[Footnote 47: Memorial Papers, p. 288.]
The conclusions to which the experience of a hundred years has thus directed us will be extended and confirmed by an examination of certain characteristics which the "Church of the Future," as a "Church of the People," must necessarily present, and by a comparison of these with the internal structure and external operations of the Episcopal Church. In the course of this examination we shall also probably discover the causes from which the past failures of the latter have resulted, and the means by which she might adapt herself more fully to the wants of the country and the age, if, in fact, such adaptation were any longer possible. Therefore we proceed:
II. The "Church of the Future" is a church of stability in principle and flexibility in operation.
The work of the church of God upon the earth is to teach and govern men. The truth, by which alone the intellect can be enlightened, the law, by which alone the heart and life can be subjected to the will of God, are both entrusted to her keeping. Doctrine informing and directing discipline, discipline realizing and preserving doctrine—such is the system by which her Lord commanded her to subdue the world, and by which to this day the world has been subdued.
The people whose church the "Church of the Future" is to be, and of whom, as its members, it must be composed, will be a free people. The race from which they spring long ago recognized, as fundamental truth, that the will of the people is the highest law, and every civil and political institution which is or is to be derives its origin and permanence from the sole fiat of the citizen. There is no power above it by which its errors may be corrected or its excesses be restrained. The popular vote is the tribunal from whose decision there can be no appeal. The ballot-box is the throne of state, from which supreme authority comes down only to take up the thunderbolts of war.
The sturdy independence which results from such a national cultivation will place a burden of no common order upon the church into whose hands the control and unification of American society must fall. The bearer of divine illumination, the custodian of unalterable truth, the spiritual government of the people, will be also on her shoulders; and she must be able to withstand not only persecution from without, but the more dangerous assaults of innovation and revolt within. She must have no capacity for compromise. The organic principle which binds into one body her integral elements must be beyond the power of popular tumult to disturb or political dissensions to destroy. In every storm and tempest she must be immovable, and, with a will of divine firmness and an arm of godlike might, must bend the tempest and control the storm.
Again, the people over whom the "Church of the Future" will extend its sway embraces men of every nation, color, class, and tongue. The offspring of the African, the Saxon, and the Indian dwell here together with the children of the Hebrew, the Mongolian, the Teuton, and the Celt. Religions of all forms offer contemporaneous and discordant worship to their several divinities. Prejudices of every complexion and against every truth mingle in the religious atmosphere. Vices of every name, grown, through long apathy or longer ignorance, into a second nature, contaminate the public heart. Every possible diversity of ideas, of tastes, of impossibilities, is found among them, and, under all, the same great wants, the same unceasing aspirations, the same formless void.
The church which heals the spiritual wounds of such a people must both possess and use appliances of infinite variety. Her pharmacopoeia must contain all remedies which ever have been suitable to man. Her learning and ability must extend to their appropriate selection and bestowal. She must, indeed, be "all things to all men," high with the high and lowly with the low, wise with the learned and simple with the ignorant, firm with the headstrong and gentle with the meek, sublime with the imaginative, cold with the severe, in every way adapting the method of her operations to the dispositions of the people whom she seeks to save, if by any means their salvation may be made secure.
Thus, in herself immovable, eternal, and in her labors as flexible and various as the needs she must supply, the "Church of the Future" will not only conquer, but wherever and whatever she has conquered she will thenceforth unceasingly retain.
But can the church which does this be the Episcopal Church? Let us test her immobility of principles. Let us measure the flexibility of her operations. The result will teach us much that is worth learning, and should not be without its influence on her.