There are inspiring tokens which show the depth and breadth of the conviction, that the great schism of three centuries ago has proved a terrible mistake. Multitudes outside of the Catholic Church are inquiring with earnest solicitude about the meaning of catholic unity. The main course of intellectual inquiry is, in both hemispheres, respecting the claims of the Catholic Church. There are evident signs that the chaos of Protestantism is about to be broken up, and the wild, and dreary waste to bloom and glow with Catholic beauty and order. God grant that it may be so, and that not only thousands of individuals may know how precious a prize it is to kneel devoutly and sincerely before, the altar of God; but that even, mighty nations may be convinced, what priceless gifts they have forfeited by three centuries of separation from the source of all they have that has been or is worth keeping.
In view of the fact that the revival of catholic feeling enkindles also the enmity of those who scan it, the gathering at Rome is not only an assurance before the world that the Catholic Church will continue to be the guide of life and the empire of civilization, but it is also a sublime challenge against all the agencies of every kind that have been, or may be tried, to eliminate Catholicity from the age. The Catholic Church has a work to do, and she will do it. She can no more forego it, than she can die by her own will. She has never flinched yet; she never will. It is the very necessity as well as the reason of her being that she shall fulfil her charge without wavering or diminution; and this she will do. If the "gates of hell" cannot prevail against the church of God, she may safely defy all mortal might. The sun might more easily have refused to come forth at the bidding of the Creator, than the church can refuse to do his will in conquering the world for Christ. God speed the day when the divisions of Christendom shall end; when all who profess to be the disciples of Jesus Christ shall seek and find consolation in his one, true, enduring fold; and when the sceptre of God, manifest in the church, shall be extended in benignant power over an obedient and rejoicing world.
"The United Churches Of England And Ireland, In Ireland." [Footnote 47]
[Footnote 47: Ireland and her Churches. By James Godkin. London, Chapman & Hall. 1867. 1 vol. pp. 623.]
It is well to be accurate in the bestowal of titles, and we give, therefore, the institution whose latest history lies before us the exact definition by which, these sixty years past, it rejoices to be known. Under this designation of its own choice this institution is open to the reflection of being one of the most modern of all the churches pretending to be national; the junior of even our own American Episcopal Church, which is not itself very far stricken in years; the junior, indeed, of all the other churches we can at this moment recall to memory, unless we were to include "the Church of the Latter-Day Saints," whose Mecca stands upon Salt Lake.
On the first day of January, in the first year of this century, the ecclesiastical system, establishment, or organization which designates itself as "the United Church of England and Ireland, in Ireland," came, with sound of many trumpets, into the world. On that auspicious day, the legislative union of Ireland and Great Britain was proclaimed; a new national flag, "the Union Jack," was run up from the royal towers of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh; a new royal title was assumed for the coinage of the new realm, and in all great public transactions; a new "great seal" was struck for the sovereign of the newly modelled state; new peers and new commoners were added to the two houses of Parliament, and, to complete the revolution, by the 5th clause of the same act, the matters previously mentioned having been first disposed of, this new church was, on that same day and hour, by the same authority, called into existence. His majesty's proclamation, announced at Paul's Cross in London, at the Cross in Edinburgh, and where the Cross of le Dame street ought to have been, in Dublin, that "the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England."
The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick—his independence of Rome more especially—was the favorite argument of its defenders.