[Footnote 45: Memorial Papers, p. 189.]
Surely if evidence of any kind could satisfy us that, at any time at least, the Episcopal Church was not adapted, by internal structure and external operations, to control and harmonize American society, the evidence which the Memorial movement thus elicited, has done it. If it ever has been, or can ever be, made manifest that any given church is not the "Church of the People," it was then demonstrated that the Protestant Episcopal Church is not so.
Since that golden epoch twelve years have passed away. That the people of America have materially changed, either in intelligence or religious feeling; that their necessities are lessened or more easily supplied, no one will venture to assert. All the world knows that the spiritual destitution of the nation has increased, and that the same means which failed to relieve it then meet with like failure now. All the world knows that the Protestant Episcopal Church is the same dignified and stolid organization, moving on in the same beaten track, its ponderous and cumbersome machinery revolving heavily round the same well-worn axis, and limited on every side by clamps and bands, which tremulous conservatism dare not offer to unloose.
The records to which we have heretofore referred show also that, in both of these particulars, all the world is right. Not one of the measures advocated by the Memorialists has ever been adopted. No law has ever passed, requiring that her clergy preach instead of read. No general attempt has yet been made to organize the lay element, either male or female, into a body of efficient laborers. No change has taken place in the canon which requires that upon every occasion of public worship the Prayer-book, and it only, should be used. And, worse than this, no disposition to so modify existing modes of labor as to secure their wider range or surer efficacy has ever since been manifested. Even when, at the convention of 1865, a memorial was presented, signed by nearly fifty leading clergymen, repeating the statements of the Memorial of 1853, and praying for the institution of an association of "Evangelists," in the hope that "these statements may be so regarded as to secure to the church the important instrumentalities." … "which were never more urgently demanded than at the present time," the house of bishops coolly resolved that "it was not expedient to entertain the subject" and the other house tacitly concurred in the decision. [Footnote 46]
[Footnote 46: Journal of 1865, pp. 361, 190.]
If, in the face of facts like these, we judge of the future by the present and the past, what shall we say? Is there a hope that, in that mighty era when this great continent shall swarm with prosperous, intelligent, industrious millions, a church, which during a whole century, with every advantage of respectability and wealth, has met with such signal failure, shall rise into supremacy? Is there a probability great enough to justify our serious contemplation that a church, whose claim to be the "Church of the People" is thus denied by that unerring voice of history which is the echo of the voice of God, should be the "Church of the Future" in our country?
We know no better answer to these questions than the thrilling exhortation given by the venerable Dr. Muhlenberg to the Memorial Commission concerning their own duty to their church:
"Bid her," said he, "look over this vast continent, filling with people of all nations and languages and tongues, and see the folly of hoping to perpetuate among them an Anglican communion, that will ever be recognized as aught more than an honorable sect. Bid her give over the vain attempt to cast all men's minds into one mould.
"Bid her cherish among her own members mutual tolerance of opinion in doctrine, and taste in worship; remembering that uniform sameness in lesser matters may be the ambition of a society, a party, a school in the church, but is far below any genuine aspirations of the church herself. It is the genius of Catholicism which is now knocking at her doors. Let her refuse to open. Let her, if she will, make them faster still with new bolts and bars, and then take her rest, to dream a wilder dream than any of the Memorial of becoming the Catholic Church of these United States." [Footnote 47]