most essential articles of faith. And in general, since we reduce to condensed views, and systematic con exion, the principles of the arts and sciences, what should preclude us from adopting a similar course as to theology? Or if the practice is unwarranted, what shall we say to the wisdom and piety of past ages, which, in a concern for the interests of truth and righteousness, have formed creeds and confessions of faith, or larger compendiums of the subjects contained in the Bible? What shall we say to the catechetical instruction of children, in the principles of Christianity, a practice which has been followed by the Church from the beginning, and which presupposes some human arrangement of the more miscellaneous, extensive, and detailed representations of scripture? It is true that only the most pious and the most enligh ened of mankind should be trusted in constructing such works; and in a concern of this nature, they may be trusted, in subordination to the higher claims of the sacred vol

ume.

to the mere profession of religion, when it should procure reputation, emolument, or office. Let Christianity therefore become merely popular, and the worst of consequences may be expected to take place in regard to the real interests of the Church. The great means of counteracting the effect arising from this popularity, the disproportionate attention paid to the form of religion, must be religious instruction, must be a sound and thorough indoctrination of the people into the principles and duties of religion. Moreover the gospel is extending its dominion in the earth, among heathen nations. Many hearts and hands are engaged in aiding the great work; and exertion is now so systematized, that we believe it will be permanent, and cease not, till the noble object in view shall be fully accomphished, in the moral renovation of all nations. How important, then, is it that Christians should fully understand the truth and their duty-that they should not favour in their own example a superficial Christianity. How important is it, that a clear and correct acquaintance with religion should be cultivated, so that its external triumphs may indicate the real progress which it makes in the hearts of mankind! Now there is something in the very excitement which exists on this subject— in the active efforts which the exigencies of the age demand--and in the religious tidings which pour in from all quarters, that tends to draw away the mind from the silent inquiries and the deep investigations of the closet. Substantial reading, and the study of the Christian classics, will be apt to be superseded by a species of engagement in the good cause, which no doubt is the duty of a believer, but not his whole duty. Every one according to his means and his opportunities should seek a maturity of religious knowledge. The efforts which are now making to meet this demand of the church, in books of systematic construction we

1

rejoice to see, and so for as the sanction of our opinion extends, we will give them our support.

We will only add, that the present work being furnished with a system of questions adapted to its contents, is well calculated for learn

ers, in Sabbath schools, or for the purposes of family instruction. We cheerfully commend it as thus accompanied, to a tentive perusal, and we earnestly wish it an extensive circulation in schools and in families.

AT the annual Commencement of Union College, July 27, sixty-two young gentlemen received the degree of A. B., and thirty-one that of A. M. The degree of LL. D. was confered on Lewis E. A. Eigenbrot, of Jamaica, L. I. The degree of D. D. on Rev. Augustus Wakerhagen, and the Rev. Andrew Wylie, President of Washington College, (Penn.) The Honorary Degree of A. M. on Hon. John V. N. Yates, of Albany; James R. Lawrence, Esq. of Onondaga ; Rev. Francis Cumming, of Rochester; Rev. Charles G. Sommers, N. York; John L. Viele, Esq. and Rev. Paul Weidman.

At the Commencement of Columbia College, on the first Tuesday in August, the degree of A. B. was conferred on twenty-one young gentlemen, and the degree of A. M. on four. The honorary degree of A. M. was conferred on the Rev. William Shelton. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon the Rev. Henry Peneveyre, Rector of the Church du St. Esprit, in the city of New-York; upon the Rev. John McVickar, Professor of Moral Philosophy, &c. in Columbia College. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon John C. Calhoun, Vice President of the United States; upon Joel R. Poinsett, Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to the Republic of Mexico; upon Stephen Elliott, of Charleston, S. C.; and upon Nathaniel T. Moore, Professor of the Greek and Latin languages in Columbia College.

The public Commencement of the Pennsylvania University, took place at Philadelphia on the 28th of July. The degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred on teen young gentlemen, and that of Master of Arts on twenty-five.

The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on General La Fayette. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on the Rev. William Vincent Harold, Vicar General of the Roman Catholic Diocess of Pennsylvania-and on the Rev J. George Schmucker, Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Borough of York, in the state of Pennsylvania.

