answered--"That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in
Thee, that they all may be one in Us, that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent Me." No one branch of the Church is absolutely by itself
alone the Catholic Church; all branches need reunion in order to the
completeness of the Church. There are blessed signs that the Holy
Spirit is quickening Christian hearts to seek for unity. We all know
that this divided Christianity cannot conquer the world. At a time when
every form of error and sin is banded together to oppose the kingdom of
Christ, the world needs the witness of a united Church. Men must hear
again the voice which peals through the lapse of centuries bearing
witness to the "faith once delivered to the saints," or else for many
souls there will be only rationalism and unbelief--while this sad, weary
world, so full of sin and sorrow, is pleading for help, it is a wrong to
Christ and to the souls for whom He died that His children should be
separated in rival folds. As baptised into Christ we are brothers.
Notwithstanding the hedges of human opinions which men have builded in
the garden of the Lord, all who look for salvation alone through faith
in Jesus Christ do hold the great verities of Divine faith. The
opinions which separate us are not necessary to be believed in order to
salvation. The truths in which we agree are parts of the Catholic
faith. The Holy Spirit has passed over these human barriers, and set
his seal to the labors of separated brethren in Christ, and rewarded
them in the salvation of many precious souls. The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the renewing and sanctifying influences of the Holy
Ghost are the same in the peasant in the cottage, and in the emperor on
the throne. They share with us in the long line of confessors and
martyrs for Christ. We would not rob them of one sheaf which they have
gathered in the garner of the Lord. We rejoice that Churches with a
like historic lineage with us are seeking reunion. Churches whose faith
has been dimmed by coldness or clouded by error are being quickened into