culture, to formation of habits of attention, of diligence, of reading, command of the faculties, and of regular and constant application. Of course, it is of no little importance what the material of study is; but much more is the intellectual discipline which it furnishes. In the university, on the other hand, the great concern is the subject-matter of study. The student, it is presumed, has already the necessary training, and is now seeking clear and classified information for his life's work.

Conversation, or examination, or making of abstracts, should always accompany a course of lectures for instruction, as helpful, if not indispensable to the certifying, digesting, and assimilating of the instructions received. Taking of notes during the time of listening to a lecture is an interruption, and granted only to defective memory. It were better to grasp the whole discourse as a unit, by one continuous effort of attention, and write the notes after returning to one's room; but that demands an excellence of memory too rare to admit. of its being recommended as a rule; and to learn to take notes with facility and without embarrassment of attention, is an attainment valuable for life.

Upon the whole, the great aim of the university is to instruct, promote, and direct professional enterprise. The school is a system of constraints; the college of mixed constraints and inducements, designed to guide, to correct independent action. The university is a commonwealth of minds already committed to their own responsibility. Neither school nor college have properly any professional bearing; the university is entirely professional.

They are the studies of the university which have no natural termination. The work of the school comes to an end when its pupils are adequately prepared for college; the work of the college ceases when its classes are properly qualified to take up the studies of the university; but the work of the university initiates men into that career which, as long as they are useful to the world, has no end. Up to the close of their college course youth receive education for their own sake; in the university they are to learn how to be useful to others. And although that end may be attained by many

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different ways, yet fundamentally it lies in the right directing of enterprise, and toward the forming of public sentiment accordingly, and through the channel of professional effort.

The best service a man can render his fellow-men is generally in the line of his profession; but there is also an indefinable influence for good or evil wielded by every respectable professional man, through his intercourse with society, and which increases in power and extent with his professional success. Consequently the common duty belonging to all educated men is that of guiding public sentiment aright; that is, in a manner conducive to the good order of community, to the support of enlightened enterprise, and the cause of God, peace, and good will among men.

By profession, in these remarks, we would not be understood to mean only medicine, law, and theology, but every learned occupation, demanding, for true success in it, a basis of liberal culture.

One of the things which it belongs to the college to teach, is the reliability of truth; that there are principles trustworthy and eternal, many of which can be known indubitably, and ought to be so known by all educated men. This position should be abundantly sustained from every branch of science, that the young mind may be well fortified in regard to it. Immense evil has been done by the false dictum, so often repeated, that nothing can be known for certain. It puts the mind in a state of universal scepticism, defeating all the most valuable ends of education. It is chiefly with a view to the inculcation and full exposition of this doctrine that the precise sciences should be taught in college. The fuller study of mathematics belongs to the engineer or astronomer, and accordingly to university work; the minute study of chemistry belongs to the professions founded thereupon, but their fundamental principles ought to be well enough explained and substantiated for youth in college, to establish in their minds conviction and confidence in their reliability. A minuteness of instruction, beyond the demands of this purpose, is out of the proper line of college work, and belongs to the university.

At the same time, to prevent the evil of confidence in the the wrong place, the bounds of actual knowledge ought also

to be set forth, and the vagueness of conjecture, where nothing but conjecture exists, should be .distinctly set over against positive knowledge, where that exists. How to test the credible and distinguish its features, and what features mark any thing as incredible, is a point essentially belonging to the same connection.

For such purpose was geometry employed by the Greeks, and law by the Romans. Law, studied as a profession, is out of place in a college course; but law, to all the extent of inculcating the reality of the great principles of civil order, is one of the most valuable instruments at the disposal of liberal education.

A good college education may as properly be laid out upon a youth destined to be a merchant, or a farmer, or a tradesman, as upon one who has a view to a learned profession. The difference is only that the liberal professions demand, if not by rule, by the nature of the case, previous attainment in college studies, and other occupations do not so demand it. There can be little doubt, however, that all the respectable. occupations of human life would be better conducted if in the hands of liberally educated men. But that implies a breadth of culture extending to all the studies prior to, and independent of, the particular professional training. Most industrial pursuits depend upon science. But an education containing nothing but science is not a liberal one. It cultivates only a part of a man, and that the harder part, which it hardens. There can be no liberal culture without art: and the most available of all arts for the purpose is that of literature.

The work of Professor Porter, of Yale College, the name of which stands at the head of this article, is a defence, and a very able defence, of the system and methods pursued in the oldest and best American colleges. Commencing with an historical review of the rise and progress of the existing agitation on that subject, the author takes up the line of argument, as before the bar of the American public, and discusses the studies of the regular course, in comparison with those now recommended as better; the enforcement of fidelity in study, as compared with greater license; the evils of the college sys

ART. IX.-NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

Manual of Historico-Critical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. By Karl Freidrich Keil. Translated from the Second Edition, with Supplementary notes from Bleek and others, by George C. M. Douglas, D. D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis in the Free Church College, Glasgow. Vol. II., 8vo, 435 pp. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co.

