Before going further, however, let us call to mind two things.  Let us remember first, that if we expect to find a revelation at all, it is morally certain that it must be a revelation already in existence.  It is hardly possible, if we consider that all the supernatural claims that have been made hitherto are false, to expect that a new manifestation, altogether different in kind, is in store for the world in the future.  Secondly, our enquiries being thus confined to religions that are already in existence, what we are practically concerned with is the truth of Christianity only.  It is true that we have heard, on all sides, of the superiority of other religions to the Christian.  But the men who hold such language, though they may affect to think that such religions are superior in certain moral points, yet never dream of claiming for them the miraculous and supernatural authority that they deny to Christianity.  No man denies that Christ was born of a virgin, in order to make the same claim for Buddha:  or denies the Christian Trinity in order to affirm the Brahminic.  There is but one alleged revelation that, as a revelation, the progressive nations of the world are concerned with, or whose supernatural claims are still worthy of being examined by us:  and that religion is the Christian.  These claims, it is true, are being fast discredited; but still, as yet they have not been silenced wholly; and what I propose to ask now is, what chance is there of their power again reviving.

Now considering the way in which I have just spoken of Protestantism, it may seem to many that I have dismissed this question already.  With the ‘enlightened’ English thinker such certainly will be the first impression.  But there is one point that such thinkers all forget:  Protestant Christianity is not the only form of it.  They have still the form to deal with which is the oldest, the most legitimate, and the most coherent—­the Church of Rome.  They surely cannot forget the existence of this Church or her magnitude.  To suppose this would be to attribute to them too insular, or rather too provincial, an ignorance.  The cause, however, certainly is ignorance, and an ignorance which, though less surprising, is far deeper.  In this country the popular conception of Rome has been so distorted by our familiarity with Protestantism, that the true conception of her is something quite strange to us.  Our divines have exhibited her to us as though she were a lapsed Protestant sect, and they have attacked her for being false to doctrines that were never really hers.  They have failed to see that the first and essential difference which separates her from them lies, primarily not in any special dogma, but in the authority on which all her dogmas rest.  Protestants, basing their religion on the Bible solely, have conceived that Catholics of course profess to do so likewise; and have covered them with invective for being traitors to their supposed profession.