That, in reference to either of these two essential characteristics, any improvement will take place we see no reason to believe. It would be contradictory to all experience if the Episcopal laity should voluntarily relinquish their share in the government and administration of the church which they uphold, or that, by any exercise of spiritual power, the clergy could compel them to its resignation. It seems to us almost equally impossible that the inflexibility of operation which prevents her success can ever be materially diminished. Her liturgy is her _centrum unitatis_, her teacher, her authoritative law. It is the golden band which binds her members to one another; which unites bishop to bishop, diocese to diocese, priest to priest; which links her with the centuries of the past, and reaches onward to the future; which keeps her heterogeneous elements in contact with one another, as the electric coil binds into one repellent particles of steel. In it her denominational existence is bound up, and with material changes in it she herself is fated to dissolve and die.
It cannot be. No day will ever come when Protestant Episcopalianism can convert this people. No day will ever come when, if converted, she could govern them. Honored for her learning, her decorum, and her wealth, she may endure to witness many generations pass away. Great names will be in her and great men will be of her. She will do her work in the world, whatever that may be; but her continuance will be that of a sect, and a sect only, until the day of her absorption comes.
III. The "Church of the Future" is a church of uniform and consistent faith.
It seems almost superfluous for us to argue in support of this proposition. That divine truth is one, that what God teaches is unchangeable and every way harmonious with itself, are axioms which even the unlearned can see to be infallible. And that the thoughtful, earnest, practical people who must by and by cover this great continent will ever acknowledge as God's representative and their spiritual teacher a church whose faith is variable and undefined, whose theologians are at issue concerning fundamental points of doctrine, and whose public preaching is in perpetual self-contradiction and uncertainty, is utterly impossible. The "Church of the Future" is a "Church of Truth," a church of divine origin and of divine authority, over whom is one Lord, and in whom is one spirit; a church whose voice is ever clear and certain, whose unity with herself is evidence of her unity with God, and who, in gathering the nations to her footstool, maketh them all "to be of one mind in the house," through "the faith once delivered to the saints."