Let them keep clear of controversy; let them attend little to each other, much to themselves and their task. Catholicism and Protestantism will then dwell peaceably, not only within its new state, but together.
I know that this peace will not be that spiritual unity which has been so talked of. Spiritual unity, beautiful in itself, is in this world chimerical; and from chimerical it becomes tyrannical.
As finite and free beings, that is to say, incomplete and fallible, unity escapes us, and we constantly miss it.
Harmony in liberty is the only unity to which men here below can pretend. Or, rather, it is for them the best, the only mode of elevation towards that true unity which all violence, all constraint,—that is, every invasion of spiritual by material order,—throws back and obscures, under the pretext of attaining it.
Harmony in liberty is the spirit of Christianity. It is charity united with zeal. It is also the object of philosophy, for it is the true, the moral sense of the principle of toleration and equal protection of the rites of worship; a principle which impiety has violated by trying to set it up as the standard of indifference and contempt for religion, but which allies itself wondrously with zeal and faith, for on their right it is itself founded.
The alliance must be ratified. I say must in concluding, as I did when beginning. Peace between religious creeds is now imposed on all alike by our social condition. Harmony in liberty is their legal condition, their charter. Let them yield to it in spirit as in act; let them love it while obeying it. I fear not the fate of a false prophet, when I predict that religion will be thereby as great a gainer as society.
As to Philosophy, she has in our days the glory of not having remained a Utopia. From discoveries she has proceeded to conquests. She has metamorphosed her ideas into facts and institutions; a formidable change, as it reveals not only the errors of the first thought, but for a time misleads and corrupts it by plunging it into the vortex of human passions; nevertheless a great glory, and one which assigns to philosophy a high position in the new social state.
It is a rare privilege to be able, without embarrassment, worthily to acknowledge and abjure error. Philosophy can do this, for, politically speaking, victory belongs to her, and not only victory but power. Though much self-deceived, she has done much. She has reason for pride as well as for modesty. She can afford to show herself just, benevolent, and respectful to her former adversaries. She cannot be charged with weakness or cowardice.