rd from the dying lips of single girls, as well as of
married women, the awful words: "I am for ever lost! All my past
confessions and communions have been as many sacrileges! I have never dared
to answer correctly the questions of my confessors! Shame has sealed my
lips and damned my soul!"

How many times I remained as one petrified by the side of a corpse when,
these last words having hardly escaped the lips of one of my female
penitents, she was snatched out of my reach by the merciless hand of death,
before I could give her pardon through the deceitful sacramental
absolution! I then believed, as the dead sinner herself believed, that she
could not be forgiven except by that absolution.

For there are not only thousands, but millions, of Roman Catholic girls and
women whose keen sense of modesty and womanly dignity are above all the
sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They never can be
persuaded to answer "Yes" to certain questions of their confessors. They
would prefer to be thrown into the flames, and burnt to ashes with the
Brahmin widows, rather than to allow the eyes of a man to pry into the
sacred sanctuary of their souls. Though sometimes guilty before God, and
under the impression that their sins will never be forgiven if not
confessed, the laws of decency are stronger in their hearts than the laws
of their cruel and perfidious Church. No consideration, not even the fear
of eternal damnation, can persuade them to declare to a sinful man sins
which God alone has the right to know, for He alone can blot them out with
the blood of His Son shed on the cross.

But what a wretched life that of those exceptional noble souls, which Rome
keeps in the dark dungeons of her superstition! They read in all their
books, and hear from all their pulpits, that if they conceal a single sin
from their confessors they are for ever lost! But, being absolutely unable
to trample under their feet the laws of self-respect and decency which God
Himself has impressed in their souls, they live in constant dread of
eternal damnation. No human words can tell their desolation and distress
when, at the feet of their confessors, they find themselves between the
horrible necessity of speaking of things on which they would prefer to
suffer the most cruel death rather than to open their lips, or to be for
ever damned if they do not degrade themselves for ever in their own eyes by
speaking on matters which a respectable woman