novators, who are worse than useless to the church, who will be cited by some future professor of eloquence as models of a false and depraved taste, which cannot be too soon banished from the pulpit. The professor, as he cannot deliver a critique on contemporary orators, will labor by rules and examples of a just eloquence to form preachers, who shall render this critique less severe, when the time for writing it shall arrive.

The canon law, its history, principles, and application, too, are to be taught and illustrated by a member of the Faculty. This topic is treated at some length, but has little interest for us.

Such is a general idea of the plan and of the spirit in which it is to be pursued. The professors have been selected with care, and the whole arrangement has received the sanction of the minister of public instruction.

The Archbishop points out a distinction between the eloquence suited to a choir of the Faculty, and that suited to the pulpit, or the political tribune, and concludes with an animated address to his clergy, in which he recals to their minds some of the motives to faithful and serious study, as the state of the other sciences, the example of their fathers in the faith, the success of their ministry, and the consolations attending a life of so much labor and usefulness.

He gives a melancholy picture of the state of the other sciences, which he thinks are menaced with a sad decline, from the irreligious spirit in which they are cultivated. In the physical and natural sciences vast progress has been made, but in accumulating observations almost to infinity, the learned have arrived at results so minute that they become as dust in their hands. In seeking the highest reason, the last word, the general law and common tie of being, yet excluding God and religion, which can alone supply it, they engage in a vain search; and after a commencement, full of enthusiasm, we are in danger of witnessing a profound indifference in regard to the study of nature.

In psychology and metaphysics, disgust and lassitude are already visible. Literature is debased by the most reprehensible passions. History is transmuted into a cramped and contradictory philosophy. Poetry has become a sort of delirium, or has exchanged its enchanting strains for savage cries, or a wearisome monotony. Political science has become a tower of Babel, with this difference, that unlike the sons of Noah, the contending parties are now more inclined to fatal strife than to a pacific separation.

Yet amid all, the ministers of religion should be sustained and animated in their studies by faith in the final triumph of truth over the wanderings of human genius, and principles of a corrupt taste. This faith sustained and animated the great teachers who, in former ages, reflected honor on the church. Amid oppressive labors, amid distracting cares, they still studied. They studied before the voice of the people summoned them abroad, and required to be pressed to leave their studious solitude; and they still persevered in study, when it seemed impossible from the multitude of onerous duties imposed on them.

The Gregories of Nazianzen, the Basils, placed in the great sees of the East, were not less studious than Jerome in his grot at Bethlehem. St. Ambrose read and studied amid hourly interruptions. St. John Chrysostom composed his chief works under the pressure of the heavy cares of his ministry, and amid the dissensions and intrigues, which agitated the degenerate Greeks of the lower Empire. Yet how few the facilities of study then enjoyed, compared with those which exist at the present day.

When in the fifth century, the barbarians invaded or threatened all the provinces of the West, when the energies of their savage hearts were occupied in obliterating all monuments of civilization, and spreading over the universe the veil of a profound night, at a time so full of evil, the learned bishops amid a thousand solicitudes, the labor of instructing their flocks, of succoring the poor, and pleading the cause of the oppressed, amid schism and strife still studied. In a life so occupied they pleaded not want of time. Amid the noise of falling Rome, which resounded through the Universe, Jerome and Augustine still studied. Amid the catastrophes which covered the earth with ruins, they were not disheartened, and the monuments of their labors still remain.

The Fathers combatted the adversaries of truth; they vanquished ancient errors. They studied and triumphed over the philosophers and sectaries most exercised in the use of the voice and the pen. The Fathers of the third century defended by their writings the faith they were called to seal with their blood. The night consecrated to study might be followed by the day of their martyrdom, and still they studied. The times were often unpropitious, but the ardor of study still survived. The priest indeed studied little when every town and village resounded with the din of arms, but still he studied. In the

time of St. Bernard and St. Thomas, he studied much. In the age of Gerson, he studied with zeal in the universities. Bossuet studied. A bishop, the preceptor of Kings, once a missionary, in the midst of the pomp of a court, the most brilliant in the universe, he still studied, as did Fleury and Fenelon after him. The history of the church is full of the monuments of studious labor, and the call for study is still undiminished, for the errors to be combatted are not fewer now than in former times.

Here we must break off. We have given an imperfect sketch of the views and sentiments which pervade the letter, We leave the reader to make his own reflections.

A. L.

RELIGION AND GOODNESS.

