Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/172

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its destinies that the two chief fields of its power and expansion should be the British Empire and the United States. In these two vast spheres of intense intellectual activity and vehement energy of will, an episcopate of a hundred and seventy Bishops rules over missionary churches the most united, vigorous, and prolific to be found in the whole world. I do not know how others may have regarded the assembly of the Anglican Bishops of England and America two years ago. Something may indeed have invited the criticism as much of their own flocks as of others. But to me it was a subject of hope. It was an explicit evidence of the desire for unity which is working in various ways on every side. They, no doubt, desired to confine that union within their own system; but they felt that the insular narrowness of England is not enough. They invited America and the colonies to bear a part. This alone proved a wider desire and a higher aspiration, which such an assembly can never satisfy. It gave a great impulse to those who have been praying for reunion. They do not fear to declare that America and Australia are not enough without Catholic Europe; and that even Constantinople is not enough without Rome. These ideas have been scattered broadcast; and where they have lighted they have infused desires and prayers in myriads of hearts up and down in England and throughout the Anglican system, which nothing can extinguish, nothing can stay. They will work on in silence with a potency which is not of man only, preparing for a time when those who are separate from the only unity of Divine foundation will be irresistibly absorbed by its supernatural power and grace.