re is none
more arduous or more irksome than that of hearing confessions. If I may
make a revelation of my own life, I deferred receiving Holy Orders for two
years, from a sense of the dread responsibility connected with the
confessional. It is no trifling task to sit for six or eight consecutive
hours on a hot summer day, listening to stories of sin and sorrow and
misery. It is only the consciousness of the immense good he is doing that
sustains the confessor in the sacred tribunal. He is one "who can have
compassion on the ignorant and erring, because he himself is also
encompassed with infirmity."(468)

I have seen the man whose conscience was weighed down by the accumulated
sins of twenty winters. Upon his face were branded guilt and shame,
remorse and confusion. There he stood by the confessional, with downcast
countenance, ashamed, like the Publican, to look up to heaven. He glided
into the little mercy-seat. No human ear will ever learn what there
transpired. The revelations of the confessional are a sealed book.

But during the brief time spent in the confessional a resurrection
occurred more miraculous than the raising of Lazarus from the tomb--it was
the resurrection from the grave of sin of a soul that had long lain
worm-eaten. During those precious moments a ray from heaven dispelled the
darkness and gloom from that self-accuser's mind. The genial warmth of the
Holy Spirit melted his frozen heart, and the purifying influence of the
same Spirit that came on the Apostles, "like a mighty wind from heaven,"
scattered the poisonous atmosphere in which he lived and filled his soul
with Divine grace. When he came out there was quickness in his step, joy
on his countenance, a new light in his eye. Had you asked him why, he
would have answered: "Because I was lost, and am found. Having been dead,
I am come to life again."(469)

II. On The Relative Morality Of Catholic And Protestant Countries.

It has been gravely asserted that the confession of sin and the doctrine
of absolution tend to the spread of crime and immorality. Statistics are
produced to show that murder and illegitimate births are largely in excess
in countries under Catholic influence, and that this prevalence of
wickedness is the _result of confession and easy absolution_.

If our system of absolving those only who both repent and _confess_ leads
to laxity of morals, how much more must the Protestant system, which omits
that which is most h