inst statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the
prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has
no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance
with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.

There are therefore Scribes in all ages--Romish Scribes, who
distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its
appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who
have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain
methods of appeasing him--a certain price--in consideration of which
He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the
distinction between the different kinds of faith--faith historical and
faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat
the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as
bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the
work that _may_ and the work that may _not_ be done on the
Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the
workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual
experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you
a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as
the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in
their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.

Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded,
despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the
slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it
well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:
Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this
way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at
last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon
astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be
borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and
absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.

With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have
ceased to front the _living fact_--we are as zealous as Scribes and
Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature,
oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real
and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on
protests against