our faith be a divine gift, and arises in no manner from what you call human knowledge, how then, I ask you, can faith be tarnished by it?"

B. P.-"How? By going through a course of 'education,' which makes you lose your faith; by learning that some things may be true, although. they contradict an article of faith.”

R. C.-"You will probably say the Queen's Colleges were invented to enslave the youth of our flock."

B. P.-"We condemn the godless colleges, and you, if you be a Roman Catholic, must condemn them, because the Church has condemned them. For us, this authority is absolute and final. And so it must be for you," [and all mankind?]

R. C.-"Having lately visited the 'Public

Schools,' among the young aspirants for 'education,' I was particularly pleased at the constant and regular attendance, and, in many instances, high standing in their respective classes, of our Irish Catholic children. ... Degrade the schools, or give them no countenance, and you inevitably degrade the people, the result of which is ignorance, crime, anarchy, and poverty."

B. P." There is the old sing song again. Why, man! one would suppose, to hear you talk, that you think that our Lord sent, not preachers, but schoolmasters, to redeem the world; that he had sent, not St. Peter, but a Board of Education, a Horace Mann. Your language is not Catholic."

R. C.-"I know of no worthier, nobler, or holier cause the united influence of the 'Catholic and Irish Press' of this country can be devoted to than to the elevation of their rising generation, and those constantly landing on these shores."

B. P. "Nay, but it is our duty to encourage them to be Catholics. That is the beginning and end of our labors," [and nothing more?]

R. C.-"The preservation of our civil and religious rights, property, and reputation, and religion itself, require and demand unwearied action in the cause of education."

B. P.-" Mr. Roman Catholic, that last proposition is downright heresy. The preservation of religion, thank God, depends upon something better than a school-house. The Church and the family are the only legitimate education. Any interference of the State, not authorized by them, is tyrannical. State education must, of necessity, end in producing a generation of infidels."

A VOICE FROM IRELAND.-It is always pleasing to witness the spirit of patriotism, wherever it hails from, and we like now and then to drop an example of the sort into the apathy-eaten noddles of Americans. It is a fact that, notwithstanding the enslaved condition of Ireland, with a nationality lost and a bleeding dependence, or rather submission, there is not on the face of the whole earth a people more patriotic than her own. Her curse has been, not a lack of the home sentiment, nor a want of true nerve, nor an imperfect desire to be free, but the crushing incubus of a besotted priesthood, who, by the cultivation of ignorance, have for ever enchained the souls as well as the bodies of her people.

The warm, bright glow of their earnest love of country is continually beaming forth through the links of their fetters, and ever and anon a new batch of overpowered patriots are brought either to the block or the dungeon, or wafted into exile. But what we want to look at just now, as especially deserving attention, is an appeal made to the Irish people in the city of Dublin, on the 12th of December last, calling upon them, as one

"We call upon the mothers of our growing gen eration to assist in this great, this last effort. Mothers! will you, in this season of general distress, lavish your money upon the frippery and trumpery of foreign nations? Will you teach your young to value, to pride themselves in the tinsel and the pinchbeck gewgaws of foreigners? Will you debase their young minds with a habit that will surely lead them to neglect, or despise, or betray their native land? Will you effeminate your sons, the hope of the country, with a mean longing after every thing abroad? Will you fill the heads of your daughters with sickly notions and desires for foreign dress, which no industry can support, and which, sooner or later, must pull them down to poverty, as it has already pulled down thousands? Will you, educated mothers, plant the seeds of national decay in the very hearts of your own offspring? You may not live to see the result upon your children of this false teaching; but we forewarn you that it will lead them individually to poverty, and the nation of which they shall form an unworthy part to decay !"

This is Irish doctrine, Irish patriotism; but to a nation like ours, which is sending upwards of $40,000,000 annually to Europe for dry goods and iron, with the natural elements of which our whole land is teeming, it comes in the light of an admonition.

