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.
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States consists "of thirty-four confederated dioceses, under the care of bishops, using the same liturgy, and yielding obedience" to the same canon law. [Footnote 48] The organic principle by which this confederation was originated and has been maintained is a written constitution. [Footnote 49] Its organic life is manifested through a general convention, in which the supreme legislative and judicial authority of the whole church resides.
[Footnote 48: _Church Almanac_ for 1867, p. 17.]
[Footnote 49: Law writers define a "constitution" as either a "limitation" or a "grant" of power. Did the general convention of 1789, in adopting the constitution of the Episcopal Church, thereby _grant_ to the church of Christ, or to any part thereof, powers of which it was previously destitute, or limit powers which Christ himself conferred upon it? Or, on the contrary, is not the idea of a "constitution" essentially repugnant to the idea of the Christian church?]
Each of these several dioceses consists of various parishes, united under one bishop, and yielding obedience to the same local law. The organic principle of the diocese is a written constitution; and its organic life is manifested in a diocesan convention, in which the supreme legislative and judicial authority of the diocese resides.