Verily, there is but one possible explanation, and that explanation is furnished us, by the words of the promise made by God-incarnate, viz., “Behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world” (Matt, xxviii. 20).  Yes, I, Who am “the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John i. 9), “will abide with you for ever, and will lead you into all truth” (John xvi. 13).

If but few persons, outside the Catholic Church, realise the force and import of these words, it is because few realise the absolute and irresistible power of Him Who gave them utterance.  With their lips they profess Christ to be God, but then, strange to relate, they proceed to reason and to argue, just as though He were merely man—­one, that is to say, Who, when He established His Church, did not consider nor bear in mind man’s weakness and fickleness, and who possessed no power to see the outcome of His own policy, nor the difficulties that it would engender, nor the future multiplication of the faithful, in every part of the world.  For, did He know and foresee all these things, He must have guarded against them; and this they practically deny, by continuing to associate themselves with churches where His promises are in no sense fulfilled, and where His most solemn pledges remain unredeemed.  We refer to those churches wherein there is no recognised infallible authority; in fact, nothing to protect their subjects from the inroads of the world, and from the faults and errors inseparable from the exercise of purely human and fallible reason.

Those, however, who can put aside such false notions, and awaken to the real facts, will find the truth growing luminous before their gaze.  History constrains them to admit that it was Christ Who established the Church, with its supreme head, and its various members.  But Christ is verily God; of the same nature, and one with the Father, and possessing the same divine attributes.  Now, since He is God, there is to Him no future, just as there is no past.  To him, all is equally present.  Hence, in establishing a Church, and in providing it with laws and a constitution, He did this, not tentatively, not experimentally, not in ignorance of man’s needs and weaknesses, and folly, but with a most perfect foreknowledge of every circumstance and event, actual and to come.  He spoke and ordered and arranged all things, with His eyes clearly fixed on the most remote ages, no less than on the present and the actual. We mortals write history after the characters have already lived and died, and when nations have already developed and run their course.  But with Christ, the whole history of man, his wars and his conquests, his vices and his virtues, his religious opinions and doctrines, had been already written and completed, down to the very last line of the very last chapter, an eternity before He assumed our nature and founded His Church.  It was with