It cannot be. No day will ever come when Protestant Episcopalianism can convert this people. No day will ever come when, if converted, she could govern them. Honored for her learning, her decorum, and her wealth, she may endure to witness many generations pass away. Great names will be in her and great men will be of her. She will do her work in the world, whatever that may be; but her continuance will be that of a sect, and a sect only, until the day of her absorption comes. {160} III. The "Church of the Future" is a church of uniform and consistent faith. It seems almost superfluous for us to argue in support of this proposition. That divine truth is one, that what God teaches is unchangeable and every way harmonious with itself, are axioms which even the unlearned can see to be infallible. And that the thoughtful, earnest, practical people who must by and by cover this great continent will ever acknowledge as God's representative and their spiritual teacher a church whose faith is variable and undefined, whose theologians are at issue concerning fundamental points of doctrine, and whose public preaching is in perpetual self-contradiction and uncertainty, is utterly impossible. The "Church of the Future" is a "Church of Truth," a church of divine origin and of divine authority, over whom is one Lord, and in whom is one spirit; a church whose voice is ever clear and certain, whose unity with herself is evidence of her unity with God, and who, in gathering the nations to her footstool, maketh them all "to be of one mind in the house," through "the faith once delivered to the saints." Will the Episcopal Church justify this description? Has she that "pure and uncorrupted faith," that "word of the gospel," which is "always, and everywhere, and by all" invariably taught and held? Everybody knows better. She herself denies it. Years ago one of her bishops described her as a church in which parties were "arrayed in bitter hostility to each other;" in which there was "so much difference of opinion upon important points of doctrine that the bishops and other ministers could not be brought to agree;" in which "one part denies all claim to an evangelical, that is, a gospel, character, to all who do not agree with them in every particular," while "the other party denies to the former any just right to the name of churchman." [Footnote 63] [Footnote 63: _Memorial Papers_, p. 187.] Years ago a venerable presbyter declared that the prime source of all her difficulties was that "_the house_" was "_divided against itself_" and that so long as men were "ordained to her ministry, clothed with her authority, and seated in her high places, who cannot conscientiously teach her Catechism for children, and whose work of love it is to revile her doctrines, her institutions, and her faithful people, her enemies" [Footnote 64] would rejoice, and the world repudiate her claims. [Footnote 64: _Ibid_. p. 236.]