all minds and hearts, shall present itself. And this new principle will present itself. Men will not live always in a religious anarchy. The confusion of the transition-state, in which we now are, must end, and a new religious form be disclosed, which all will love and obey." The leading thought with the party with which we were ourselves associated was progress. We could, in the state to which Protestantism had reduced us, conceive no end for which man could exist but to perfect himself, or rather to be always perfecting himself (the Fourierists improve on this, and say his end is to perfect the globe and the universe), and we regarded every thing in its relation to this end. Adopting the doctrine of progress, we contended that all institutions should not only aid progress, but be themselves progressive; that, so long as progressive, any institution is true and sacred; and when fixed and stationary, the noblest institution becomes hurtful and wicked. Catholicity, we believed, had been, during its earlier period, progressive, and had marched with the race, gone on with the improvements of the age, and during that period it was truly and preeminently the Church of God; but, in process of time, it contracted, through some original vice inherent in its constitution, a fixed and stationary character, refusing to move, or to suffer its children to move. The Reformers saw this, rebelled against it, and broke away from its thraldom; but they established nothing in its place. The human race, however, advances only by means of institutions. A state of disorder, anarchy, dissolution, individualism, is a state, not of life, but of death. We cannot, then, accept the labors of the Reformers as final; as provisionary, as preliminary to something hereafter to be, we esteem them, and regard them as sacred; but we must go beyond them, do what the Reformers did not, organize a religion, found a religious institution, or a new church, which, while it contains the elements of order and authority, shall yet have the capability of indefinite expansion, of uninterrupted progress, by assimilating to itself whatever new thought, idea, discovery, or improvement, the race, or any portion of it, should suggest or bring forward. - Now here, if we mistake not, was a thought which went beyond Protestantism, and, in relation to it, a thought with its face Christian Examiner, Boston, Sept. 1834, pp. 68, 69. This extract shows that the writer, though well acquainted with Protestantism, totally misapprehended Catholicity. turned backward, not forward. The type was in what had been, and not, as we supposed, in the future; and so it proved in our individual case. We struggled individually for this new church, which, as it was to have the power of indefinite progress, of realizing constantly a higher and a higher ideal, we called "The Church of Union and Progress," "The Church of the Ideal," and "The Church of the Future"; and perhaps should be struggling for it now, had we not, one day, through the grace of God, chanced to make two rather important discoveries in mechanics,—namely, that there can be no motion where there is nothing at rest, and that a man cannot, as we have often repeated, lift himself up by his own waistbands. Strange as it may seem, these two notable discoveries wrought a complete revolution in our whole mode of theorizing, nay, put a stop to our theorizing, once for all, and made us look, in our own eyes, exceedingly foolish. If no motion without rest, then our new church can aid progress only in so far as itself shall be immovable. If it is movable, the race cannot be progressive by it, but it must be progressive by the race, and the progress of the race will still be to be provided for. Then either our church will be worthless under the relation of progress, or it must itself be immovable, founded upon a rock, able to defy all the wrath of man and all the rage of hell. Wonder we did not think of that before. If a man cannot lift himself up by his own waistbands, then the church, which, if he constructs it, can have no power but what he gives it, that is, no power but his own, will have no power to lift him from the condition he is in at the moment of constructing it. Then no progress by means of a man-made church. Unity multiplied by unity is unity. Man multiplied by himself is only man. From man you can get only man. The church, then, can, at best, be only man projected, or taking himself as his own multiple. Do our best, then, we can get in the church only what we are out of it, that is, only ourselves; and as ourselves ourselves, it is as plain as any thing in Daboll or Euclid, that we have with the church no power of progress which we have not without it. It is idle, then, to attempt to construct the new church. It must be constructed for us, and embody a power above ours, or it will avail nothing. Then the church, if it is to be at all, must be given us from above and be immovable; and if so given, all we have to do is to accept it and do what it bids us. Arrived here, what were we to do? Simply to ask whether Almighty God has abandoned us to our ignorance and utter helplessness, = or whether he has provided for our wants? Has he given us such a church? He has. Which is it? The Roman Catholic. Then seek admission into its communion. We did, were admitted, and found what we wanted, ready made to our hands, considerably better, we are inclined to think, than we could have made it. The great objection to the Transcendentalists is not in the motives by which they were governed, or the end they contemplated. They wished to get rid of infidelity, and to have a solid and imperishable basis for faith. But, born and bred in a Protestant community, they sought their end by means of the Protestant principle. Accepting the Protestant principle, they were obliged to accept the Protestant movement, and, accepting this, they were obliged to accept the infidel movement, which they all saw was part and parcel of the same. It is this fact that caused so much misapprehension in the public mind, and brought down upon them so much unmerited reproach. They believed infidelity, positively considered, the greatest of evils; but, provisionarily considered, it had been useful, inasmuch as it was not possible to attain to faith without passing through it. Voltaire and D'Holbach did but continue Luther and Calvin, and their incredulity was but an accident in their lives. The old