harmonize Christianity with itself. If, then, the United
States have a political destiny, they have a religious destiny
inseparable from it.

The political destiny of the United States is to conform the state to
the order of reality, or, so to speak, to the Divine Idea in creation.
Their religious destiny is to render practicable and to realize the
normal relations between church and state, religion and politics, as
concreted in the life of the nation.

In politics, the United States are not realizing a political theory of
any sort whatever. They, on the contrary, are successfully refuting
all political theories, making away with them, and establishing the
state--not on a theory, not on an artificial basis or a foundation laid
by human reason or will, but on reality, the eternal and immutable
principles in relation to which man is created. They are doing the
same in regard to religious theories. Religion is not a theory, a
subjective view, an opinion, but is, objectively, at once a principle,
a law, and a fact, and, subjectively, it is, by the aid of God's grace,
practical conformity to what is universally true and real. The United
States, in fulfilment of their destiny, are making as sad havoc with
religious theories as with political theories, and are pressing on with
irresistible force to the real or the Divine order which is expressed
in the Christian mysteries, which exists independent of man's
understanding and will, and which man can neither make nor unmake.

The religious destiny of the United States is not to create a new
religion nor to found a new church. All real religion is catholic, and
is neither new nor old, but is always and everywhere true. Even our
Lord came neither to found a new church nor to create a new religion,
but to do the things which had been foretold, and to fulfil in time
what had been determined in eternity. God has himself founded the
church on catholic principles, or principles always and everywhere real
principles. His church is necessarily catholic, because founded on
catholic dogmas, and the dogmas are catholic, because they are
universal and immutable principles, having their origin and ground in
the Divine Being Himself, or in the creative act by which He produces
and sustains all things. Founded on universal and immutable
principles, the church can never grow old or obsolete, but is the
church for all times and Places, for all ranks and conditions of men.
Man cannot c