At the Commencement of the Transylvania University, on the second Wednesday in July, thirty-two students received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and eighteen the degree of A. M. The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred on the Hon. Thomas Todd of Kentucky, and the Hon. Etienne Mazureu of Louisiana.

At the annual commencement of the Baptist Literary and Theological Seminary at Hamilton, N. Y. on Wednesday, the 1st of June, seven young gentlemen received degrees.

The Corporation of Harvard University, have recently received two thousand dollars from the executor of the estate of William Breed, Esq., to be added to the funds of the college, and disposed of at their discretion. They have voted to apply it to the purchase of books for the University Library.

The corner-stone of the general Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, was laid at Greenwich, New-York, on the 28th of July, in the presence of Bishops White, Croes, Kemp, and Brownell, the Trustees, Professors, and Students of the Seminary, Clergymen of the Episcopal Church, &c. The cost of the building to be erected, is estimated at twenty-five thousand dol lars.

SALE'S ALCORAN.-Mr. Davenport has obliged the lovers of curious literature with a new edition of Sale's Alcoran of Mohammed, in two volumes octavo, with explanatory notes, from the most approved commentators, a preliminary discourse, a memoir of the translator, and various readings and additional illustrative notes from Savary's version of the Koran.-Monthly Mag.

ORIENTAL LEARNING.-The cultivation of every species of oriental learning in Europe, becomes a matter of great interest from its subserviency to the cause of missions. The Baron de Sacy, at the formation of the Asiatic Society, in Paris, anticipated important aid in its pursuits from the labours of the British and Foreign Bible Society. "It has powerfully contributed," he says, "towards the most recent progress which Asiatic literature has made among us." "It presents a singular phenomenon, the ultimate effect of which it appears to me impossible to calculate." "The study of Asia cannot but advance in a rapid and unlimited degree, by means of the translation of one, and that the same 'book, into the dialects of all those nations by whom it is inhabited." On the other hand, it is easy to see how in various ways the labours of the Society, of which De Sacy is President, and of similar institutions in Europe, though formed for purposes merely literary, may become powerful auxiliaries in the work of spreading Christianity through the east. The first and greatest step towards the introduction of the gospel among a people, is the acquisition of their language. Grammars, lexicons, translations, the researches of the historian, the philosopher, &c. are important helps to the missionary, by whomsoever furnished, whether by the laborious Morrison in China, or by a learned professor at Paris, Gottingen, or Cambridge.

The following "Report on the state of Ancient Learning in France," is from a foreign journal. It comes to us through the National Gazette.

Ancient Literature embraces at once the criticism of the works of the ancients, and that of their monuments, applicable to the history of nations anterior to modern civilization. The state of the arts of design among those nations, and the objects which they proposed to themselves in cultivating

them, form also a branch of that literature. In this respect, France has been the first school of Europe, and the renown of her Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, dates from the commencement of the eighteenth century. It was she who furnished the most ancient precepts of that criticism, at once learned and profound, which, employing itself upon the texts of dead languages, or upon the monuments of every species which were their contemporaries when living, is constantly in search of the traces of man in each of these venerable relics, as well as those of his social state, his opinions, and even of his prejudices. It is thus that France has eminently contributed to give a certain identity to the ages that are past, to restore the picture of ancient civilization, and to exhibit every circumstance with that order and method which serve to place each precept in its true position, and each example in its true light. The names of Fourmont, Freret, Foncemagne, D'Anville, Bartholemy, and many others, rank first in the list of the learned men of Europe, who have most successfully applied the art of criticism to history; and their contemporaries, who are also ours, MM. Dacier, Silvestre de Sacy, Gossellin, and Pastoret, have faithfully discussed the value of the inheritance of their doctrines, and have transmitted them, through the medium of their works and their advice, to a new generation, who will not suffer so noble a patrimony to perish.

The Nestor of ancient European literature, M. Dacier, is still, at the age of eighty-three, one of the most assiduous co-operators in the present school. He continues to enlighten by his vast experience, at the same time that he participates in all the labours of the Academy of Belles Lettres, of which he has been more than fifty-two years a member, and for more than forty, perpetual secretary. In his historical notices of the lives and works of deceased academicians, he allows no opportunity to escape him of recalling to mind and recommending those principles which have laid the solid foundations of the glory of the Academy; and thus the collection of his notices becomes the real literary history of France, in all that relates to antiquity, and the best guide for those who wish to commence that vast and difficult study.

