tempt to improve upon the work of God?
Is it not ridiculous for the Luthers, the Calvins, the Knoxes and the
Henries and a thousand lesser lights to be offering their amendments to
the Constitution of the Church, as if it were a human Institution?

Our Lord Himself has never ceased to rule personally over His Church. It
is time enough for little men to take charge of the Ship when the great
Captain abandons the helm.

A Protestant gentleman of very liberal education remarked to me, before
the opening of the late Ecumenical Council: "I am assured, sir, by a
friend, in confidence, that, at a secret Conclave of Bishops recently held
in Rome it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would
be reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council; in fact,
that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be
repaired in 1869." I told him, of course, that no such question could be
entertained in the Council; that the doctrinal decrees of the Church were
irrevocable, and that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined
once and forever.

If only one instance could be given in which the Church ceased to teach a
doctrine of faith which had been previously held, that single instance
would be the death blow of her claim to infallibility. But it is a
marvelous fact worthy of record that in the whole history of the Church,
from the nineteenth century to the first, no solitary example can be
adduced to show that any Pope or General Council ever revoked a decree of
faith or morals enacted by any preceding Pontiff or Council. Her record in
the past ought to be a sufficient warrant that she will tolerate no
doctrinal variations in the future.

If, as we have seen, the Church has authority from God to teach, and if
she teaches nothing but the truth, is it not the duty of all Christians to
hear her voice and obey her commands? She is the organ of the Holy Ghost.
She is the Representative of Jesus Christ, who has said to her: "He that
heareth you heareth Me; he that despiseth you despiseth Me." She is the
Mistress of truth. It is the property of the human mind to embrace truth
wherever it finds it. It would, therefore, be not only an act of
irreverence, but of sheer folly, to disobey the voice of this
ever-truthful Mother.

If a citizen is bound to obey the laws of his country, though these laws
may not in all respects be conformable to strict justice; if a child is
bound by natural