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and will come for assistance, which of course the Parson cannot give him unless he states what his difficulty is; that is to say, confesses his sin. Therefore we do urge him, and we should not be acting up to our duty if we did not urge him, that "if by this means he cannot quiet his own conscience, but requireth further help or counsel, he should come to us or to some other minister whom he may prefer, and open his grief."

For this reason we should not do well to put any check on other priests preparing our young parishioners for Confirmation. It is a preparation of conscience, and, according to the analogy of the Prayer Book, the penitent has a perfect right to select his spiritual assistant. A Priest would be very wrong to put himself forward in another man's parish, and to disturb another man's parochial arrangements; but he ought not to refuse such an office if pressed upon him, nor ought the parish Priest to refuse tickets for Confirmation to such catechumens, unless he has any other reasons for so doing.

There is a popular prejudice against the word, Auricular Confession, and this act of discipline is confounded, frequently from ignorance, much more frequently from design, with the Romish doctrine bearing the same name.

Whatever they may be in name or in theory, in practice no two things can be more essentially different, and the difference lies in this, that, in the Church of England, Auricular Confession is not of necessity private, and can never be compulsory. The Parson certainly would exclude from Confirmation an open and notorious evil liver, just as he would exclude such a person from Communion; but as he cannot take upon himself to forbid from either, one who does not choose to open his conscience to him, but must in that case be satisfied with a general warning on the consequences of unrepented sin, so under no assignable circumstances can Confession be other than a matter of the freest choice.

Neither is Confession, even though it be auricular, necessarily private. It will very frequently be so, because the catechumen himself will prefer it, and, except in very particular cases, the Parson has no right to object to this.

But it is not so of necessity; Confession may very properly be made in the presence of a witness; most properly, in the case of a catechumen preparing for Confirmation, in the presence of a sponsor. It may be made even through a sponsor in the absence of the penitent, if it be made with the penitent's consent.

It is the custom among popular lecturers and declaimers to represent Confession as a system of questioning on the Seventh Commandment, and, in support of this view, liberal quotations are made from Romish authors. What may be the practice of the Church of Rome, it is of little consequence for us to inquire. In that of the Church of England, the Seventh Commandment, from its very nature, occupies a much smaller portion of the subject than any of the others. Still, it is quite certain, that instances will occur under this head, in one or other of the catechumens, in every Confirmation; and it is equally certain that that sin, which is just as deadly as any other, may not be passed over from motives of false delicacy.

But here, more especially, the system of sponsors comes into play, and sponsors in this case imply parents also. No doubt the Parson will, from time to time, be compelled to hear cases privately, because, if his penitents object to the presence of another person, even a sponsor, they have a perfect right to do so; and his male penitents frequently will object, and now and then his female penitents also, though very seldom, if the case be rightly set before them. In that case, he has but to pray GoD for grace to direct him to hear and to advise, and then to do it according to the best of his judgment; but as a rule he will do well to hear all such matters in the presence of a sponsor, not only for his own sake, but because the sponsor, being a parent or a near relation, will be a more perpetual check against any subsequent relapse in the penitent, than the Parson could possibly be himself, and will have derived from this participation in the act of Confession a spiritual authority, a sort of domestic delegation of the priesthood, which he did not possess before.

People who lecture and declaim against Confession are generally themselves very indifferent Christians, to whom

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this discipline, were it generally admitted to be necessary, would be a grievous burden. By their opposition to the whole system of voluntary confession, that is to say, the confession of other people, they bear unwilling testimony to the truth of the doctrine. No man is asked to confess if he does not like it; and, therefore, no man could possibly object to his neighbour, who does like it, making a voluntary confession, unless he felt in his heart that his neighbour's confession was a tacit reproof to himself.

These men naturally enough represent Confession as a grievous burden imposed by ambitious and tyrannical Priests upon their flocks, which burden it is the duty of all who compassionate these poor people, and would resist priestly usurpation, to help them to throw off. But the fact is, those who practise it themselves do not regard it as a burden at all, but as a privilege. They consider it a blessing (as, indeed, it is very natural that they should,) that they possess an adviser, whose sole business it is to study the Will of GOD, and whose duty it is to advise them whenever they think they want advice.

