Even without laying any great stress upon that softening of party prejudices which has of late actually taken place, the hope of a near termination of controversy, and of the healing of all permanent differences among true Christians, may still rest on solid ground. An intelligent faith in the divine origination of the Scriptures contains necessarily a belief in their power to bring the catholic church into a state of unity, so that division should no more be thought of. That, during so many ages this has not been the condition of the Christian body, is satisfactorily to be attributed to causes which are by no means of inevitable perpetuity; but, which on the contrary, seem now to be approaching their last stage of feeble existence. Meanwhile the Oracles of God are visibly ascending to the zenith of their rightful power. The necessary preparations for their instalment in the place of undisputed authority are completed; and nothing is waited for but a movement of general feeling, to give them such influence as shall bear down whatever now obstructs the universal communion of the faithful. An expectation of this sort will, of course, be spurned by those (if there are any such) who, were they deprived of their darling sectarism, and robbed of their sinister preferences, would scarcely care at all for Christianity, and to whom the idea of Catholic Christianity, if they can admit such an idea, is a cold abstraction. And it will be rejected also by those who, though their feelings are Christian, accustom themselves to look at the state of religion always with a secular eye, and are indisposed to admit any suppositions not obtruded upon them by immediate matters of fact. To all such persons the existing obstacles that stand in the way of Church union must seem utterly insurmountable, and the hope of an annihilation of party distinctions, altogether chimerical. But it is not to such minds that the appeal is to be made when futurity is in question; for such are always slaves of the past, and of the present; and they are destined to stand by, and wonder, and cavil, while happy revolutions are in progress; and it is only when resistance to the course of things becomes impracticable, that they are dragged on reluctantly, more like captives than attendants, upon the triumphant march of truth.