How long this state of things can continue we venture not to prophesy. Whether the Episcopal Church is destined to disintegrate like other sects around her, or whether she will overcome the dangerous schismatic miasm which infests her members and be once more the home of peace and unity, are questions which we have no need to answer. But that this state of things was ever possible proves that her uniformity, wherever it exists, is merely accidental, and never can confer upon her teachings that authority which a clear-sighted and sensible people will demand as a condition of their faith.
There are still other characteristics which the "Church of the Future" will possess, but the limits of this article forbid us to examine them. The three to which we have directed our attention are those which were most easily discernible, and concerning which material for research and comparison lay most readily at hand. They have answered our question as definitely as if the whole ground had been gone over, and have told us that, so far as human calculations can extend, the Protestant Episcopal Church will never be the "Church of the Future" in our country.
In attempting to demonstrate this proposition we have been actuated by no feeling of hostility toward the Episcopal Church. Too many sacred memories, too many years of deep and fond affection, have made her priests and people dear forever to our hearts. We believe that, in the inscrutable providence of God, she has a work to do; a work which, stained with heresy and rent with schism as she is, none else can do so well. Standing between the Catholic Church and the remoter darknesses of Rationalism and Infidelity, she catches the light of its eternal truth more fully, and breathes a far diviner atmosphere than they. She drinks in the solemn beauty of its apostolic order. She feels the power of its infallible authority. She wonders at its vast and perfect unity. She strives to reproduce these marks of the true church upon her own exterior, and calls her neighbors to examine and admire.
Thus she becomes the school-mistress to lead them to the truth. How many, who by birth, by prejudice, by old associations, appeared to be for ever aliens to the Catholic fold, have yielded first to the modified Protestantism of the Episcopal Church, and through her have been led straight home to the real mother of their souls! The names of Newman and Spencer, Faber, Ives, and Baker, teach us how much Catholics may owe to her who, even since her fall, has nursed the spiritual infancy of many saints of God. And we, who from her breast drew our first reverence for Holy Church, and, guided by her hand, at last beheld the beacon-light which led us to the Rock of Peter and the Home of Peace, can never cease to love her, or to pray that her great work may spread until the people of this nation, entranced by her reflected beauty, may turn their eyes to whence her light proceeds, and hasten onward to the Catholic Church, in which the sun of truth for ever shines.
Let, then, the general convention of 1868, so soon to gather in this great metropolis, awake to the emergency and quit themselves like men. The task imposed upon them is worthy of their toil, and, though the church for which they legislate reap not the harvest, they shall have their reward. The influence of their grand and solemn worship, of their fixed, conservative ideas, is necessary to keep down this restless age, and make it look with calmness on the questions of the day. Let that worship be established and those ideas extended in every town and hamlet to which the Catholic Church has not preceded them. Let her bishops and her clergy imbue the people with veneration for apostolic order and with a spirit of submission to apostolic power. Let her maintain the truths which she preserves, and with them build foundations in the national heart for the erection of the divine temple of the Christian faith. Let her do this and so fulfil the work which lies before her, doubting not lest the Lord forget her labor, but hoping that the way of grace she paves for others it may be finally her lot to tread.
And when the "Church of the Future" counts the trophies of her victory, and reviews the means by which it was accomplished, the work of Protestant Episcopalianism shall not be forgotten, and the workmen who performed it shall receive the meed of praise which is their due.
From The French Of Erckmann And Chatrian.