The present state of our people calls for what Protestantism has not. Justification by faith could not save its first professor from breaking his vows and debauching another person equally bound; nor will its influence increase by repeating his famous dictum, _Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius_. The evanescence of genuine fanaticism on the part of evangelical religion is no guarantee of a better state of morals. Our people have got beyond simply _believing_ and _feeling_; they wish to _do_ right, but they are gradually coming to acknowledge that man cannot _do_ right without _knowing_ what he ought to do, viz., what is right; and the best and wisest will confess that they do not know what they ought to do, and that they can see nothing in the future from whence they may expect to learn. Whether they will be content to review the evidences of Catholicity we know not. Many are doing so, but the intense worldliness of the day is not favorable to serious thought on the part, of the multitude. Should, however, the authority of true Christianity be revealed to, and accepted by, them, we may justly expect a development of the utmost significance in the history of the world. Catholicity not only preserves and restores the Christian truth of which men have been robbed by the heresies of the Reformation, but it preserves, sanctifies, and makes fruitful the natural goodness which remains in the individual, the race, and the nation. But above all things it applies those principles of natural justice and purity which are now so seriously jeopardized. An unjust man can console himself, when transmitting his dishonest gains to his descendants, by reflecting that he is to be justified by faith alone. This has been done to our certain knowledge, and doubtless every New Englander can recall similar cases. A man who admits the injustice of his transactions can find ways of forgetting his indebtedness. The fraudulent bankrupt can revel in the wealth of his wife and children. Even the thief who admits in the abstract the obligation of restoring that which he has stolen, without the assistance of the confessional is too apt to cling to that which he has once acquired. We want, first, to hear the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of restitution in the place of maudlin denunciation of “carnal righteousness.” We want to have it well understood that no amount of exalted emotion will relieve the guilty thief until he has handed over his ill-gotten goods. We do not say that the neglect of this doctrine is the cause of the special cases of corruption which come before our eyes; but we freely assert that the spread of dishonesty is due to nothing less than the ineptitude and fatuity of Protestantism in this respect.