An Introduction to the New Testament. By Friedrich Bleek.

Edited

by Johannes Friedrich Bleek. Translated from the German of the Second Edition, by the Rev. William Urwick. Vol. II., 8vo, 426 pp. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. The introductions of Keil and Bleek have, from the date of their appearance, been esteemed the best and most serviceable manuals of the kind in Germany, where criticism and exegesis are prosecuted with a thoroughness, acuteness, and learned research unknown elsewhere. These works, which are indispensable to one who would acquaint himself with the latest and best results of Scriptural investigations, are now, by the publication of their second volumes, made entirely accessible to English readers.

The respective merits of these introductions, and the general character of the translations, were sufficiently stated in our notice of the preceding volumes. Keil and Bleek have both proceeded upon the idea which, since Reuss, has been the prevailing one in Germany, of regarding introduction under the aspect of the literary history of the Bible. This gives to the subject a unity and scientific precision which it did not possess before, though it still leaves the true position of some important topics in doubt. With some minor diversities of arrangement, however, the plan pursued by both is the same. One of the most striking and obvious results of this method is the inversion of the order pursued in all the old introductions, by placing the special before the general portion of the subject. The questions of the canon and the text, the manuscripts, versions, etc., are postponed until the origin and character of each individual book has first been investigated. This may accord better with the historical order, but it is, in our judgment, of doubtful advantage in a text-book for theological classes.

In regard to some of the books of the New Testament, Bleek arrives at conclusions differing from the belief now currently entertained, though he does not, except in a single instance, pass beyond the limit of the doubts allowed in the early church, and mentioned, if not entertained, by some of the ablest and soundest of the fathers. He is disposed, with Eusebius, to discriminate among the books of the canon, and, while not venturing to exclude any from it that are now received, and still less inclined to admit any that are now excluded, he is of opinion that those books regarding whose canonicity no doubt has ever been expressed, and which have from the beginning been received without a discord

ant voice, as the undoubted production of the Apostles, or inspired apostolic helpers, should be assigned the first rank. To others, regarding which a portion of the early church was in doubt, he concedes only an inferior and limited authority. They are to a certain extent authentic testimonials of primitive Christianity, and yet they are at a partial remove from the purity of our Lord's teaching and that of his immediate Apostles.

The Epistle to the Hebrews he supposes not to have been written by Paul, but by one of his companions and fellow-laborers, a few years after his death, probably by Apollos. The Epistles of James and Jude, and the Revelation of John, were written by the persons whose names they severally bear. These, however, were not apostles, but other persons of note in the church, whose position entitled them to speak and write with the authority they here assume. James and Jude were the brothers of our Lord, the sons of Mary, and are to be distinguished from James, the son of Alpheus, or James the Less, and Jude his brother. John, who wrote the Revelation, was not the son of Zebedee, the Evangelist, or the author of the Epistles, but another John, of whom mention is made in the apostolic period, and who was an auditor of the immediate disciples of our Lord. First Timothy and Second Peter were written in the names of the Apostles Paul and Peter, but they belong to the second century of the Christian era, and are entitled to less consideration than any of these deutero-canonical writings, as he esteems them, though they tally essentially with the apostolic doctrines.

Much as we may regret these conclusions, and untenable as we regard them, we cannot but admit that the discussions are conducted with great apparent candor and a seemingly sincere love of truth. The arguments are frankly and fairly stated, and thus the materials for an independent judgment are afforded to the student even when the balance is struck the wrong way, and a weight conceded to objections to which they are not in reality entitled.

The Early Years of Christianity. By E. De Pressensé, D. D. Translated by Annie Harwood. "The Apostolic Era." New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

No other religion has been subjected, through all its history, to such tests as Christianity has stood. Taking its rise among an educated people, in an age of uncommon intelligence, and preached, in the first instance, by men of no superior education, it vindicated itself, from the first, to the conviction of many of the best informed as superior to all previous teaching. It has been encountered by enemies of great ability, in every age, and has always come off with the victory, when reliance has been put on spiritual arms. Platonic philosophers met it with their subtile inquiry, and found its teachings worthy of the gravest attention, and some of them became its converts; Stoics resisted it with all the force of their stubborn argument and inflexible moral system, and melted away before it. All the hostility of ancient learning failed to arrest its progress. Local authorities and the imperial government put forth their efforts to extinguish it by violence; and the issue was their own overthrow, and the establishment of Christianity on the throne. Greek dialectics and Roman legislation alike failed in the conflict with it. All succeeding philosophers have, at one time or another, tried their strength against it, and every new science has tested