good
understanding with the Greek and Eastern Churches; and we are aiming at
sending out bishops to distant places, where they must come in contact
with foreign communions and though the extreme vagueness, indecision,
and confusion, in which our theological and ecclesiastical notions at
present lie, will be almost sure to involve us in certain mistakes and
extravagances, yet it would be un-thankful to "despise the day of small
things," and not to recognize in these movements a hopeful stirring of
hearts, and a religious yearning after something better than we have.
But not to dwell unduly on these public manifestations of a Catholic
tendency, we should all recollect that a restoration of intercommunion
with other Churches is, in a certain sense, in the power of individuals.
Every one who desires unity, who prays for it, who endeavors to further
it, who witnesses for it, who behaves Christianly toward the members of
Churches alienated from us, who is at amity with them, (saving his duty
to his own communion and to the truth itself,) who tries to edify them,
while he edifies himself and his own people, may surely be considered,
as far as he himself is concerned, as breaking down the middle wall of
the division, and renewing the ancient bonds of unity and concord by the
power of charity. Charity can do all things for us; charity is at once a
spirit of zeal and peace; by charity we shall faithfully protest against
what our private judgment warrants us in condemning in others; and by
charity we have it in our own hands, let all men oppose us, to restore
in our own circle the intercommunion of the Churches.

There is only one quarter from which a cloud can come over us, and
darken and bewilder our course. If, _nefas dictu_, our Church is by any
formal acts rendered schismatical, while Greek and Roman idolatry
remains not of the Church, but in it merely, denounced by Councils,
though admitted by authorities of the day,--if our own communion were to
own itself Protestant, while foreign communions disclaimed the
superstition of which they are too tolerant,--if the profession of
Ancient Truth were to be persecuted in our Church, and its teachings
forbidden,--then doubtless, for a season, Catholic minds among us would
be unable to see their way.

LESLIE STEPHEN.

BORN 1832.

AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING.

BY LESLIE STEPHEN.

All who would govern their intellectual course by no other aim than the
discovery of