To argue that the Episcopal Church alone possesses those characteristics which indicate the true church of God, and that, as such, she must eventually predominate over all the rest, is thus as useless as it is unwise. It opens up a series of disputes which no generation would be long enough to exhaust, and no acknowledged authority be sufficient to determine. It creates in advance an adversary in every Christian outside her exclusive pale, and puts him on his guard against the courtesy and solicitude with which she seeks to win his personal devotion. It thrusts into the face of the inquirer a proposition whose absurdity annoys him, whose positiveness discourages him, whose arrogance repels him. If our Episcopal brethren wish to realize the dreams of their modern seer, they must abandon this species of argument and betake themselves to the adaptation of their church to meet, more fully, the wants and necessities which surround them upon every side. In their ability or inability to do this resides the human answer to the question whose discussion we pursue. The syllogism in which this answer is embodied may be thus constructed: The church which is best adapted, by internal structure and external operations, to control and harmonize American society, will be the church of the future in our country. The Protestant Episcopal Church is best adapted, by internal structure and external operations, to control and harmonize American society. _Ergo_, the Protestant Episcopal Church will be the church of the future in our country. The major premise of this syllogism is evidently sound. If the minor is reliable in fact as well as form, the conclusion is unmistakable. Our inquiry is thus reduced to this: Whether the Protestant Episcopal Church is best adapted, by its internal structure and external operations, to control and harmonize American society? The answer to this inquiry will unfold our own view of the matter now in issue, and will, we trust, set forth some of the principal _criteria_ by which the church of the future may, at this day, be humanly discerned. 1. The "church of the future" is a "church of the people."