the world, and stands with his arm erect till it becomes stiffened into a fixed position; while the Buddhist and the Romanist retire to the convent that they may there withdraw from the world, and devote themselves wholly to spiritual exercises and to God.  But though this is natural, it is a mere accommodation.  The real evil of the human heart is not corrected by the change, nor have the hair shirt and the leathern girdle the slightest influence in controlling the corrupt passions of the nature.  There may be as much pride, self-righteousness, and ill-governed temper in the lonely hermit’s cheerless cell, as in the deep current of the world’s society.  At the same time it is an accommodation, for it employs the name of Christ, and gives the semblance of a very elevated piety.  It adopts the language of devotion, and prescribes a course of action and self-denial.  It gives the inquirer something to do, and something to bear; it separates him also from other men, and so, though his heart be not purified, it gives him the hope that he is holy.  This was remarkably seen in the case of Ignatius Loyola.  Like Luther, he was awakened to a deep sense of sin, and it is a remarkable fact that the two greatest phenomena of the sixteenth century, the Reformation, and Jesuitism, should have sprung out of the same uneasiness for sin.  Luther found peace through the blood of the Lamb, and holiness in the work of the Spirit; Loyola was as much distressed as he, and failing in his discovery of Christ, he took refuge in the substitute of an ascetic life.  He tore himself away from his kindred and father’s house, determining to undergo penances of the severest character, and to serve God in Jerusalem.  He hung up his shield before an image of the Virgin, and, having clothed himself in coarse raiment, he stood before it for whole nights with his pilgrim’s staff in his hand.  At Manresa he passed seven hours daily on his knees, and scourged himself regularly thrice a-day.  He devoted three whole days to making a general confession for sin, but the more he explored the depths of his heart, the more painful were the doubts which assailed him.  Having read in some of the fathers that God had been moved to compassion by a total abstinence from food, he remained from Sunday to Sunday without tasting anything, and at last only broke his fast in obedience to the positive injunctions of his confessor.

Such were the efforts of a master mind, to create for itself an artificial holiness, and such are the principles more or less involved in the whole system of the monasticism of Rome.  It substitutes devotion of act, which withdraws men from their appointed sphere, for devotion of heart which glorifies God in its varied duties: and thus presents a spurious holiness within reach of unconverted minds.

IV.  But the great root of the matter yet remains in the craving of the soul for Reconciliation.

That there is this craving none can deny.  It is seen in all classes, in all nations.  Buddhists, Hindoos, Mussulmen, Jews, Protestants, Romanists, and even Infidels, all bear testimony to a certain undefined longing after peace.  Now this peace is given by the Gospel, in the free, full justification of the believer through the perfect atonement and imputed righteousness of the Lord.  But in the practical application of it to the heart there arises this difficulty.  Our safety depends on an invisible union with an invisible Redeemer.  Faith is not a thing which can be seen and felt.  It looks away from self to Christ, and disappears as soon as you look back on self to find it.  Now if a man be enabled by the Holy Ghost to look simply to Christ, this difficulty vanishes through the all-sufficiency of the one object there presented to his view.  But if, on the other hand, this faith be wanting, and the freedom of Divine grace remain unknown, the human heart at once makes an effort for some visible, tangible mode of laying hold of acceptance in Christ Jesus.  The system, therefore, best accommodated to the natural man would be one which embraced all the rich promises of the Gospel, but connected them with something which could be said or done, so leaving men in no doubt as to their position.

Now this desire is exactly met by the Church of Rome.  It presents its pardon in a tangible, visible form, and it leads the soul to rest for its assurance upon something safely done.  The sin is confessed, the penance performed, the absolution pronounced, and there the matter ends.  The guilty man has no further occasion to distress his mind upon the subject.  The language of the catechism of the Council of Trent is very curious as illustrating the endeavour to connect pardon with a visible act.  It first draws the distinction between the inward disposition of repentance and the outward act of penance, and adds, § 13, “That it is the outward penance in which the sacrament consists, and which contains certain external actions, which are subjects of sense through which the inner feelings of the mind are manifest.”  The next section explains the reason why the sacrament of penance is said to have been instituted, viz., to assure us of our pardon, for without it, “there must have been most anxious suspense of mind respecting inward repentance, since every man would have had good reason to doubt his own judgment in those things which he was doing.”  To avoid this anxiety, therefore, the pardon is connected with a visible act.  It is found, accordingly, in practical life, that the priest’s absolution is regarded by the Romanist in the same light as God’s forgiveness, and that, whatever be the state of heart, that visible act is deemed sufficient.  Pat Burns, now a devoted Scripture Reader under the Irish Society, was for ten years the leader of a desperate gang of Ribbandmen, and he told a friend of mine that during that time he frequently went to the priest, paid him all dues regularly, and obtained absolution from time to time, as his conscience felt uneasy after the commission of crime; that the priest generally put a penance upon him, and that when it was performed, he considered himself as good a man as any other, and as fit for heaven.  This same person added that the priest had never once directed him to the Word of God, or to the Lord Jesus for salvation.

The same connexion between confession and reconciliation was curiously illustrated by the following fact.  The priest in my friend’s parish gave nothing during the late contribution towards Irish distress, but the poor creatures excused his penuriousness on the plea that it was unlucky to take a priest’s money—that a priest’s money being paid at confession and absolution, is the price of sin, and often comes from murderers and other bad characters, as the price of absolution and pardon; and if, therefore, you buy a horse with it, he will get lame; and if you buy seed corn it will be blighted.

I am perfectly aware that it may be justly argued that these facts among the people do not prove that the principle has been adopted by the Church; but I think it must also be admitted that they do show how exactly suited to the natural man is the connexion which Rome does assert between the pardon of sin and certain visible actions amongst men.  God connects his pardon with a deep seated spiritual faith.  The human heart says, “Let me do something.  Let me work it out.  Let me have some assurance that I am forgiven.”  Popery steps in, and adapts its principles to both, asserting on the one hand the necessity of faith, but prescribing on the other a certain penance, and then sealing the whole with the priest’s absolution, so as to leave no doubt on the sinner’s mind.  According to the language of a late pervert, the priest “shewed her how she must unite her