I should say myself, that among those who are in any way anxious for their soul's welfare, the difficulty is not to get them to confess, but, to prevent them from throwing the whole responsibility in every little case of doubt upon their Parson, instead of exercising their own judgment upon it; and that it is a point on which the Parson will very frequently have to exercise his discretion, whether, in a given case, he ought to encourage the desire of Confession, or to repress it.

There is no doubt but that when God gave to men a reason and a judgment, enlightened by the HOLY GHOST, He gave them that gift in order that they should use it themselves, and that they are not doing their duty to GoD when they permit His gifts to lie idle, thus suffering other men's judgment to work for them. Nevertheless, it is extremely natural, and, when not carried to excess, absolutely warranted by Scripture, that they should seek the advice of those in whom they have confidence. So far from men being driven to Confession, the fact is, that, wherever their privilege is fairly set before them, and pro

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perly explained to them, they seek it to an extent that is not only burdensome to the Priest, but sometimes even injurious to themselves.

But if this is the case with penitents generally, very much more is it the case with those catechumens who have grown up in the parish in which they are now to be confirmed. Most of these have but lately left school, where they have been accustomed to look forward to the Parson's periodical visits and weekly examinations with pleasure. They have been accustomed to refer to him their school grievances and childish difficulties; besides being the author of their school festivities and pleasures, he has been their supreme court of appeal, and they generally leave school with an exaggerated idea of their Parson's power and benevolence.

With such ideas, it is most natural that, when reason begins to awake, and they begin to feel for the first time the reality and danger of their sins and spiritual hindrances, that they should come for advice and relief in those weightier matters to him who has been their adviser and support in their childish difficulties.

This feeling will gradually wear away, and so it should; it will wear away in proportion as they have accustomed themselves or have been led by the instructions of their Parson to make use of their own judgment, but the natural feeling of childhood is reliance on others, and in this particular case the feeling is strengthened by habit. As they grow up to manhood, the Parson will himself encourage the growing feeling of self-responsibility, by calling upon them to decide for themselves whenever he thinks them capable of so doing; for the well-known school axiom, that "the lesson which the pupil has taught himself is of ten times the value of that which he has learnt from any other person," runs through the entire life of man. But he must be very cautious about beginning this lesson while he is preparing them for Confirmation, for this evident reason, however much their judgment is to be trusted in after life on the ordinary and usual occasions in which it is called forth, it is not to be trusted then, because to one just emerging from childhood every occasion he meets with is new and unusual.

H

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It is perfectly evident that such preparation as this must have been begun long before the notice of Confirmation. Before people, old or young, will come to their Parson on such subjects as these, their Parson must have earned their confidence, they must have been already accustomed to talk with him, and they must be already quite sure that he will sympathise with and enter into their difficulties. When Confession is considered as a duty, and Absolution is not to be had without it, as in the Roman Church, people go to it as a duty, and think but little of the personal character of the Priest to whom they confess. But when, as in our Church, Confession is a privilege, and the general absolution may be applied by each penitent for himself to the remission of his own remembered sins, people will not go to Confession unless they feel at home with him to whom they are confessing. There is a natural shyness, particularly from inferiors in social station towards those to whom they are in the habit of looking up as their superiors, and until they are accustomed to make their little confidences to their Parson about things of this world, they will not feel that he can sympathise with them in the temptations affecting their interests in the world to come. To be a Romish Father Confessor is easy, but before a man can become an English Father Confessor, his people must have learned to look upon him somewhat in the light of a father.

There is no criterion of a Parson's work so infallible as this. Men will not talk of their spiritual difficulties to one who has not evidenced to them his spiritual character, nor will they talk of their difficulties at all to one who has not shown himself their consistent and disinterested friend. Popularity and overflowing congregations go for very little, these things are generally tributes to intellectual superiority, not to faithfulness or moral worth. When people confess voluntarily, they must have confidence in him to whom they confess,-when people seek sympathy, they seek it where they have been in the habit of finding it,-and when they want spiritual direction, they go, not to the popular preacher, but to the man of GOD. Other tests may be fallacious, this is infallible;