surrounding pinnacles of the Alps; and when my guide over the mountains knelt at a wayside shrine, I bowed myself before the Invisible God of Catholic worship, looking up to the clear blue sky, and begging the Lord to bless my peasant brother, - mysterious symbol of millions of simple souls, who for a thousand years have bowed down to images, because so willed the Empress Irene. Surely He who loved the Samaritans loves and accepts these our brethren, who call upon Him out of a pure heart, though ignorant and once polluted perhaps as Rahab, who was "justified" in spite of her ignorant lie. For "Mercy rejoiceth against judgment." Among Christians of the Greek rite I have enjoyed much closer and sweeter communion; have been received into their chancels, as they have been received into ours, accepting their brotherly recognitions, and uniting in such portions of their Liturgy as are truly ancient and Scriptural. Prematurely, we should not go further. The Holy Spirit will accomplish the rest. Thank God, none of the ancient churches have lost the Truth. They have added to it; but the line is drawn between Truth and modern additions. In the latter we have no part nor lot; in all that is Catholic we are in practical communion with our brethren the Latins and the Greeks.

28. THE PARABLE OF PATMOS.

This principle of Unity is given us in the vision of Patmos, the Master amid the churches. Observe how corrupt were some of the seven: yet,

so long as he did not destroy them, but patiently awaited their return to first faith and first love and first works, he walked amid their golden candlesticks and held their stars in his right hand. So He teaches us to be in communion with Sardis itself, though not with her pollutions. And when we look at home, well may He ask, How are we better than others? Is not our American church a veritable Laodicea? I think it is. Let us " anoint our eyes with eye-salve," that we may see ourselves as the Master sees us. We have no occasion to be proud. Many of our fellow Christians. surpass us in good works, and set us an example that ought to make us ashamed. That is a rebuke to us, but it does not alter the facts, nor diminish our privileges. The good Samaritan was a rebuke to priest and Levite; but, none the less, the priests and Levites were God's ordinance and "salvation was of the Jews." It is our own fault, if in this dear Church we fail to learn lessons of piety from all Christians, and to "go and do likewise." But look every man to his own duty, and despise not others. Bearing in mind that the great thing is "love to God and man," give me leave to love also the precious Church of my fathers, in which, emancipated from such trammels as sects impose, I live in all the Christian churches and in all the Christian ages; read the Fathers as my fathers; keep the Christian feasts, and travel through all the Christian year, in sweetest sympathy and ennobling communion with "the past, the distant, and the future." No man can rob a Catholic of this gift of God, this life in the universe, this ex

pansion of heart and mind and soul to the Catholic thought of which God is the author. It is high as heaven, and deep as Hades; it lifts us to the heavenly choir; it unites us with all who "sleep in the Lord Jesus." Oh how blessed the privilege of him who can say with the saintly Bishop Ken, “I live and die in the communion of the Catholic Church, as it was before the disunion of East and West, and as it stands distinguished from all Puritan or Papal innovations"!

29. PERILS OF THE REPUBLIC.

Young gentlemen, your attention has been directed to the solvent operation of sect, and to the corrosive action of the Trent religion, especially as the virulence of its corruptions has been concentrated in the monstrous moral system of Liguori. In our dear country both these classes of peril are terribly active, and the worst of the evil is that practically they work together. Sectarianism makes fuel for Romanism; Loyola triumphed in Germany wherever Luther and Calvin had created sectarian divisions. To the ignorant and the indifferent Rome makes an appeal which Sectarianism knows not how to meet, and to which it lends apparent force. "Look," says the Jesuit, "at these religions of yesterday, all the fragmentary creations of Protestantism, all wrangling among themselves, and all united only in a negative antagonism to Rome, which has no positive character or base. Here, on the other hand, is that

1 See Note K".

which they agree to vilify and disparage, the old Mother of all Christians, the Church of Peter, the one only Church of Scripture and the Creeds." Our popular journalism proceeds on this theory in fawning upon Rome for political purposes, and the popular mind falls into the trap. The trap is constructed by Sectarianism itself, which calls Rome "the Catholic Church," "the old religion," "the oldest of the churches," and so on,-which repeats with relish Rome's insults to Anglicans, calls ours the "Church of Henry VIII., the creature of the English Parliament," and the feeble offspring of Luther's great movement in Germany, or whatever else a Jesuit may dictate against us. Now, in a republic dependent upon popular intelligence and national morality, it is impossible that such elements of mischief should co-operate for the confusion of ideas in religion, without undermining all that rests upon religion and upon truth. The rapid decay of American institutions is threatened from the combined forces of Sectarianism and Ultramontanism, working together as they have been working in Germany and France towards a general downfall into irreligion, unbelief, atheism. The perils assailing us are such as they who framed our Constitution never anticipated. The popular religion, with all its good, is yet a solvent, and operates to destroy. But home-bred evils are aggravated beyond all computation by an ignorant and vicious and pauperized immigration, which pours in upon us like a deluge. If these poor waifs and outcasts of Europe came here as regiments, and were landed daily with bayonets in their hands,

we should confront them and repel the invasion. But they come in stealthily, and we ourselves put arms in their hands far more terrible as they use them than would be cold steel or gunpowder. We give them the ballot; they hold the balance of power; and demagogues make them the arbiters of our destinies. They may soon overthrow our schools; they have already thrown out of them the Holy Bible; they grasp our taxes, with insatiable rapacity, to endow their own schools, disguised as protectories and hospitals, or other institutions of charity. In Protestant Upper Canada they are a minority; but by the game of demagogues they have overcome the tax-payers and dictate their own terms to the government.

30. THE CONSTRUCTIVE FORCES OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH.

Now, I must be permitted to express my convictions, resting on no superficial base, that the Church which is entwined with the entire history of our race, with the growth of which is bound up the common law, which reflects the genius of our literature and embodies the principles out of which has risen our national Constitution, — that such a Church has in herself those conservative elements and constructive forces which are just what our national fabric requires. In everything else that is called American, the centrifugal force predominates what we need is the balancing force that generates an orbit, and holds us to the light and heat of the sun. Macaulay very justly