[Footnote 29: _Journal_ of 1856, p. 339. 1 1 tut. p. 204.]
The house of bishops therefore passed a series of resolutions, expressing their opinion that certain variations might be lawfully made in public worship, and appointing a "Commission on Church Unity" to confer with other churches as occasion might require. [Footnote 30]
But no legislation followed. No practical recognition of the emergencies in which the nation lay, or of her urgent duty to meet the wants which cried so loudly for her interference, marked the proceedings of this chief council of the church. Not one of the important measures which the _Memorial_ suggested, which many leaders of the church recommended, and which the Episcopal commission had itself advised, received the sanction of her legislative will. On the contrary, at the next session of the convention, in 1859, a strong and determined effort was made, by the house of clerical and lay deputies, to move the house of bishops to rescind their resolutions, and permit the representative branch of the convention to take part in the discussion of the subject and in determining what steps should be adopted. This the bishops refused, [Footnote 31] and there the matter rested and still rests a solitary report of the "Commission on Church Unity" that _they have done nothing_ [Footnote 32] alone marking the spot where the vast hopes and aspirations of the _Memorialists_ exhaled and disappeared.
[Footnote 31: _Journal_ of 1859, pp. 55, 72, 100, 143.]
And thus the golden opportunity of Protestant Episcopalianism passed by. The terrible events which followed in the next six years, put far away that quiet calm in which religious differences grow dim, and love for God and man overcomes human pride. Through her own bisection into _Confederate_ and _Federal_ her unifying influence has sustained a shock from which it will not, for long years, recover. The _evangelical_ churches have, at once, lost confidence in her disposition to meet them with a fair and open compromise, and in her separate ability to do the work which, in the providence of God, is placed before her; while her internal difficulties have augmented year by year, and rendered less and less likely the revival of that spirit which promised such achievements only fifteen years ago. Her golden opportunity passed by. But that hour of trial, in the great crucible of national emergencies, can never be forgotten, either by her friends or foes, and both will look to it for the disclosure of her real abilities, and for the revelation of her character, as human or divine.