what they were writing; that they did not
mean to say that a child was not to confess its sins to God direct; that
it was not to confess its sins, at the age of six, to its mother, or to
its father, but was only to have recourse to the priest. But the
words, to say the least of them, are rash. Then comes the very obvious
question:

"'Do you know why? It is because God, when he was on earth, gave to
his priests, and to them alone, the Divine Power of forgiving men their
sins. It was to priests alone that Jesus said: "Receive ye the Holy
Ghost." . . . Those who will not confess will not be cured. Sin is a
terrible sickness, and casts souls into hell.'

"That is addressed to a child six years of age.

"'I have known,' the book continues, 'poor children who concealed their
sins in confession for years; they were very unhappy, were tormented
with remorse, and if they had died in that state they would certainly
have gone to the everlasting fires of hell.'" . . .

Now here is something against nature, something that I have seen time
after time in the faces and bearing of priests and heard in their
preaching. It is a distinct lust. Much nobility and devotion there are
among priests, saintly lives and kindly lives, lives of real worship,
lives no man may better; this that I write is not of all, perhaps not
of many priests. But there has been in all ages that have known
sacerdotalism this terrible type of the priest; priestcraft and priestly
power release an aggressive and narrow disposition to a recklessness of
suffering and a hatred of liberty that surely exceeds the badness of any
other sort of men.

8. THE CHILDREN'S GOD

Children do not naturally love God. They have no great capacity for
an idea so subtle and mature as the idea of God. While they are still
children in a home and cared for, life is too kind and easy for them to
feel any great need of God. All things are still something God-like. . . .

The true God, our modern minds insist upon believing, can have no
appetite for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for
the attention of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who
dream of glory in the nursery, who love to hear it said, "The children
adore him." If children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and
mutual forbearance, they will be ready for the true God as their needs
bring them within his scope. They should be left to their innocence, and
to their trust in the inn