We note, in the next place, an utter want of unity in the Protestant Episcopal Church.
There are High-Church and Low-Church bookstores, where the publications of the one are discarded by the other. There are High-Church and Low-Church seminaries, where a man, to graduate from the one, will be looked upon inimically, at least with suspicion, by the other. There is a High-Church “Society for the Increase of the Ministry,” where the principal thing accomplished is the maintenance of the secretary of the said society in a large brick house in a fashionable city, while he claims to support a few students on two meals a day; and a Low-Church Evangelical Society, where they require the beneficiary to subscribe to certain articles of Low-Churchism before they will receive him.
The one society is thoroughly hostile to the other, and, in point of fact, the latter was created in opposition to the former.
There is but one thing in common between the two, and that is cold-shoulderism.
There are High-Church and Low-Church newspapers, in which the epithets used by the one toward the other do not indicate even respect.
Some of the “church’s” ministers would no more enter a “denominational” place of worship than they would put their hand in the fire. Others will fraternize with everything and everybody, and when Sunday comes will close their eyes—sometimes they roll them upward—and pray publicly: “From heresy and schism good Lord deliver us.”
It may be necessary that there should be wranglings and bickerings within her fold, in order to constitute her the church militant; but we cannot forgive hypocrisy.
With some of her ministers the grand object of existence seems to be to prove “Popery” an emanation from hell. With others the effort is equally great to prove the Episcopal Church as a “co-ordinate” branch with the Roman Church, and entitled to the same consideration as is paid by the devotees of Rome to its hierarchy. In both instances—viz., High Church and Low Church—history records failure.
We notice next the relation which the Protestant Episcopal Church holds to the Church of England.
The English Church evidently regards the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America as a weaker sister, and not to be admitted to doubtful disputations. She is courteous toward her, and accepts her present of a gold alms-basin from an unrobed representative with a certain amount of ceremony. She invites her bishops to the Lambeth Conference, and they pay their own fare across the Atlantic; but they confer about nothing. It is true the Protestant Episcopal Church approved the action of the English Church in condemning Colenso; but this was a safe thing for the English Church to present. It would have been hardly complimentary to have their guests go home without doing something, especially as they were not to be invited into Westminster Abbey, and were to have nothing to do with the coming Bible revision.