COMING TO THEIR SENSES.-We have not toiled in vain. The people and the press of our country are fast awakening to a true sense of duty. Who would have believed two years ago that the New-York Sun would have uttered at any time such sentiments as the following? Yet it has uttered them, in an article entitled "The First Duty of Americans:"

"There is no doubt that the autocrats and emperors, who are conspiring against liberty in the Old World, look upon this country with intense hatred. They regard it as the nursery of all those ideas which grow up to trouble them, by leading men to think they were created to be something better than mere slaves. They would gladly sweep our institutions and our name from the face of the earth; and assuredly they will attempt to do so;-not by fire and the sword, for they know that, in such a conflict, and acting on the defensive, we are already able to stand against the world.

They will resort to more dangerous means. By agents among us, who are unseen, unknown, and unsuspected, they will watch for and avail themselves of every opportunity to foment discord, to create sectional animosities, to lower the tone of republicanism, and disgust us with its homely simplicity."

This is as good American doctrine as we could write or preach, and we have been vilified and slandered for writing and preaching it. If the editors of the Sun believe what it says-and surely no man will be accused of promulgating such theories without believing in them-we call upon them to aid us in applying the remedy. The Sun says the despots of the Old World will assuredly attempt to sweep our institutions and our name from the face of the earth, through agents among us, who are unseen, unknown, and unsuspected.

Under our present suicidal system, which gives a political power to these very secret agents of despotism, equal to that of the American, this assertion is true, and our only remedy lies in withholding that power from them. The newly unchained felon, the ignorant, pestilent pauper, the scheming Jesuit, and the secret agent of despotism, are now alike invested with that potent engine for good or evil, the right of suffrage, and with it, the demagogues of the land are by them reduced to a condition of abject servility. Hold from them that power, and we care not for their schemes, their blind ignorance, their numbers, or their deviltry.

"FUNNY PAPERS."-The success of the London Punch and the Charivari of Paris, has brought into the world, both in Europe and America, a shoal of kindred prints-all of which have successively gone the way of all deceased publications. The last offspring of the Funny Family is ushered to the NewYork public by a modern Diogenes, under the title of THE LANTERN, which, from present appearances, bids fair to have a long life and a merry one. If the Lantern continues to keep a good supply of gas, and burns with its present brilliancy, it will soon become the laughing-stock of the whole country.

To us,

it should hardly be supposed that there could be any great difference of opinion among its ministers, especially in a matter of so much importance as faith in The Book; but the contrary appears to be the case. therefore, as Americans, desiring the preservation of the Bible in our public schools, it becomes an interest to learn, if possible, the true belief of the Roman priestly opponents regarding its use in such schools. We now present, in like manner, a digest of their Rev. Dr. Cahill's controversial sermon, as reported by the Boston Pilot, which paper commends the sermon highly. The Rev. Dr. Cahill observed, that

THE BIBLE AS A Rule OF FAITH.-In December we gave a digest, tending to show the views of the Political Church relative to the Bible, as expressed through their Rev. Dr. Cummings. That Church being infallible, (?)

"It was manifest that there was a time when there was no Bible, yet faith existed; and it was equally manifest that the Bible, as interpreted by private judgment, was false as a rule of faith. Catholics respected the Bible, but they did not make it the rule of their faith; but they respected it and believed it because the Church had sanctioned itthat Church which was unchanged and unchangeable."

How widely different is this respected declaration from the "remote rule,” “approximate rule," and "the rule of faith to the Church as a whole," of the Rev. Dr. Cummings! The question may well be asked, How can such opposing views proceed from "that Church which was unchanged and unchangeable," as declared by its priesthood?-the one declaring that the Bible is, and the other that it is not, their rule of faith. The Rev. Dr. Cahill further

-"proceeded to show that, from the creation of the world up to the time of Moses, there was no written have been directed or governed: the faith was work in existence whereby true believers could communicated by word of mouth, and by living authority, and he (the Rev. preacher) would submit that that was a very strong point. For twenty-six hundred years ['from the creation of Adam'] the Church of God [not the Roman Catholic surely at that time] was governed, not by written words, but by the true living authority communicated to her by God himself. He would now come to the New Law[] as established by Christ; for up to the time when he made his appearance upon earth, salvation was obtained, not from books, but from the living authority which existed, without any book."

This is a bold leap over Moses' body and church to Christ, a period of some fifteen hundred years, remarkable for being governed under the Old Testament. It sets aside the Hebrew Church, (undoubtedly being then the Church,) annihilates the authority of the Bible proper, and settles us down at once with

a questionable New Law; Christ having come, not to do away with the law, but to fulfil it.

