The subjects of the Divinity lectures for the Junior year were arranged in reference to the controversies which were most prevalent in the Irish Church in the year 1833, and also in reference to the special theological aptitudes of Dr. O’Brien. He was peculiarly fitted to treat of the evidences of natural and revealed religion, and to reply to the objections to both which were then current. Those who remember his prelections can bear testimony to the wonderful ability and skill with which he dealt with the infidel controversy of his time, and the light which he threw upon the well-known arguments of Bishop Butler. The Socinian controversy at that period occupied the serious attention of the Irish clergy, and it was necessary that all the young ministers of the Church should be prepared to deal with the arguments of the Unitarian when they entered upon their duties as curates. Prior to 1814 the Regius Professor of Divinity held no public examination in the subjects of his course. In 1813 Dean Graves, who at that time held the office, submitted to the Board a plan for the improvement of Divinity lectures, and a new Royal Statute was obtained regulating the duties of the Professor. He was bound to deliver prelections during term, but they were practically confined to the first week in Michaelmas term, the first and second weeks in Hilary term, and the first week in Easter term. He was also bound to hold an examination once a-year, open to Bachelors of Arts. The subjects of this examination were fixed by Statute. On the first morning it was the Old Testament, the first afternoon the New; on the second morning in Ecclesiastical History, and the second afternoon in the Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England. In 1814 the Board instituted prizes at this examination, which was otherwise voluntary. On the first occasion thirty graduates entered their names for the examination, but only five attended, and it ended in only three or four highly prepared Divinity students presenting themselves each year for a searching examination in an extended course. In 1859 these Divinity prizes were enlarged into Theological Exhibitions, two of which, of £60 and £40 a-year, tenable for three years, are now awarded as the result of this examination, greatly enlarged and extended by the addition of selections from the writings of the Fathers and specified portions of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Prizes also at the end of the first Divinity year, called after the name of Archbishop King, were founded in 1836. Both these stimulants to theological study, aided by annual prizes at examinations held by the Professors of Biblical Greek and of Ecclesiastical History, have very widely extended the reading of the best class of Divinity students. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity are now required to pass an examination in the whole of the extended range of theological subjects required of candidates for the Exhibitions;