The four schools were located at Alexandria, in Egypt, Cesarea in Palestine, Antioch in Syria, and Edessa or Nisibis. This last school was held at the one or the other of these places, in Eastern Syria. When persecution drove it out of one of these cities, it held its sessions in the other. All these four schools were numerously attended, often having hundreds of scholars at one time. Mr. Kidder thinks there must have been more than this number; but as it is a mere conjecture with him, his opinion can have but little weight against the statement of a man who has thoroughly investigated the subject. It will not do to judge them after our little schools, at the present day, when the church is divided into scores of little communities, each having its insignificant seminary or seminaries. The church was then one body, though each school varied slightly from the rest. PROFESSOR SHEDD. Dr. Beecher points out and refutes the statements of Professor Shedd, and some others, on the prevalence of certain doctrines in the early church. Professor Shedd, in his history of Christian doctrine, Vol. II. p. 414, says, "The punishment inflicted upon the lost was regarded by the fathers of the ancient church, with very few exceptions, as endless." "The only exception to the belief in the eternity of future punishment, in the ancient church, appears in the Alexandrian school." "The views of Origen concerning future retribution were almost wholly confined to their schools." Dr. Beecher makes the following reply. "This statement somewhat transcends the limits set by Lecky, to the doctrine of the restoration. It is not confined to two individuals, but it is confined to one school,--the school of Alexandria. What then shall be said of Diodore, of Tarsus, not of the school of Alexandria, the eminent teacher of Chrysostom, and a decided advocate of universal restoration? What shall be said of his disciple, Theodore of Mopsuestia, that earnest defender of the same doctrine, of whom Dorner says that he was the climax and crown of the school of Antioch? What shall be said of the great Eastern school of Edessa and Nisibis, in which the scriptural exposition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, was a supreme authority and text-book? Was Theodore of the school of Alexandria? Not at all. He was of the school of Antioch.... And yet he not only taught the doctrine of universal restoration on his own basis, but even introduced it into the liturgy of the Nestorian Church, in Eastern Asia. What, too, shall we say of the two great theological schools, in which he had a place of such honor and influence?... Dr. Shedd would have called to mind a statement in Guericke's Church History, _as translated by himself_, "It is noticeable that the exegetico-grammatical school of Antioch, as well as the allegorizing Alexandrian, adopted and maintained the doctrine of restoration, p. 349, note 1." Then it should be added that Origen was not the only one of the Alexandrian school, who taught this