Coming, therefore, to the New Law, he [the Rev. Doctor] wanted to know where it was written, or ordered to be written, as an authority to be guided by It was not written, but it was spoken law. If it had been necessary for Christ to have written a book on the subject, he would have done 80, or he would have commanded one to have been written; but the fact was, that Christ never, during his life on this earth, wrote a book, nor did he speak about having a book written." [Yet he spoke of the Scriptures which were then written.]

The Rev. Doctor's views of the New Testament, and the causes prompting its production, are expressed thus:

"There were twelve apostles, and out of those, only five wrote books. He would ask, if it were necessary, why did not the remainder write? The four evangelists wrote three works, not as general, to the Church, but at the special request of individuals. Matthew wrote at the solicitation of the people of Palestine; St. Mark at that of the people of Rome; St. Luke to an individual; and St. John wrote to put down a heresy that had arisen amongst some early Christians. The writings were not general, but written locally, and for local purposes, not as the guidance or rule of faith."

This writing at “the special request of individuals" certainly is poor evidence of inspiration, and would serve to show that the Rev. Dr. Cummings was in error when he stated the Bible to have been "written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

"The Rev. preacher then stated in detail to whom and for what purposes the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse were written; and stated that the Church, as the depository of all truth, had, by her authority, set her seal on the Scriptures, but that it was not until nearly four hundred years after Christ that she thus collected and set apart the sacred volume we now possess."

This is a pretty piece of presumptive impudence. "The Church," "by her authority, sets her seal on the [inspired] Scriptures." Thus, "nearly four hundred years after Christ, she chooses and stamps those she likes, respects and believes them, but rejects the rest, and presently tells us that many of the books were lost, and that therefore the Bible can be no rule of faith, because we have not the whole of it. The Rev. preacher declared

-"he had received his faith from his spiritual fathers in the Church, as pure and spotless as the stole [robe] he wore."

It is a little remarkable that these divines

(Cummings and Cahill) should have received, "pure and spotless," such differing faith, whose

"rules" will not harmonize. The Rev. Dr. Cahill declares that

"He was the legitimate descendant of that faith, and would not part with it but with his life, nor would any other Catholic in the world. Suppose the Scriptures were the rule of faith, why, they ought to have the whole Scriptures; but they had not the whole, as it was well known that nearly the half of the books were lost; but yet the Catholic Church preserved the faith whole and entire."

We have no evidence as to where the Catholic Church was to be found during the period in which Moses governed the Hebrews; nor how it became the repository of the older Scriptures, which surely were in the keeping of the Israelites, and who in all probability had a prior stamp-act of their own.

HENRY CLAY ON INTERVENTION.-We publish, for preservation and future reference, the address made by Henry Clay to Governor Kossuth, on the subject of the "mission" of the latter to this country. Its value as a state paper must be our apology for republishing it, after having gone the rounds of the daily press. Mr. Clay, in addressing the Magyar, said:—

"I owe you, sir, an apology for not having acceded before to the desire you were kind enough to intimate more than once to see me; but really my health has been so feeble that I did not dare to hazard the excitement of so interesting an interview. Besides, sir, [he added with some pleasantry,] your wonderful and fascinating eloquence has mesmerised so large a portion of our people wherever you have gone, and even some of our members of Congress, [waving his hand toward the two or three gentlemen who were present,] that I feared to come under its influence, lest you might shake my faith in some principles in regard to the foreign policy of this government, which I have long and constantly cherished.

"And in regard to this matter, you will allow me, I hope, to speak with that sincerity and candor which becomes the interest the subject has for you and for myself, and which is due to us both, as the votaries of freedom.

"I trust you will believe me, too, when I tell you that I entertain ever the liveliest sympathies in every struggle for liberty in Hungary and in every country; and in this I believe I express the for the sake of my country, you must allow me to universal sentiment of my countrymen. But, sir, protest against the policy you propose to her. right of one nation to assume the executive power Waive the grave and momentous question of the

among nations for the enforcement of international law, or of the right of the United States to dictate to Russia the character of her relations with the nations around her, let us come at once to the

practical consideration of the matter.

"You tell us yourself, with great truth and pro