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it may be confidently affirmed that this union of youths of different denominations has been attended by the result which Bishop Doyle regarded, and which, indeed, every statesman and patriot must agree with him in regarding, as one of the very highest importance. It has implanted a friendly feeling between them all, which formerly there was nothing to call forth, and much to check, and as time goes on we believe that it will prove an efficient factor in that difficulty of statesmen, the pacification of Ireland. There is no doubt, as we have already hinted, that they were founded upon the worldly and unsatisfactory principle of raising a 'Universitas' from whose formal course of studies the 'Queen of sciences' was excluded. All honour then is due to the conscientious consistency of that band of Churchmen who protested against these 'godless Colleges,' as O'Connell and Sir R. Inglis combined to call them. Still Ireland, with its miserable divisions, and after the collapse of concurrent endowment, could only be dealt with by some such device; and it may on the whole be concluded, with thirty years' retrospect to guide us, that it would have been difficult at the time to hit off any other workable project. Besides, as we have indicated, Peel's plan comprised machinery enabling the churches to supply for themselves the missing religious machinery. Their failing to avail themselves of this provision is no proof that it did not form a religious element in his calculations, or that, if they had chosen, they might not easily have worked it.

With regard to what was, of course, the more immediate and direct object of the founders, a candid examination of proved facts will show that, considering that these colleges may still be regarded as an infant institution, they have also had a degree of success, as places of education, which may well be considered satisfactory by all who are acquainted with the general condition of the country. We only wish, as we have already hinted, that they had not been more extensively used as, so to speak, the secular branch of a complete education in which religion held its own. Their scholastic efficiency has been greatly impeded by the great absence of what are called 'intermediate schools,' preparatory schools, that is to say, in which pupils may be qualified to pass the matriculation examinations, and to profit by the more advanced teaching of the professors. The present Government has shown itself alive to the deficiency by passing, during the last Session, an Act for appropriating a million out of the surplus of the disestablished Church to the promotion of intermediate education in Ireland, by the double bonus of prize scholarships and

of payments for results to the managers of the schools which have turned out the successful scholars. This measure has had the singular good fortune, most singular indeed in Ireland, of pleasing all parties. Introduced first in the House of Lords, it has been approved of by Liberal as well as Conservative Peers; it has been praised by Roman Catholic Peers, who are presumed to speak the sentiments of their hierarchy, and who cordially accept it as affording the best solution practicable of the difficulty of reconciling the authority claimed by their clergy in matters of education, with what must for Ireland be now accepted as the State principle of undenominational education. To have thus united all suffrages except those of a few fanatics, who have been just demonstrative enough to prove their own impotence, is a legislative triumph of which any Ministry might well be proud. Even Mr. Gladstone stood up to bless the boldness with which it put aside the objects to which he had in his disestablishing Act devoted the surplus. And the unanimity of friendly approval with which the measure has been received is not only a favourable omen of, but is of itself a very powerful contribution towards, its success. We sincerely hope that it may prove as efficacious as its framers desire and anticipate. This good result will be helped by the fact that the Queen's Colleges have already to some extent supplied the want themselves; while among the indirect benefits which the country has derived from these institutions may be reckoned the stimulus which they have given to education throughout their respective districts. New schools have been founded, old schools have been re-opened. At Belfast, too, the Presbyterians and the Wesleyans have, to their credit, founded theological colleges for youths intended for the ministry in their respective churches, with the express design of taking advantage of the adjoining Queen's College.

There is no reason that the Church, which has of late years made a remarkable start in Belfast, should not secure its own advantages out of the presence of the local college. We may say the same of Cork, while Galway no doubt must for practical purposes be considered as virtually a Roman Catholic town. The three colleges number at present above 800 undergraduates; and, though they were founded for Irish students only, some pupils are attracted from the other side of S. George's Channel. Names of Lancashiremen, of Welshmen, of Cornishmen, and even of men from Scilly and the Channel Islands, are to be found in the College calendars. As to the classes from whom the students are drawn, not

only do professional men, the clergy, lawyers, and doctors of the different districts send their sons to the Queen's Colleges, the wealthier traders and shopkeepers following their example, but even small farmers and artisans have stinted themselves to procure for their sons, or in some instances even for themselves, the benefits of a collegiate education and the honour of an university degree. There have even been instances of working men laying aside their tools for a portion of each day to attend the necessary lectures, and, while still in the receipt of weekly wages, qualifying themselves for a place in the Honour list of graduates.

