The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

—THE CONFESSIONAL.4G3ciety through the sides of woman. Nothing coukl moropowerfully tend to barbarize mankind. It deprives youthof its most persuasive instructor ; its robs home of its chiefattraction and its most endearing pleasure;* and it deprivessociety of that strong though secret guard which consistsin the delicacy, refinement, and purity of woman.How rankly soever the passions shoot up beneath theshade of Popery, the domestic affections refuse to flourishin its neighbourhood. The confessional works sad havoc infamilies. We do not allude to the grosser pollutions andcrimes to which it often leads, but to the fatal blight it inflictsupon the affections. Happy, guileless, unsuspectingyouth becomes prematurely thoughtful ;for persons of tenderyears are dragged into the confessional,— "the slaughterhouseof conscience,"" as it has with justice been termed,and are there doomed to listen to what must pollute, revolt,and shock them. Like a biting frost upon the early bud,so are the questionings of the confessor upon the warmsympathies of youth : these sympathies become dwarfedand stunted for life. Dreadful images of crime are mixedup with the earliest associations and amusements of theperson, which not unfrequently in after years ripen intodeeds of guilt. How the hearth and the confessional canexist together it is impossible to conceive. How can therepossibly be a full interchange of free, genuine, trustful sentimentand feeling between the different members of the family,when all feel that there, in the midst of them, sits one,though invisible, seeing and hearing all that is said anddone ? for all must be told over in the confessional. In thebreast of the wifethe husband knows that there is a secretplace, which even he dare not enter, and to which none butthe priest, with his curious and loathly questionings, has* " Home and its sweets, its pleasing cares and soothing affections,seemed unknown ; it became the shelter of exhausted nature, wlien thecup of pleasure was drained to its dregs." (Continental Confessions of aLayman, p. 31.)