The age needs for this the Catholic Church. A national church cannot do it; far less can the sects do it. These all depend on the public opinion of the age, the nation, or the sect, and have no power to withstand that opinion. This is perhaps better understood here than elsewhere. The sects, being creatures of opinion, have no power to control it, and their tendency is invariably to seize upon every opinion, excitement, or movement that is, or is likely to be, popular, and help it on as the means of swelling, when it is at flood-tide, their own respective numbers. A national church has undoubtedly more stability, and is not so easily wrested from its moorings. But it has only the stability of the government that ordains it, and the most absolute government must sooner or later yield to the force of opinion. Opinion has disestablished and disendowed the state church in Ireland, and will, as is most likely, do it ere long in both England and Scotland. The Protestant sects have no alternative; they must either yield to the dominant opinion, tendency, or passion of the times and move on with it, or be swept away by it.
It is only a church truly catholic, that depends on no nation, that extends to all, and is over all, that derives not its being or its strength from the opinion of courts or of peoples, but rests on God for her being, her law, and her support, that can maintain her integrity, or have the courage to stand before an age or a nation, denounce its errors, and condemn its dominant passion or tendency, or that would be heeded, if she did. It was only the visible head of the Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ, that could perform the heroic act of publishing in this century the Syllabus; and if, as we are confident they have, the prelates assembled in the Council of the Vatican have some share of the courage of their chief, their decrees will not only draw the attention of the world anew to the church, but go far to prove to apostate nations and truculent governments that she takes counsel of God, not of the weakness and timidity of men.
A few more such acts as the publication of the Syllabus and the convocation of the council now sitting at Rome, joined to the manifest failure of Protestantism, will serve to open the eyes of the people, disabuse non-Catholics of the delusions under which they are led away to their own destruction. The very freedom, though false in principle, which is suffered in Protestant nations, while it removes all restraints from infidelity, immorality, and blasphemy, aids the victory of the church over her enemies. It ruins them by suffering them to run into all manner of excesses; but she can use it without danger and with advantage where there are minds to be convinced or hearts to be won; for she can abide the freest examination, the most rigid investigation and scrutiny, while the indwelling Holy Ghost cannot fail to protect her from all error on either side. The present delusions of the loud-boasting nineteenth century must give way before her as she once more stands forth in her true light, and her present enemies be vanquished.
DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.
BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING, THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.
DEDICATION.
I dedicate the following work to Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, not only in appreciation of one of the most searching, comprehensive, independent, and indefatigable thinkers, and one of the truest and highest men of genius, of whom it has ever been the lot of his own country and of the English-speaking races to be proud, and the fate of contemporary nations to feel honorably jealous; not only in admiration of a mind which nature made great, and which study has to the last degree cultivated, whose influence and authority have been steadily rising since he first began to labor in literary fields more varied than almost any into which ONE person had previously dared to carry the efforts of the intellect; but still more as an humble token of the grateful love which I feel in return for the faithful and consistent friendship and the innumerable services with which a great genius and a great man has honored me during twenty years.
Paris, Jan. 18, 1870.