DOGMA

A word used originally to expre any doctrine of religion formally stated. Dogmatic theology is the statement of positive truths in religion. The indifference of later generations to positive truth is indicated, among other things, by the different notion which has come to be attached, in common discourse, to these words. By a dogma is now generally meant too positive or harsh a statement of uncertain or unimportant articles; and the epithet dogmatic is given to one who is rude or obtrusive, or overbearing in the statement of what he judges to be true. DOMINICAL or SUNDAY LETTER. In the calendar, the first seven letters of the alphabet are applied to the days of the week, the letter A being always given to the 1st of January, whatsoever that day may be, and the others in succe ion to the following days. If the year consisted of 364 days, making an exact number of weeks, it is evident that no change would ever take place in these letters: thus, supposing the 1st of January in any given year to be Sunday, all the Sun days would be represented by A, not only in that year, but in all succeeding. There being, however, 365 days in the year, the first letter is again repeated on the 31st of December, and consequently the Sunday letter for the following year will be G. This retroce ion of the letters will, from the same cause, continue every year, so as to make F the dominical letter of the third, . If every year were common, the proce would continue regularly, and a cycle of seven years would suffice to restore the same letters to the same days as before. But the intercalation of a day, every bi extile or fourth year, has occasioned a variation in this respect. The bi extile year, containing 366 instead of 365 days, will throw the dominical letter of the following year back two letters, so that if the dominical letter at the beginning of the year be C, the dominical letter of the next year will be, not B, but A. This alteration is not effected by dropping a letter altogether, but by changing the dominical letter at the end of February, where the intercalation of a day takes place. In consequence of this change every fourth year, twenty-eight years must elapse before a complete revolution can take place in the dominical letter, and it is on this circumstance that the period of the solar cycle is founded.