THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM
Throughout this century the Roman Church has desired and sought by all practical means the restoration of the former unity of Christendom. Each succeeding Pope has appealed to the ancient but separated Churches of the Orient, reminding them of the past oneness and the need of union with that see which all their records proclaim the rock and centre of unity. Similarly, appeals have been issued to the divided Christian communities of the West, as when Pius IX. wrote to the members of the Protestant world before the Vatican Council, and when Leo XIII. lately addressed his famous encyclical on the Unity of the Church to all men of good will within the Anglican pale. Such efforts may seem perfunctory; but they have in our eyes a deep meaning. They proclaim the doctrine of unity that is clearer than the noonday sun from the teachings of Jesus; they make a first step in the direction of its restoration; they keep alive the spirit of charity in many hearts, and they stir up countless prayers for the consummation of an end that few believing Christians any longer consider unnecessary. Already the canker-worms of doubt and indifference are gnawing at those last foundations of the old inherited Christian religious beliefs that still worked beneficently outside the pale of Catholic unity, but are now disappearing from the public consciousness because, too often, they are no longer elements of private conviction. In the realm of faith, as in that of nature, there is an after-glow, when the central sun has spent its force; but in both that glow is the herald of coldness and darkness. To those who no longer allow in their hearts any Christian belief, Catholicism has strongly appealed in the nineteenth century by its teachings on the right use of reason in matters of faith, the claims of religion on the mind and the heart of man, the benefits of Christianity, and its superiority over all other forms of religion—in a word, by the constant exposé of all the motives of credibility which could affect a sane and right mind that had divested itself of prejudice and passion.