The author of the article in the _Galaxy_ writes in the interest of Methodism. In its past successes and its present characteristics he beholds an omen of its ultimate supremacy over all other Christian bodies, if not over infidelity and rationalism itself. The _Churchman_, on the contrary, claims the laurels of this future victory for Protestant Episcopalianism--predicting that, through its inconsistency with republican institutions, the influence of the Catholic Church must eventually be destroyed; that Presbyterianism, being a growth of but three hundred years, and never yet attaining, or likely to attain to, the _semper, et ubique, et ab omnibus_ of mature and stalwart age, must soon decay; that Methodism, having lost its pure vitality when it departed from the sacred unity of "_Mother Church_" can never meet the needs of coming generations; he thence concludes, that the diminutive society once called the "_Protestant Episcopal_" but now rejoicing in the title of the "_Reformed Catholic_" Church, is to absorb into its bosom the teeming millions of this country, and become the guide and teacher of the Western continent.
The expections of these dreamers are well calculated to provoke a smile. While the great fact remains uncontradicted that the united strength of Protestant Christendom has failed to check the spread of irreligion in the bosom of modern society, while nearly every one of its denominations is struggling to maintain its present spiritual powers, it seems a time for humiliation rather than for boasting, for prayer and labor rather than for triumph. Far be it from us to discourage Christian hope, or snatch away from Christian zeal the vision of those future glories to which it should aspire. But the impression is strong upon our mind that such "_castles in the air_" as those to which we have referred, imply worse than time wasted in their building, and manifest an increase of that indolent consciousness of strength which, in communities as well as individuals, is the forerunner of a swift decay.
With this remark, we leave the thoughts suggested by the advocate of Methodism, and pass on to discuss the question raised by the assumptions of the _Churchman_, namely: