I would treat the subject of Religion in the School of Philosophy and Letters simply as a branch of knowledge. If the University student is bound to have a knowledge of History generally, he is bound to have inclusively a knowledge of sacred history as well as profane; if he ought to be well instructed in Ancient Literature, Biblical Literature comes under that general description as well as Classical; if he knows the Philosophy of men, he will not be extravagating from his general subject, if he cultivate also that Philosophy which is divine. And as a student is not necessarily superficial, though he has not studied all the classical poets, or all Aristotle’s philosophy, so he need not be dangerously superficial, if he has but a parallel knowledge of Religion. 3. However, it may be said that the risk of theological error is so serious, and the effects of theological conceit are so mischievous, that it is better for a youth to know nothing of the sacred subject, than to have a slender knowledge which he can use freely and recklessly, for the very reason that it is slender. And here we have the maxim in corroboration: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” This objection is of too anxious a character to be disregarded. I should answer it thus:—In the first place it is obvious to remark, that one great portion of the knowledge here advocated is, as I have just said, historical knowledge, which has little or nothing to do with doctrine. If a Catholic youth mixes with educated Protestants of his own age, he will find them conversant with the outlines and the characteristics of sacred and ecclesiastical history as well as profane: it is desirable that he should be on a par with them, and able to keep up a conversation with them. It is desirable, if he has left our University with honours or prizes, that he should know as well as they about the great primitive divisions of Christianity, its polity, its luminaries, its acts, and its fortunes; its great eras, and its course down to this day. He should have some idea of its propagation, and of the order in which the nations, which have submitted to it, entered its pale; and of the list of its Fathers, and of its writers generally, and of the subjects of their works. He should know who St. Justin Martyr was, and when he lived; what language St. Ephraim wrote in; on what St. Chrysostom’s literary fame is founded; who was Celsus, or Ammonius, or Porphyry, or Ulphilas, or Symmachus, or Theodoric. Who were the Nestorians; what was the religion of the barbarian nations who took possession of the Roman Empire: who was Eutyches, or Berengarius, who the Albigenses. He should know something about the Benedictines, Dominicans, or Franciscans, about the Crusades, and the chief movers in them. He should be able to say what the Holy See has done for learning and science; the place which these islands hold in the literary history of the dark age; what part the Church had, and how her