his work might not offend the Catholics; he did not even investigate what the Fathers taught or wrote upon any doctrine, nor did he give any analysis of their works. He therefore had the more leisure to devote himself to the investigation of their history, of the spuriousness or genuineness of their works, and their number and editions of them. Louis Ellies Dupin, Nouvelle Bibliotheque des auteurs Ecclesiastiques, Paris, 1686-1711, 47 voll. Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum historia litteraria, a C. N., usque ad Sec. 14, a Guliel. Cave, Ox. 1740-1743. Cas. Oudin, Commentarius de Scrip. Eccl. Antiquis illorumque seriptis, adhuc extantibus in Bibliothecis Europæ, a Bellarmino, Caveo, Dupin, et aliis omissis, Lip. 3 vol. 1722. DISCOURSE. THE Course of liberal education is completed, and the youthful student stands for the last time upon his academic threshold, eager to plunge into the throng of active life. The world lies fresh and green before him, whilst in the distance-a distance which his confident anticipation seems to overleap at a single bound-the rewards of enterprize and ability, the bright prizes of wealth or of glory glitter in his view. In this hour of young and stirring excitement, ere he rushes forth to the attainment or the disappointment of his hopes-destined, as he most surely is, in either case, to find how different are the realities of life from their early seeming-let me invite him to pause for a moment, and with me to cast back a hasty glance on the studies and acquisitions of his college life. Let us consider together what are the fruits of those studies, and weigh the advantages placed within his reach by education. Unless he has been singularly ill-taught, or worse mised by his own vanity, he will know and deeply feel that the learning he has now gained, is but an imperfect fragment of the science actually acquired by man, and far smaller and more imperfect still, when compared with the knowledge within the ultimate grasp of the human intellect. He will feel too, and willingly confess, the feebleness and darkness of human reason itself, in its highest state of mortal perfection. But that learned humility, thus rebuking intellectual pride and checking presumption, will not make him undervalue the treasures of true science, or chill his gratitude for being enabled to know their worth and extent. How abundant, how varied, how magnificent is the wealth of that intellectual treasury thus laid open to him! But how does that magnificence grow upon us, filling us with reverent awe, when we reflect that the science and literature of the present generation are the accumulated fruits of the labour, patience, observation, experience, experiments, sagacity, and genius of countless myriads of minds all guided to one end and combined and harmonized in one common purpose, by the overruling providence of the Father of lights, who as it seemed good to him, from time to time, put wisdom and understanding into the hearts of men. That common purpose is no other than the improvement of the human race. The Chaldean shepherd solaces the long hours of his nightly watch by noting the silent and grand regularity of the heavenly bodies in their real or apparent motions. The Egyptian magistrate or priest, compelled by the yearly overflow of his Nile, sweeping away artificial metes and bounds, to make an annual re-survey of the cultivated lands of the country, is led to the practical discovery of some of the elementary problems and propositions of geometry. Thence he slowly advances to the speculative perception and demonstrative proof of certain primary truths, as being the unchanging laws of figure and motion, whose evidence rising above the observation of mere fact, is found in the logical certainty of pure reason. these few elementary observations and propositions are carried as precious revelations of hidden wisdom to Greece, and there excite and exercise the acute intellects of the master-spirits among a nation of thinkers and reasoners. As centuries move forward, states and kingdoms rise and fall. The broad walls of the great Babylon of the Chaldeans are broken; her streets, where nations met uncrowded, become a solitude and a desolation. The sands are heaped up high around the Pyramids and Sphynxes, the massive and enduring monuments of Egyptian power and Next, |