its vision of the future as chimerical and positively deceitful. The
fundamental verities that constitute its doctrine its foolish ill-wishers
have represented as a cloak of idle dogma, its administrative machinery
they have refused to differentiate from the soul of the Faith itself, and
the mysteries it reveres and upholds they have identified with sheer
superstition. The principle of unification which it advocates and with
which it stands identified they have misconceived as a shallow attempt at
uniformity, its repeated assertions of the reality of supernatural
agencies they have condemned as a vain belief in magic, and the glory of
its idealism they have rejected as mere utopia. Every process of
purification whereby an inscrutable Wisdom chose from time to time to
purge the body of His chosen followers of the defilement of the
undesirable and the unworthy, these victims of an unrelenting jealousy
have hailed as a symptom of the invading forces of schism which were soon
to sap its strength, vitiate its vitality, and complete its ruin.

Dearly-beloved friends! It is not for me, nor does it seem within the
competence of any one of the present generation, to trace the exact and
full history of the rise and gradual consolidation of this invincible arm,
this mighty organ, of a continually advancing Cause. It would be premature
at this early stage of its evolution, to attempt an exhaustive analysis,
or to arrive at a just estimate, of the impelling forces that have urged
it forward to occupy so exalted a place among the various instruments
which the Hand of Omnipotence has fashioned, and is now perfecting, for
the execution of His divine Purpose. Future historians of this mighty
Revelation, endowed with pens abler than any which its present-day
supporters can claim to possess, will no doubt transmit to posterity a
masterly exposition of the origins of those forces which, through a
remarkable swing of the pendulum, have caused the administrative center of
the Faith to gravitate, away from its cradle, to the shores of the
American continent and towards its very heart--the present mainspring and
chief bulwark of its fast evolving institutions. On them will devolve the
task of recording the history, and of estimating the significance, of so
radical a revolution in the fortunes of a slowly maturing Faith. Theirs
will be the opportunity to extol the virtues and to immortalize the memory
of those men and women who have participate