e of its necessary
conditions is promise of amendment.

The pagans of the first centuries were aware of the guiding and
reforming power of the confessional. Voltaire, the leading infidel of
the last century, one who made sport of everything Christian, says that
"there is, perhaps, no wiser institution, and that confession is an
excellent thing, a restraint upon inveterate crime, a very good practice
to prevent the guilty from falling into despair and relapsing into sin,
to influence hearts full of hate to forgive and robbers to make
restitution--that the enemies of the _Romish_ Church who have opposed so
beneficial an institution have taken from man the greatest restraint
that can be put upon crime." While his everyday experience forced these
words of praise from the arch-infidel, his hatred of the Church creeps
out in the word "Romish."

Confession of sin, as we have seen, is a _reasonable practice_, because
it was taught by Jesus Christ, and by His apostles and their successors
from Christ's time until the present; but _especially_ because it has
the power of soothing and pacifying the conscience by freeing it from
the torture of sin, the poison of crime. It is not strange, then, that
it is so dear to virtuous souls. It is offensive only to those whose
hearts are so hardened as to blunt the sting of remorse. Confession is
Christianity using its moral power to correct and perfect the
individual. In the confessional the minister of God is continually
coming in contact with hearts in which reigns an idol that he
overthrows, a bad practice that he causes to cease, or some injustice
that he has repaired.

Confession is one of the gates by which Christianity penetrates the
interior man, wipes away stains, heals diseases, and sows therein the
seeds of virtue. The lives and experience of millions are witness of the
truth of this. Is it not, then, a reasonable, a beneficial practice? It
is only the malicious or the ignorant who calumniate the practice and
the consecrated minister who sits in judgment in the sacred tribunal.
Those who lay aside their prejudice and study the question soon become
convinced of its divine origin. A little study and reflection will show
them that confession of sin benefits society by preventing crimes that
would destroy government, cause riots, and fill prisons; that it
promotes human justice, makes men better, nobler, purer, higher, and
more Godlike; that it soothes the sorrowful heart whose cri