The society at the inauguration of which this address was delivered, owes its origin to the zeal of some excellent young priests of the diocese of New York. They founded it that they might have in it at once a help and an incentive to keep up amid the labours of the mission that acquaintance with theology which they had cultivated in college. At each of the monthly meetings of the society two dissertations are read on some subject of Dogmatic Theology; and by the prudent advice of Dr. M'Closkey, the new Archbishop of New York, the discussion of a moral case has been added on each occasion. It speaks well for the sacerdotal spirit of the American clergy, that we can find flourishing among them this and similar associations, created by themselves and conducted with so much vigour and judgment. The New York Theological Society deserves from the priests of Ireland the highest praise these latter can bestow--the praise which consists in the imitation of what we admire. The range fixed for the society's labours naturally suggested to Dr. Cummings the subject of his inaugural discourse, and led him to address himself to the solution of this question: "What are the distinctive features of religious controversy as it occupies the public mind in our own age and country?" Among the distinctive features of American controversy he places the fact that the old political differences which ranged Protestants against Catholics in Europe have no real life or significance beyond the Atlantic. The Englishman's dread of Catholicism as a foreignism has no hold on the mind of an intelligent American. No doubt, there is even in American Protestants much bitterness against the Catholic Church, but it is merely the same spirit of opposition to lawful authority which ever has been and ever will continue to be in the world. But, with all his freedom of thought, there is in the case of the inquiring American a great difficulty to overcome. "That difficulty is prejudice. The dark form of the old protest has passed away; but the injurious effects of its presence will long remain. What the gray dawn is to the night, what the chafing of the sea waves is after the storm, such is the cold mistrust, the vague fear, the half-concealed repugnance to Catholics and Catholicity, which has succeeded to the bitter hatred and stern defiance of days gone by. Very commonly the Protestant who happens to meet with some point of Catholic controversy is either entirely ignorant of the subject--knows absolutely nothing about it--or is misinformed and malinformed; in fact, has his mind filled with all sorts of ideas touching the case in point except the right and true one....