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For is She not that Church which Gladstone himself calls, "the most famous of Christian communions, and the one within which the largest numbers of Christian souls find their spiritual food!" The Catholic Church sees in this movement of Church-Union the complete disintegration of Protestantism and the open condemnation of its fundamental principles.

Henry IV.'s first wife, the sprightly and too facile Marguerite de Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend from the throne in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de' Medici. The Catholic champion whom Henry IV. felicitated himself upon being able to oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences between the two communions, Cardinal de Perron, was at the point of death.

Many of these persons resort to other communions, because they are too honest to compromise with conscience; because they cannot see these questions in the light in which their own churches present them; and rather than go to God’s altars with even an implied falsehood upon their consciences, or embrace the alternative of remaining outside of Christ’s fold, they will sever life-long ties, entwined with some of their dearest and tenderest recollections, and go alone with their conscience and their God to altars where no such tests are imposed.

They made it, therefore, their principal business, to persuade those, whose spirits were inflamed with the heat of controversy, that the points in debate between the two churches, were not essential, to true religion; that the fundamental doctrines, of Christianity, were received, and professed, in both communions; and that the difference of opinion, between the contending parties, turned, either upon points of an abstruse, and incomprehensible nature, or upon matters of indifference, which neither tended, to make mankind wiser, or better, and in which the interests of genuine piety, were in no wise concerned.

Both these organizations had to give way to the great wave of religious enthusiasm which swept the section early in the nineteenth century. Baptist and Methodist missionaries, many of them unlettered but vigorous and powerful, went into the remotest districts and swept the population into their communions. They preached a narrow, strait-laced, Old Testament religion, but it went deep.

No lady in this world could have such a white and rosy face, with a beauty so akin to that of the Virgins on the picture-cards given to children at their first communions. And it was strange that the eglantine of the Grotto did not even hurt her adorable bare feet blooming with golden flowers. Pierre, however, at once proceeded to recount the other apparitions.

That the divers communions of the earth, and the manifold systems of religious belief, should never be allowed to foster the feelings of animosity among men, is, in this Day, of the essence of the Faith of God and His Religion. These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems, have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light.

These beings gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of bodies politic and associations, which is often so different from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and communions. I thought these assemblages had their life in certain unseen Powers.

We must recognise, and this is a truth of experience, our complete inability to attain this without Him. That will, and that recognition, are the repentance and faith which constitute the necessary contribution on our part to the work of Christ for our salvation. Our Communions are the most important moments in our lives.

Some of the cardinals objected to the orthodoxy of Ivan III.; but the pope replied that it was by condescension and kindness alone that they could hope to open the eyes of one spiritually blind; a sentiment which it is to be regretted that the court of Rome and also all other communions have too often ignored. On the 1st of June the princess was sacredly affianced in the church of St.