lead me far beyond any limits now at my service. It is well known, that for three hundred years Pagan persecution, especially under the Roman emperors, raged against all that was Christian. And, let me ask, upon whom did this vengeance fall? They were the ancestors of our faith, men who adored the same mysteries and observed the same practices which Catholics now revere. When Constantine gave peace to the Church, upon what body of men was that benefit conferred? Undoubtedly on that which was governed by St. Sylvester, from whom the first Christian emperor received baptism, and who is one of the two hundred and sixty-five links in the chain of apostolical succession which we trace up to St. Peter. Under what auspices did Constantine prevail on the field of battle? The holy emblem of the cross, which we, and we alone, have borne aloft in every age and nation? To whom did he apply for a decision in the Arian controversy? To the Fathers of the Nicene Council, whom we alone can number in our household, as the evidences of the value of tradition and the authority of the Church. How were the remains of Constantine interred? According to his own desire they were deposited in the Church of the Apostles, which he had erected at Constantinople, "in the hope of participating in the prayers which were there offered, and sharing in the fruits of the mystic sacrifice after death." Thus, a glance at any period or any event of time, blends past ages with the present hour, owing to the universal character of the Church. In her bosom alone are to be found those princes and monarchs whose spirit of piety, conspicuous amidst the storms of war and the calm of peace, was founded solely on the doctrines and principles of the everlasting Church. Her faith holds associ ation with all the illustrious characters, who, by the splendor of their virtues, the heroism of their courage, the equity of their laws, and the magnificence of their liberalities, were the protectors and ornaments of religion and society. It was the missionary of the Church that abolished every where the false worship of Paganism, and established in its room the pure faith of Christ. It is true, that many outside cry, "We also preach Christ." Is Christ divided? Certainly not. How are we then to distinguish? Who are the rightful preachers? They alone whom the divine wisdom employed in a Catholic ministry from the beginning, to destroy the absurdities of Paganism. Here shines forth the glorious mark of Catholicity; for, by no other means than the ministry of the Church did it please God to destroy the altars of Jupiter and the oracles of Delphos, and to shed the irradiation of the "Orient from on high" over a benighted world. Without going far for proofs, we have evidence of the fact here before us in the recollection of our ancestry. A Patrick converted Ireland; Palladius carried the faith to Scotland; and Austin brought it to England: they were all missionaries from Rome. Yes, from the moment the fire of apostolic zeal came from heaven on the day of Pentecost, the Church has been the sole instrument to convey the Gospel to the fairest, the most civilized nations, as well as to people the most barbarous and unpolished. The impression. of her genius and the imperishable monuments of her faith are found in the deserts of the East, and on the wildest Alpine rock-amidst the lions and burning sands of the tropics, as well as amidst the bears and icebergs of the poles. Every monument of learning and all the vestiges of antiquity serve to point out this Catholicity of time and place. We trace it in the foundation of every eminent university and school, in the character of every fundamental law, in the gifts of every liberty. Also in the customs and peculiar practices of nations; in the election and inauguration of emperors; in the coronation and anointing of kings. We trace it on the portals and windows of every ancient church and ivymantled castle, on the figures and inscriptions of coins, on the gates of cities, in the immemorial practices of our ancestors. In short, there is nothing connected with the history of mankind, which has not a record of Catholicity, thereby showing the extension of our faith to all times and places throughout 1874 years. And now after all the persecutions, after all the efforts of enmity, this Catholicity is unimpaired. In Europe, whilst the Church extends through a majority of kingdoms and people, it shows its capacity for every exigency and contingency that may befall religion; accordingly, whilst her martyrs are pouring out their blood in China, Russia, &c., her bosom is receiving the returning converted wanderers in England and Germany, and as she stood by to erect the cross upon the ruins of Paganism, she still awaits in England, Holland, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, where her faith burns distinct and clear, to illumine the human mind emerging from the grave and darkness of Protestantism. In Asia she is still the fold receiving such as the Lord is pleased "to add to the number that will be saved." In Japan, in Syria, Persia, from the banks of the Indus to the borders of the Euphrates, from the frozen gulfs of Siberia to the sultry extremity of Cape Comorin, her gentle voice is heard, her temples rise, and her lessons of piety are respected. In Africa she remains with all that has been left of learning and civilization, and her Mass In is being sung again on the heights of Hippo near the tomb of the great Augustine. In America, from the snow-clad hills of Canada through the warm regions of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, to the extremity of Chili, few there are but Catholics. In the United States, there is alarm enough to inform us not only of the existence of the Church, but of its progress, and we may rejoice, for she is destined to be here the sole guardian of the name of Christ. May we live long to