she must fight the battle of life and conquer? Are not this mutual and
daily sharing of the anxieties of life, this constant shouldering on the
battle-field, and this reciprocal and mutual protection and help renewed at
every hour of the day, which form, under the eyes and by the mercy of God,
the holiest and the purest charms of the married life? Is it not that
unreserved confidence in each other which binds together those golden links
of Christian love that make them happy in the very midst of the trials of
life? Is it not through this mutual confidence alone that they are _one_ as
God wants them to be _one_? Is it not in this unity of thoughts, fears and
hopes, joys and love, which come from God, that they can cheerfully cross
the thorny valley, and safely reach the Promised Land?

The Gospel says that the husband is to his wife what Christ is to His
Church! Is it not, then, a most sacrilegious iniquity for a wife to look to
another rather than to her own husband for such advice, wisdom, strength,
and life, as he is entitled, qualified, and ready to afford? As no other
has the right to her love, so no other man has any right to her absolute
confidence. As she becomes an adulteress the day that she gives her body to
another man, is she any the less an adulteress, the day that she gives her
confidence and trusts her soul to a stranger? The adultery of the heart and
soul is not less criminal than the adultery of the body; and every time the
wife goes to the feet of the priest to confess, does she not become guilty
of that iniquity?

In the Church of Rome, through the confessional, the priest is much more
the husband of the wife than the man to whom she was wedded at the foot of
the altar. The priest has the best part of the wife. He has the marrow,
when the husband has the bones. He has the juice of the orange, the husband
has the rind. He has the soul and the heart; the husband has the skeleton.
He has the honey; the husband has the wax cell. He has the succulent
oyster; the husband has the dry shell. As much as the soul is higher than
the body, so much are the power and privileges of the priest higher than
the power and privileges of the husband in the mind of the penitent wife.
As the husband is the lord of the body which he feeds, so the priest is the
lord of the soul, which he also feeds. The wife, then, has two lords and
masters, whom she must love, respect, and obey. Will she not give the best
part of her love, re