In 1876 the Government sent down a Commission to visit the three Colleges, and to report on their working. One of the Commissioners was that earnest Churchman, Mr. Osborne Gordon, of Christ Church, one of the most accomplished scholars and most experienced tutors of Oxford, and now a member of the University Commission. Another was Dr. Allman, who, in the higher branches of science, has made himself an eminent name as a professor at Edinburgh. And not only did they present a report in which they described the instruction given in all the Colleges as 'most excellent and most successful,' but, in private conversation with Sir M. Hicks-Beach, then the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who quoted their panegyric in a speech which he addressed to the University in the autumn of the past year, 'they expressed to him, he might almost say, their astonishment at the results of their investigation, and at the progress which had been made in the education of the students far beyond anything that they could have conceived to be possible in such comparatively new institutions.' In proof of the veracity of these gentlemen, students of the Colleges, after completing their course, have gained scholarships in colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, and have subsequently obtained places in the list of wranglers, or in the first class of the classical tripos; while in Civil Service competitions, both at home and in India, they have been as successful as, if not more so than, the pupils. of any other single institution in the three kingdoms.

The Queen's University, which serves as the fountain of degrees for the Colleges, as is well known to all who interest themselves in Irish affairs, has been, still is, and no doubt still will be, fiercely opposed, both in and out of Parliament, by a section of the extreme Irish or Roman Catholic party among the Irish members. Although it is far from being unanimously disapproved of by the Roman Catholics, Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop McHale, as might be supposed, have

little love for the institution; but the University is warmly countenanced by several of the most eminent men of science among the Roman Catholic laity; while Roman Catholic judges are found in the Senate, and on the Boards of Visitors. There is, we all know, much still to be done in and for Ireland as in all other questions, so in that of education; but, if the diffusion of culture and the softening of party and religious animosities are essential towards fostering civilisation and refinement, contentment and prosperity, we think that their supporters can well claim, even from those who can allege well-founded objections to a system of higher education based upon a secular basis, to make allowances for the sad peculiarities of Ireland, and to give not only a fair, but a friendly trial to the Queen's University and Colleges in connexion with the new scheme of intermediate education. In particular, the Church of Ireland has hitherto been afraid of stretching out its hand to pluck advantages which circumstances have brought within its reach, and it is accordingly with no small pleasure that we have heard that S. Columba's College, the flourishing centre in Ireland of Church-like publicschool education, is prepared with a stout heart and wellfounded expectations to brace itself up for the prizes promised in the Intermediate Education Act.

ART. V.-CREEDS AND THEORIES OF
DEVELOPMENT.

1. A History of the Creeds of Christendom, with Translations.
Vol. I. By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D., Professor of
Biblical Literature in the Union Theological Seminary,
New York, U.S.A. The Creeds of the Greek and Latin
Churches. Vol. II. The Creeds of the Evangelical
Protestant Churches. Vol. III. (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1877.)

2. A History of the Christian Councils, from the Original Documents, to the close of the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By the Right Reverend CHARLES JOSEPH HEFELE, Bishop of Rottenburg. Vol. I. Translated by W. R. CLARK, M.A. Vol. II., A.D. 326 to A.D. 429. Translated by HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1871 to 1876.)

3. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., of the Oratory. New Edition. (B. M. Pickering, 1878.)

At

CREEDS may be viewed as the expression of the Church's mind, as Liturgies are the expression of her feelings of devotion. There is a stage, accordingly, in the history of Churches, when their activity takes a doctrinal direction, just as at another (and probably an earlier) period, it finds its satisfaction in the elaborating of stately liturgies and significant ritual. such a stage, the intellectual consciousness of the time-what the Germans call the Zeitgeist--occupies itself with the facts and reasonings upon which the Church has itself been founded. It looks at them in the character of intellectual truths, abstract or concrete, and sets itself to collect and to define, to systematise and to complete them. Such a period will be a symbolising or creed-making age, and will show itself evidently as such, to attentive examination. The fact is one which has not escaped attention, and the theories which have from time to time been proposed, in order to provide a philosophical explanation of the phenomena which such periods present, would seem to be attracting to themselves at the present time a considerable degree of attention. A complete view of the case must of course include both the divine and the human factors which combine to produce the total result; but on the present occasion we propose to limit ourselves to one side only, and to examine, so far as our space permits, the human side alone of that historic process by which the symbolic doctrinal statements of the Church of Christ were successively shaped. And (by way of preface to the specific subject afforded us by Dr. Schaff's industrious work) we will first examine the logical nature of the process by which a creed is thus produced and set forth and finally adopted, and to which, in point of fact, the Ecumenical Creeds are, as a general rule, due. We shall avail ourselves, in so doing, of the materials which have been laboriously brought together and classified in the works named at the head of this page.

This work of the investigation of doctrine with a view to its definite statement seems to us the special function of the devout intellect in the Church; and we may regard it as certain that the course of such a process is providentially guided and its issue shaped by God the Holy Spirit. For our present purpose the religious truths with which the collective intellect of the Church has thus to deal may be considered under two classes-facts and inferences. With the facts of sacred history, when once received as facts, the Christian intellect has but little actively to do. Certain of them were originally matters of revelation, but for later generations they all alike rest on testimony inspired and uninspired. The

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