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Show BISHOP POTTER AND FATHER FRANCIS. So far as 1 know, I never heard of Father Francis James Paul. Henry C. Potter, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York. New York World, Feb. lt. At (iarrison. on the Hudson, almost in sight of Xew York City, there dwells and has dwelt for .some years an Anglican clergyman. Ten minutes' walk from his humble home there is an unpretentious unpreten-tious group of frame buildings, a convent, a shrine and a chapel. These buildings and that of the clergyman overlook the historic Hudson and lie ! within a region made romantic by the imagination of Washington Irving. They are owned and occupied by an Anglican Sisterhood, known as the ''Sisters of the Atonement." Atone-ment." who observe the rule of the benign Francis of Assisiurn, the saint of tenderness, pity and human hu-man pathos. Their life is a life of mortification, of prayer, of chastity and Christian toil. For the love of God and man and hope of the Beatific . -( ision 'these ladies have by solemn promise pledged themselves "to do all the good they can, in all the ways they can. and to whomsoever they can," till 'he last breath is spent and the soul departs for the judgment seat of Christ. Bishop Potter has never heard of them. The spiritual director and chaplain to this pious community is the Reverend or as he is lovingly lov-ingly addressed by those who are privileged to know him as a friend and counselor Father Francis lames Paul. He, too, is a Franciscan, committed ' by vow to the counsels of perfection, to celibacy, ' poverty, obedience. If loyalty to the rule, framed by the lovable St. Francis, leads to sanctity. Father Francis has entered upon the path to perfection. I But, he is something more than a pious Fran- -iscan; he possesses talent of a high order, which I . he has sedulously trained and developed by medi- 1 talion and study, until today he is acknowledged to I stand in the front rankf the men of intellect and I erudition in the Episcopal church of the- United States. Last January, we reviewed in these col- umns his "Prince of the Apostles," a work remark- I I able for research and trenchant logic. In February, 1903, Father Paul, with admirable admira-ble courage and the hope of Divine help, entered upon the publication of the "Lamp." which is now recognized as ihe ablest exponent in America of Conservative Anglicanism. Its motto is, "Ut omnes unum sint (that we all may be one). From the opening number until now we have not found .a solitary sentence insulting, or even derogatory derog-atory to the faith of Catholics. Where the Lamp takes issue with us, the controversy is lifted unto the plane of the scholar and the gentleman. J n this admirable publication the editor appeals, month after month, to his co-religionists to take counsel with each other and to unite in protest against the traitors in the camp who are wrecking the historic Episcopal or Anglican church. With the intuition of a military strategist he marshal's his proofs and delivers his attacks on the Chicago Quadrilateral, the Richmond convention and the free and easy religion of many of the bishops and ministers which, he contends, make for the ruin of the dogmatic life of the Episcopal church. He foretells the descent of the church into heretical slime, and. as an alternative between the infalli- Ibility of Rome and heretical absorption or the negation ne-gation of positive Christianity, he plead$ for a return to the faith of the fathers and chooses apos-f apos-f folic Christianity, as represented by the supreme I Pontiff. He stands for the Anglo-Roman Catholi- cism of the pre-reformation days in England. And this is the man of whonilhe Protestant j . . "'- , Episcopal bishop of Xew York never heard. Like Brutus, the bishop is "an honorable man," and we have not the right to doubt the accuracy of his statement. Still, if the bishop's deafness' be not beyond human aid, he should consult an aurist, or possibly he may not, on the Day of Judgment, hear the invitation of Our Lord to "the Blessed oi my Father" to "enter into the joy of the Lord." It is passing strange that the Right Rev. Father in (jodcould hear and accept an invitation to assist at the opening of a saloon or hotel in his own city and yet not hear of thex"Lamp." or its editor, who is doing so much in his own or a neighboring diocese dio-cese to save the tottering building, which gives spiritual shelter to the bishop, from crashing into the Unitarian and heretical homes around him. And now, it may be asked why Father Paul and theT.OOO within the Episcopal church. who have not fallen down before the statue of Baal, do not follow-to follow-to its logical end the guiding principle embodied in the motto of the "Lamp:"; "That we all may be one." Why do they not enter into the Ark, the Holy Roman church, mother of all churches,-and of all the faithful, the church God has chosen to unite his children in the same faith and in the same charity and in the same oneness We do not know. We can only repeat with St. Paul. "For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the I spirit of man that is in him ( So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the spirit of God." Why Manning, Newman, Frederick Oakley, Oak-ley, Faber, Dalgairns and so many others of the Anglican church entered the Ark of the Covenant, and Hurrel, Froude, Keble, Pusey, Wilberforce and their companions of unblemished lives and vast learning, paused at the gangplank and turned aside is to us a mystery. The spirit of God breathed where he wills and it is not for us to search the inscrutable. Of the good faith, the honesty, the clean lives of men like Father Paul we harbor no doubt. But they are not welcome where they are; they disturb the spiritual sleep of" their religious brothers, but do not wake them, and, may we say reverently, cannot. We have said that Father Paul has entered the road of perfection. May we remind re-mind him that the road ends at the Vatican ( |