The Church of the Parables

But you may ask me, Is there not an abundance of the spiritual bread of the word of God scattered all over the country? There is hardly a city or village throughout the land which does not open, every Sunday, three, four, or five different churches at the least to accommodate its inhabitants; and are there not hundreds of different religions to suit the most fastidious worshippers. Have we not Bible and Tract Societies, supported chiefly by the rich, which circulate annually millions of copies of the written word of God and religious instruction all over the States of this glorious Union? All! if these church edifices were to contain, not altal- against altar and teacher against teacher, but one and tho same altar of which the Apostle speaks when he says, "You have an altar of which those have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle"; and were our numerons teachers preaching the same doctrine of the one true faith originally handed down to the saints, speaking all the self-same thing, like the primitive Christians, who, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, had all tho same faith and the same baptism-not a different faith and a different or 110 baptism; were they all one, as Ohrist and the Father are one-not different churches, but all belonging to the one only true Church, established by Jesus Christ and His Apostles, one flock under one shepherd; had no one revolted, but all remained firm in the faith of Christ; were there no divisions, no schisms, no human opinion advanced as the substitute for truth; were the American people all living members of the one body of Jesus Christ, which is His visible Church, His visible Spouse, with a supreme visible head of her own, animated and guided by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth; if these numerous churches were not so many mutilated bodies without a head, so many scattered limbs without a trunk or soul; were they all united in offering to the eternal and undivided Trinity that "clean oblation" spoken of by the prophet Malachi-then would the sight of those edifices fill our hearts with holy joy and exultation; then would we hail them as scats of light and not of darkness, as sources of heavenly truth and not of pernicious errors, as tabernacles of God with men, and not as strongholds of the spirit of darkness, who falsifies the word of God and suggests his own inventions in its stead. o America! how much thou dost resemble in this respect pagan Rome, which thought, as St. Leo tells us, "it had adopted the greatest religion because it rejected no sort of falsehood." There was not an idol or a superstition in the whole empire which had not its temples and votaries in Rome. It was only when the Son of God made man sent His faithful Apostles to that city, to transform it from the chief sent of error into the chief seat of divine, heavenly truth, that hell rebelled, and, for the space of three hundred years, waged the most cruel persecution to uproot and destroy, if possible, the dawning light of the Gospel. But its efforts were fruitless; it was conquered, and this proud mistress of error became the bumble disciple of truth.