ught to live better than they can find out for
themselves, or he is nothing at all--he has no _raison d'etre_. If the
priest is not as much a healer and director of men's souls as a physician
is of their bodies, what is he? The history of all ages has shown--and
surely you must know this as well as I do--that as men cannot cure the
bodies of their patients if they have not been properly trained in
hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be cured of their
more hidden ailments without the help of men who are skilled in
soul-craft--or in other words, of priests. What do one half of our
formularies and rubrics mean if not this? How in the name of all that is
reasonable can we find out the exact nature of a spiritual malady, unless
we have had experience of other similar cases? How can we get this
without express training? At present we have to begin all experiments
for ourselves, without profiting by the organised experience of our
predecessors, inasmuch as that experience is never organised and
co-ordinated at all. At the outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin
many souls which could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary
principles."

Ernest was very much impressed.

"As for men curing themselves," continued Pryer, "they can no more cure
their own souls than they can cure their own bodies, or manage their own
law affairs. In these two last cases they see the folly of meddling with
their own cases clearly enough, and go to a professional adviser as a
matter of course; surely a man's soul is at once a more difficult and
intricate matter to treat, and at the same time it is more important to
him that it should be treated rightly than that either his body or his
money should be so. What are we to think of the practice of a Church
which encourages people to rely on unprofessional advice in matters
affecting their eternal welfare, when they would not think of
jeopardising their worldly affairs by such insane conduct?"

Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas had crossed his own
mind vaguely before now, but he had never laid hold of them or set them
in an orderly manner before himself. Nor was he quick at detecting false
analogies and the misuse of metaphors; in fact he was a mere child in the
hands of his fellow curate.

"And what," resumed Pryer, "does all this point to? Firstly, to the duty
of confession--the outcry against which is absurd as an outcry would be
against dissect