enjoy the fact now daily evinced, that, whilst apostates "are shaking off sound doctrine, and heaping to themselves masters of itching ears," Catholicity attends the inquiring spirit of Americans, and according as they become more enlightened in religious matters, and disgusted with the so-called "Reformation," they will gladly turn to the path of their fathers, the holy Catholic Church. It is thus the mark of Catholicity, affixed by the hand of God to the eternal Church, is elevated like some orb of heaven pouring its flood of light on every epoch and gilding with its ray every extremity of earth. She stands thus a solitary exception to the waste and novelty belonging to what are facetiously called "different denominations," which bear upon their front every mark of violent evulsion from the parent stock. A few centuries ago their existence was unknown, and in the fantastic combinations of their names you discover their recent and humiliating origin. The denominations of Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Socinians, Wesleyans, Mormons. High Church Episcopalians, Low Church Episcopalians, Ritualistic Episcopalians, Cumminite Reformed Episcopalians, Jumpers, Seekers, Holy Rollers, &c., prove their coveted privilege of universal discord, and render more notable the Catholicity of the ONE HOLY CHURCH, the pillar and ground of truth. A CHURCH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE TALE OF A TORN PRAYER-BOOK. WHEN We detailed for our readers, in the January number of the RECORD, the history of the birth and early years of Bishop Cummins's baby, "a church of the period," we seriously thought we were done entirely with the enfant terrible, but alas for the shortsightedness of human prognostications, for hopes of earthly peace and unalloyed tranquillity, this first-born darling of Cummins's house and heart seems doomed to rival the famous offspring of the famous Ginx, by being determined to do some damage to somebody, for it is beginning to create such a turmoil, in fact is giving evidence of being such a precocious child, that no girl or boy of the period can at all be compared with it. It was made for the "cummin" century, and about the year 1900 it may be expected to be in its prime. In the first place the early education of the child has been all wrong. It has been reared in a dangerous atmosphere, that of New York, the wickedest of towns, and fed on pap from the questionable milk dairies of Chicago, a city whose cows are noted for their wicked and fiery proclivities, if we may take the celebrated heifer of Mrs. O'Rielly of Dekoven Street as a specimen. The connection between bad theology and dangerous cattle has always been very marked. We need only refer in the Old Testament to the story of "the golden calf," while we know that under the new dispensation "the Pope's Bulls" have curdled all the milk in many a heretic's blood, and we are very fearful that the historian of "the house that Jack built" had Bishop Cummins in prophetic vision, when he wrote of "The priest all shaven and shorn, That married the maiden all forlorn, for a sleeker specimen of shaven and shorn divinity than the late pontifex of Kentucky, or a more forlorn old body than Mother Cheney, deserted by all her theological kith and kin, when she joyfully accepted the Right Rev. George David's invitation to act as nursing mother to his newborn and motherless infant, begotten from the defunct Evangelical Alliance, and permit it to be saturated from the breasts of that Chicago which is commonly supposed to flow with milk and honey, can scarcely be imagined. But to return to the child. In the first place, as we have just insinuated, it has not been fed on the lac rationabile, or milk without guile, which St. Peter deemed so desirable a condiment for newborn infants, and now "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup " isn't worth a picayune as an antidote to the teething performance under the reign of the ascending dog-star. How our minds are tortured with mental visions of papa Cummins and stepmamma Cheney, clad in the cast-off surplices and berrettas of the Anglican establishment, serving them as nocturnal raiment, walking up and down the room at the solemn hour of their theological midnight, its argumentative thermometer at 90°, "singing hush a bye baby," to the tune of the sixty-third psalm, Protestant version, and all in vain, for the child continues as vigorous and squally as a young Hercules. Then in the second place it seems to give indications of mischievous literary propensities, and has laid violent hands on the family prayerbook, having torn it to pieces at a terrible rate, while the silly, doating parents, instead of putting a stop to the proceedings, look on and ex Who milked the cow with the crumpled horn," claim, "That's right, darling," and then turn with a significant wink to their friends, and exclaim, "Did you ever see such a bright baby?" All the more shame for them, for this prayer-book was a valuable heirloom, embalmed with the memories and venerable with the dust of centuries. But they do not stop with a mere tacit approval of their offspring's irreverent conduct, but have actually called a convention of their friends to witness the performance. What will be the future of a child brought up under such circumstances, heaven only knows; a child whose first act in life was the nearly if not quite successful attempt to choke its own grandmother, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and whose unrestrained career is sufficiently indicated by the fact that wherever it comes across the word "shall" in that prayer-book, it is allowed to run. its finger through the spot, and then paste it over with the word "may." Anything for a change seems to be its predominant passion, for the book has now been literally torn to pieces, not because sweeping changes were necessary, but because