It should not, however, be forgotten.

that the new mode of studying languages has rendered that of the ancient tongues more easy and more beneficial. General grammar has been introduced; philosophical analysis has opened the channel to new researches, that sure and certain method of searching and discovering the true general principles of languages, and, in obtain ing the clue to them, at the same time to obtain that of the origin of nations. It was thus that due importance was attached to a study, the progress of which belongs to our age, and which has enriched history with a number of important facts. M. Silvestre de Sacy still presides over this species of research. Being perfect master of several of the living oriental languages, he has in his numerous works published many valuable notices respecting almost all the dead ones, the monuments of which are to be found in the manuscripts which have been preserved, either by means of some few traces, or in works more or less considerable. The biblical languages, as well as all the other oriental tongues, dead or living, are the objects of public and gratuitous instruction at the College de France, and at l'Ecole Speciale established at the Bibliothèque du Roi. M. Et. Quatremire, professor of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac languages at the College Royal; M. de Sacy and M. Caussin, of the written Arabic, in the two Institutes; and M. Caussin, Junior, of the vulgar Arabic at l'Ecole Speciale. The Armenian language has also a particular professorship, long since confided to M. Cirbied; and the study of that tongue, whether at Paris or in Italy, has already produced beneficial results. As a proof of this, it is sufficient to mention Les Memoires sur L'Arminie, by M. H. Martin, (Paris, Imprimierie Royale, 1818 and 1819, 2 vols. 8vo.) and his Armenian version of the Chronique d'Ausèbe, translated into Latin with a Greek text by MM. Mai and Zohrab, (Milan, 1818, small folio,) and published with the Armenian text, by M. Aucher, (Venice, 1818, 2 vols. 4to. Greek, Armenian, and Latin). M. de Sacy is at present giving lessons in Persian at the College Royal; the same language is also professed at l'Ecole Speciale by M. de Chezy, who was formerly assistant to M. Langles. The Turkish language, so useful with a view to our relations with the Levant, is taught at the same

time at the College Royal by M. Kieffer, and l'Ecole Speciale by M. Am. Jaubert, so well known by his Travels in Asia, &c. and whose Turkish Grammar, (Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1824,) has obtained the suffrages of all orientalists.

But the new wealth, literary and historical, collected in the vast regions of Asia, demanded new succours, in order thoroughly to explore its ancient and modern state. For that purpose, in 1814, the King created two new professorships, that of Chinese and Mantchou, and that of Sanscrit. M. Abel Remusat, who was appointed to the first, was chosen on account of his analytical studies with reference to that language, which he at length disembarassed from all the mys teries in which his predecessors had left it buried, rendering it the subject of a methodical mode of instruction, the success of which sufficiently proves its clearness and correctness. The Journal Asiatique often publishes some of the translations, by students of this class, of historical or literary morceaux; and one of the students, M. Stanislaus Julien, has already published, by means of lithography, the text of the book of Meng-Tseu, or Mencius, the most celebrated Chinese philosopher after Confucius, with a literal translation in Latin, and with a review of the Tartar-Mantchou version of that work. Another learned man, although foreign to France, ought to have a place in this sketch, since it is at Paris, and by his own typography, that he has published the fruits of his researches; it is at Paris, that M. Klaproth has produced his Catalogue of Chinese and Mantchou books and manuscripts in the library of Berlin, (Paris, 1822, 250 pages in folio,) and his Supplement to the Chinese Latin Dictionary of P. Basile de Glemona, printed in 1813 by the late M. de Guignes. These two works are printed at the Royal presses, and the second, of which the first part was published in 1819, (180 pages in folio.) is not yet finished. Thus elementary books are multiplied in a language the aspect of which seemed to present nothing but insurmountable difficulties, but the class of which is now among those that present nothing inaccessible to the ordinary attention of students. This important service is due to the efforts of M. Abel Remusat; and his Elements