Throughout this century the Roman Church has desired and sought by all
practical means the restoration of the former unity of Christendom.
Each succeeding Pope has appealed to the ancient but separated Churches
of the Orient, reminding them of the past oneness and the need of union
with that see which all their records proclaim the rock and centre of
unity. Similarly, appeals have been issued to the divided Christian
communities of the West, as when Pius IX. wrote to the members of
the Protestant world before the Vatican Council, and when Leo XIII.
lately addressed his famous encyclical on the Unity of the Church to
all men of good will within the Anglican pale. Such efforts may seem
perfunctory; but they have in our eyes a deep meaning. They proclaim
the doctrine of unity that is clearer than the noonday sun from the
teachings of Jesus; they make a first step in the direction of its
restoration; they keep alive the spirit of charity in many hearts, and
they stir up countless prayers for the consummation of an end that
few believing Christians any longer consider unnecessary. Already
the canker-worms of doubt and indifference are gnawing at those last
foundations of the old inherited Christian religious beliefs that still
worked beneficently outside the pale of Catholic unity, but are now
disappearing from the public consciousness because, too often, they
are no longer elements of private conviction. In the realm of faith,
as in that of nature, there is an after-glow, when the central sun has
spent its force; but in both that glow is the herald of coldness and
darkness. To those who no longer allow in their hearts any Christian
belief, Catholicism has strongly appealed in the nineteenth century
by its teachings on the right use of reason in matters of faith, the
claims of religion on the mind and the heart of man, the benefits of
Christianity, and its superiority over all other forms of religion—in
a word, by the constant exposé of all the motives of credibility
which could affect a sane and right mind that had divested itself of
prejudice and passion.