f disabusing
the mind of the incipient Christian of its pagan errors, and of
moulding it upon the Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at
hand for the study of those who could avail themselves of them; but St.
Irenaeus does not hesitate to speak of whole races, who had been
converted to Christianity, without being able to read them. To be
unable to read or write was in those times no evidence of want of
learning: the hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the word,
illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony, though he knew not letters, was
a match in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try
him. Didymus again, the great Alexandrian theologian, was blind. The
ancient discipline, called the _Disciplina Arcani_, involved the same
principle. The more sacred doctrines of Revelation were not committed
to books but passed on by successive tradition. The teaching on the
Blessed Trinity and the Eucharist appears to have been so handed down
for some hundred years; and when at length reduced to writing, it has
filled many folios, yet has not been exhausted.

But I have said more than enough in illustration; I end as I began;--a
University is a place of concourse, whither students come from every
quarter for every kind of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every
kind everywhere; you must go to some great city or emporium for it.
There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all
together, which you find each in its own separate place elsewhere. All
the riches of the land, and of the earth, are carried up thither; there
are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the centre of
trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival talents, and
the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing
galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful voices and
performers of transcendent skill. It is the place for great preachers,
great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of things,
greatness and unity go together; excellence implies a centre. And
such, for the third or fourth time, is a University; I hope I do not
weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the place to which a
thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely
range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist
activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where
inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries ve