baby willed them, and the whole proceeding has been conducted on the same childlike style with which most children are permitted to slap at certain characters in picture-books which do not happen to strike their fancy. We remember very distinctly having in our infantile zeal administered castigations of this kind sufficiently numerous and vehement against the figures of the Jews who were torturing our Saviour, in the woodcuts illustrative of the mass prayers of juvenile devotional works, to wipe out of existence all the descendants of Israel, if they had not possessed as mournfully charmed a tenure of life as the fabled race of pussy-cats. Well, the too indulgent friends of the new REFORMED PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH of America have actually, as we intimated, met together in solemn convocation, not only to watch their darling's antics, but to seriously discuss not where the entertainment should stop, but rather whether any limits whatever should be placed upon the child's reforming instincts. Prince Florestan, deposed lord of Monaco, enumerating in his quaint biography the many curious things which he had witnessed in his short lifetime, mentions before all else that he had seen an Anglican clergyman dance the cancan. Perhaps he used the name of the (in)famous dance as a sarcastic term for the theological "Jim Crowism" of the worthy fathers of the "Anglican Church," but even if he was serious, he certainly never viewed a sight more vulgarly silly or grotesquely funny than the exhibition of the reverend divines of the Cummins church, as they picked up the shreds of leaves torn from that prayer-book, and rolled them up into little doctrinal pillules to fire at each other, while the baby crowed with delight at their efforts to please him. Perhaps we can best exemplify the statement by a few brief extracts from the reports of the proceedings. In the first place Bishop Cheney delivered a sermon, in which he drew a very striking and truthful picture of the harmony which existed in the early church in comparison with the disorder which prevails among the various "branches" of the modern tree spiritual of Protestantism. Failing, however, to draw any moral from this fact, for the cure of the maladies of his own establishment, and totally ignoring the good old maxim, "Physician, heal thyself," he rather sought to excuse from traditional authority these disorders, and by a curious expression of contradictory statements, to argue from the historical fact of the existence of heresies, even among the first Christians, that they were no better off in this respect than their Protestant descendants. Then jumping over to the old and much-mooted question of the important position which the Bible held in the Protestant estimation, and of the great faith which all anti-Catholic congregations placed in their preachers, he gave as a rather singular proof of the latter statement, the story that when George Whitfield first came to preach in Edinburgh, he was astonished, on mounting the pulpit and giving out the text, chapter, and verse, to hear in response a sound like the whistling of leaves among the trees. It was the rustling of the pages of two thousand Bibles by his hearers, who were anxious to see if the text had been properly paged, numbered, and correctly quoted. Whitfield was astonished at their zeal, at least so says Bishop Cheney. Did it never enter his head that perhaps the Scottish preacher's astonishment arose from the fact that his auditors "didn't take his word for it." There were of course the usual number of "prayers" and addresses, and struggles for place, among the candidates for church officers, which latter proceeding had the sanction of apostolic authority, as we know from that Scripture which sayeth, Then there arose a contest among them which should be the greater in the kingdom of heaven." The merits and demerits of the various aspirants were, however, discussed in a novel manner. 66 and he hoped that now, on the threshold of a new body of Christ's children, a Smith thought that there were as good new stand might be taken. Rev. Mr. B. men outside as within the Church. The office of vestryman was a mere temporal one, and related solely to the business matters of the Church. It was common in other denominations to thus select officers without the pale of the Church proper. Mr. Turner, the secretary, thought the financial aspect of the Church would be very materially affected by this motion, as many of the most wealthy supporters of the Church were not communicants, either through conscientious or other reasons. In the midst of the discussion a motion to adjourn was made and carried.” From all of which we may infer that our Saviour's remarks to the contentious apostles mentioned above, will still hold good to their self-dubbed successors of the Reformed Episcopal Church: “The prince of this world lordeth it over them." We think, moreover, that the convention should have employed a good rhetorician to explain what the reverend party by the name of Smith meant when he used the metaphor "the threshold of a new body of Christ's children.” Next in order was a spirited debate as to whether "bishops" should lay on hands in the "consecration" services, in the course of which some very heavy hands were laid on the traditional rubrics; but then, as Bishop Cheney stated in his opening sermon, that tradition was of no account whatever, and that "Saint John's Evangel" had been written expressly to confute the heresies to which the unwritten word had given rise as early as his day, we can hardly blame this peremptory arresting of dangerous popish practices. The knottiest question with regard to the bishops, after the usual gerrymandering with the question of the apostolical succession and the status of the episcopacy, was whether they should be saluted as Right reverend father in God," or as "Dearly 66 |