Church was based on an external authority, which was wrong; or, if it was not wrong, the Reformers were unjustifiable in their revolt, and the glorious Reformation should be condemned and wept over, and not boasted. If the old Church was wrong, the new order must be founded on an internal, not an external, authority. The Reformers, however, while asserting this internal principle against Catholicity, had attempted to reorganize themselves on the principle of external authority, which was a double wrong; for it was to deny their own principle, and to accept what they held to be a false one. The French infidels, like the Reformers, broke away from Catholicity, but were too keen-sighted not to see the absurdity of Protestant communions affecting to be organized on the same principle. Nothing, then, remained for them but to reject all religion; for it was no gain to renounce the Pope, to come under the presbyter, or the Church, to come under a Presbyterian Assembly, a Genevan Consistory, or Dutch Classis, or even the civil tyrant. This provisional justification of infidelity was forced upon us by our Protestant principles, and the necessity we were in of vindicating the Reformers. There was no possible ground on which we could justify Luther, and Melancthon, and Calvin in leaving the Catholic Church, which would not be equally available for Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, and their associates and followers; and we could discover no possible reason any of them had or could have for separating from the communion of the Catholic Church, which would not be an equally strong reason for separating from any actually existing Protestant communion. If, as Protestantism taught us, the revolt of the Reformers sprang from what was good in them, and from what was bad in the Church, so did infidelity spring from what was good in the unbelievers, and from what was bad in the Church and the sects. If we accepted Protestantism as we did, we were obliged to lay down the maxim, that infidelity is a mark of love of truth and virtue, not of vice and error. Protestantism, not we, was answerable for this abominable maxim. the But, if we accepted infidelity as a necessary phase in the development of modern society, it was only to make an end of it. The first effort was to vindicate the Reformation, and to place ourselves in harmony with its principles, and then to derive from it the advantages we supposed it must conceal. But in this second labor there was, on all hands, an unconscious reaction against the very principle of the Reformation. We were all after faith,-in we knew not what, but still faith, power to affirm something, and something which belongs to the unseen world of spirit. We wished to attain to an affirmation that should be valid not only for us as individuals, but for all men and for all times,—something certain, absolute, which no one of a sane mind could question. This already concealed a revolt against the Protestant principle, for it was an aspiration to a catholic faith. But this affirmation could not be made on an individual authority. All felt and acknowledged it. A plain reaction this. But on what authority can it be made? Evidently only on a catholic or universal authority, an authority common to all individuals and independent of all. So all said. But what and where is this authority? We had all renounced all external authority, and therefore were obliged to seek it in the individual; and in the individual we sought it, thinking to find în the individual what is not individual; and we thought we did find it in the Impersonal Reason, as we and the Eclectics said after M. Cousin,-in the Impersonal Nature, as said the Transcendentalists proper. All that we and our immediate friends said of the "Impersonal or Objective Reason," of "Spontaneity," and all that Mr. Emerson and his friends and disciples - said of "Impersonal Nature," "Instinct," "Over-soul," the "One Man in all Men," was only so much theorizing in favor of an authority not individual, but catholic. It matters nothing to our present purpose that in this way we did not and could not get any thing but an individual authority, as is unquestionably true; it is enough for argument that there was an effort to get something more; for every such effort is manifestly an incipient reaction against the Protestant principle. Transcendentalism has just now in this community changed its phase. It now assumes the form of Fourierism. In Fourierism this incipient reaction is still more manifest. Its publications boldly denounce the Protestant principle, and carry their hostility to individualism so far as to annihilate the individual altogether. They even talk of unity and catholicity,explaining the terms, however, in a very uncatholic sense. Yet all this is a sign. It shows a reaction is going on against Protestantism, where, at first thought, we should least expect it, and where, as a matter of fact, Protestantism appears in its most hideous forms. The whole body of your come-outers and socialists are, in their own way, protesters against Protestantism, and, at bottom, seekers after something which is catholic, which is one, and not individual and multiple. We say, then, again, there is in this Transcendental movement not only a tendency to carry out Protestantism to its legitimate consequences, but the commencement of a movement in an opposite direction; and therefore we look upon the movement as an indication, a sign, that Protestantisin approaches the term of its existence. We have no occasion, at present, to point out the mistakes the Transcendentalists, under one form or another, fall into. We have already pointed out their mother mistake, that of supposing the institutions which are requisite for our redemption are to be created or can be created by man himself. We showed this is out of the question, in our Essay, No Church, No Reform, in our Review for April, 1844. The Church was instituted by Almighty God, and has never ceased to be in the world one moment since the fall of man, and redemption, in every sense desirable, is certain by obedience to it. The other grand mistake is in supposing that any internal authority can be a catholic authority; since what is internal must be taken on the authority of the individual reason, and therefore is only the authority of the individual reason. It must, then, be external, or not at all, If external, it must have a divinely prepared |