Our contemporary, the Fosterlandet (The Homeland) provides us with the following information: "Now as never before, it is becoming evident that the schools in which religion is not being taught are only promoting wickedness, and are forging the weapons of evil....Every page of the history of the secular schools of our country provides proof of this assertion of ours."

A bold assertion indeed! According to the foregoing, our public school system is a breeding place for crime, for wickedness and vice; the schools are destructive of morality and foster lack of character. And all this, according to the Fosterlandet, because in these schools the children are not taught the books of Moses, the books of the Prophets, and the Song of Solomon. Just think how much truer, nobler, purer is the youth who has had the opportunity of studying, at one of our Swedish-American schools, the catechism of Luther and the exposition of that catechism by Lindblom. How much manlier in character is he than the student who has studied Huxley, Spencer, Kant, and similar 2outstanding authors!

True and sound development of the mind is fostered to a far less degree in the religious schools than in those in which religion is not taught, and the example of France, which our contemporary holds up as a warning, carries no conviction at all. The Fosterlandet writes: "A comparison between the years immediately preceding 1870, when France discontinued the teaching of religion in the public schools and the years immediately after following, reveals that the number of cases involving contempt of government and of the courts more than doubled in the very first year in which religious instruction was discontinued."

But isn't this [lack of respect for law and order] a consequence, rather, of religious instruction in the schools? Before the year 1870, the children were taught in the schools that "the government in power is placed there by God". The children believed that such was the case; but as they grew up, they saw one injustice followed by another, one type of oppression replaced by another, and soon they realized that the story told them in the schools was not true. As a result, they became angry, and they defied the law and 3its administrators, the government and its officials. Would it not have been better and more sensible if the children had been taught that the government is placed in office by the people, that the officers of the law are either elected by the people or are appointed by the elected government? When this would be learned, there would not be so much defiance of the authorities when the latter tried to overreach themselves; the officials in question would be remembered at the following election.

We do not complain because there is instruction in Biblical history in the Schools under the Augustana Synod. But when the Fosterlandet, a paper published by the Synod, steps forth to claim that our country's public schools "are breeding places of vice, and are forging the weapons of wickedness," then we assert that this contemporary of ours is an errand boy of the Prince of Lies.