In asserting that religion and goodness are one and the same thing in the character, there is danger of giving low views of religion to those who have low views of goodness. Indeed, the origin of all the opposition, which the church has shown to the identification of morality and piety, is to be found in the low morality which has prevailed, and which usurps that sacred and spotless name. If we say that the morality of the exchange, of the shop, of the social circle, is piety, we slander religion beyond endurance. If we encourage the notion, that the amount and kind of virtue, which passes current in the world, is the religion of God and Christ, it needs excite no surprise, if the really good, and Christian, style the doctrine rank heresy. It is so.

There has never been too high a standard of duty and excellence in the church, or the world. The objection to the exclusive claims of religion, to be considered as something differing frorn, and beyond goodness, as the only and peculiar saving principle in the soul, is not that it demands an impracticable and exaggerated purity and holiness from man, but that it puts

men off the track of excellence, by a confusion of language and of principles; and so instead of requiring too much, tends to content them with too little. To identify true goodness with true religion is necessary, not so much in vindication of man, as of God; it is not so much a plea for man's weakness, as a plea for God's law. The great heresy in the world is a want of goodness. The grand and only objection to the prevailing views of religion is, that they do not promote virtue. It is to elevate the name of religion, not to exalt the dignity of virtue, that this union is declared. Virtue in her real character cannot be magnified. But it has been the perpetual loss and degradation of religion, that she dissociated herself from the protection and reputation of virtue. What pure and holy hearts now call practical religion, is only virtue called by a new name, because her old one has been so greatly dishonored; but religion, alas! with the mass now applies to principles and dispositions, to which goodness will not lend her name. If virtue, to protect her sanctity, now claims the title of religion, religion, to escape popular desecration, must claim the name of goodThus the low character of popular religion and popular virtue obliges true religion and true virtue to claim first one name and then the other, to escape alliance with either.

ness.

When goodness and virtue are exalted as the only saving possessions, it becomes very important that we should have clear and definite ideas about them. There is much mischievous confusion existing in most minds as to the meaning of these terms. Virtue is always goodness- but goodness is not always virtue. Virtue promotes the highest happiness -- but happiness does not always arise from virtue. Goodness is a common thing; virtue a rarity. Happiness is very general but genuine and lasting felicity very infrequent.

There is a goodness belonging to our common nature, which is the source of a large part of human happiness. It surely is not an accidental or insignificant coincidence, that the only word descriptive of our nature, humanity, is also expressive of the sweetest charities we know. There are fountains of pity and benevolence in the great common heart of man. Children universally manifest abhorrence of cruelty, the utmost compassion for suffering, and easily learn to love any human being. Nay! there is a kindly feeling in all hearts. All men take delight in acts of courtesy, and of substantial service. The worst men find it hard to keep their hearts from melting toward their fel

low creatures. There is little malevolence, hatred, or spite in the world; injury and violence are the fruits of sudden passion, not of malice. The groundwork of man is better than he thinks. We are always agreeably disappointed in the acquaintance of those who suffer, however justly, a bad reputation. There are more amiable traits about them than we anticipated. We are unprepared for many of their demonstrations of kindness. We are disposed to think them very hardly judged. Should we visit the prisons and penitentiaries of the world, we should find much less malignity and blackness of heart than we expected, or rather much less unmixed evil. If there be as much bad in the world as we think, there is vastly more good. And the good and the bad are found most intimately woven together. The dispositions of very bad men are often affectionate and sympathizing. You may sometimes find a husband and a father, whom the world suspect, or despise, and justly too, to be tenderly beloved and cherished beneath his own roof-nay, almost respected, as incapable of the sins with which the world charge him and all through the sweetness of his temper, the tenderness of his affections. So too, we read of pirates and highwaymen, possessed of chivalrous and gentle bearing, of merciful hearts, of almost disinterested generosity men towards whom our own affections yearn. We are apt to style these portraits inconsistent, unnatural, and injurious. On the contrary, they are the most natural and faithful delineations. They are injurious only because the good which is in them is made a matter of merit, instead of being set down to the account of our nature. It is the essential goodness of the native human heart — which thus breaks through the most reckless, abandoned character, and attracts our sympathy.

Now there has doubtless been a tendency originating in theological systems, or else in a laudable but mistaken moral sensitiveness to underrate the importance and worth of this native goodness. Because sweet dispositions, impulsive benevolence, generous sympathy, are often found in unprincipled and immoral men, because there is confessedly no virtue, or merit in them, being the spontaneous growth of our nature, it has been argued that they are of no value whatever. But this is a most hasty and wild conclusion. Our whole nature is no creation of ours, but of God's. To his honor and goodness speaks every noble or beautiful impulse of the human heart. The spontaneous goodness of our kind is more descriptive of VOL. XXXIII.-3D s. VOL. XV. NO. III.

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