Again :-

The priest should take most especial care not to suggest any new sinful idea to the mind of the penitent, nor teach him any evil formerly unknown to him. This is unspeakably important in the case of very young persons, since for them ignorance of evil is often better even than knowledge of good.

Another popular fallacy is the opinion that manuals written for the exclusive use of confessors, and going into details, are samples of what passes between confessors and penitents. It would be as reasonable to suggest that manuals of anatomy and pathology furnish a fair specimen of the conversations between a doctor and his patients. If a clergyman hears confessions at all, he ought to be instructed in a number of things of which he is likely to be ignorant, and manuals are necessary for that purpose. I have never read that much abused book, 'The Priest in Absolution.' But I know that it was written by the incumbent of one of the most wretched parishes in London; a man of singularly pure and holy life, who worked himself to death among the poor. The book was doubtless largely based on his own experience, and probably dealt with gross sins and abnormal forms of vice. These, alas! exist in rank abundance, but happily unknown and undreamt of in certain strata of society; and also unknown to many of the clergy. And yet, unless they know them, they are as helpless in dealing with considerable sections of the community as a doctor would be who should start a practice

without any previous training in the anatomy and maladies of the human frame. "The Priest in Absolution' was intended for clergy only. It was not sold to the public; but a gentleman of strong Protestant opinions, calling one day on a clerical friend, found the book on his table, and during the momentary absence of his friend from the room, pocketed the volume, and gave it to one of the officials of a Protestant society, which scattered extracts from it broadcast as specimens of what passed in the confessional. Some years previously the police confiscated a pamphlet called 'The Confessional Unmasked,' which consisted of excerpts from a Roman Catholic manual for confessors. The great hero of the recent Albert Hall meeting was Mr. John Kensit, of whom I read for the first time in 'Truth' of August 15, 1889, as follows:

Where is the Vigilance Committee? During the last two or three weeks hawkers have been parading London with truckloads of an abominable publication called 'The High Church Confessional.' From a cursory view of one of the numerous copies with which I have been favoured I should say that a more obscene work was never publicly offered for sale, and this filthy poison is being sold up and down the streets, under the very noses of the police, at the price of twopence. The publisher is one Kensit, of theCity Protestant Book Depôt,' 18 Paternoster Row, who boasts that he has sold 225,000 copies. It is nothing less than a public scandal that this Kensit and his associates should be at large, while Mr. Vizetelly is in gaol; for if what the latter has done be a crime, the crime is certainly infinitely worse when committed under the cloak of religion and morality.

Mr. Labouchere, who has been publicly thanked by several judges for his exposure of sundry impostures, renewed his attack on Mr. Kensit a year ago in a series of scathing articles, taking the paragraph which I have just quoted for his text. The following quotation will serve as a specimen :

On the appearance of this paragraph Mr. Kensit sent me a letter, in which he referred to a 'most unwarranted attack made on him as a publisher,' dropped dark hints of the advice which he was seeking from his 'legal adviser,' and called upon me, pending this advice, for an explanation or apology. Having nothing to apologise for, I adopted the other alternative, and gave Mr. Kensit an explanation. I reminded him that a well-known publisher had just been sent to prison for publishing translations of the works of an eminent French novelist, which, in the opinion of a magistrate or jury-I forget which—were held to trangress the bounds of decency; and I pointed out that 'The High Church Confessional' contained page after page of the most loathsome indecency and obscenity, that is to say, the detailed discussion, not merely of subjects which conventional delicacy enjoins silence about, but of vice and depravity in their foulest and most disgusting phases. Mr. Kensit having boasted that 225,000 copies of this work had been sold, and it being notorious that the publication was being hawked about the streets for the delectation of the prurient-minded, young and old, I urged that Mr. Kensit was as deserving of imprisonment as Mr. Vizetelly, the publisher of Zola's novels, and that it behoved the National Vigilance Association, who had prosecuted in the one case, to take the same course in the other.

Truth, September 22, 1898.

Whether or not Kensit took the opinion of his legal adviser' upon these remarks I do not know; but the only response he vouchsafed to them was a further letter compounded of abuse and religious cant, in which among other things he boasted that my denunciation of him as a purveyor of the foulest and most pernicious literary garbage had produced a widespread inquiry for his publications, and given a gratifying stimulus to his trade. This led me to look a little more closely into his trade, and I found the work which had been denounced in 'Truth' was only one of a whole library of obscene publications, one at least of them far more revolting in tone and corrupt in tendency than 'The High Church Confessional.' Thereupon I appealed further to the Vigilance Association, among the members of which were many eminent and respected men, both in Church and State, to put the law in force against Kensit without delay. A new and unexpected turn was then given to the controversy by the discovery that Kensit himself occupied the position of official publisher to the Vigilance Association, so that the publications of that body were stored upon his shelves, in all their virgin purity, side by side with the Protestant obscenities of Kensit, like the antidote and the poison upon the shelves of a chemist's shop. It was obvious from this that the National Vigilance Association were in a somewhat difficult position in undertaking the prosecution of Kensit, but they appeared to recognise that it behoved them to take action of some kind, and after having made some inquiry into the nature of Kensit's trade, they eventually relieved him of his position as their publisher.

Mr. Labouchere has lately stated in "Truth' that Mr. Kensit is using the district post-office over which he presides as a receptacle for the regular

sale of these pamphlets. Mr. Kensit has, no doubt, persuaded himself that he is thereby doing God service. That question I leave to the judgment of the public.

But the truth is that a certain class of minds appear incapable of reasoning dispassionately on this subject. Men who do give their reason fair play find no difficulty in perceiving that there are two sides to the question. It would be difficult to name a man of calmer and more judicial mind than the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis. No one will suspect him of Romanism, and he was certainly no advocate of clerical supremacy, either in domestic or political affairs. But he could see both sides of a disputed question, and could deal fairly with things which by no means appealed to his sympathies. His opinion on the subject under discussion is therefore of some value. This is what he says:

It may be here remarked that an unjust prejudice has not unfrequently been raised in Protestant countries against the treatises which are prepared for the use of confessors in the Church of Rome. . . . The more difficult and doubtful of the cases likely to come before the confessor have been discussed separately, and have given rise to the branch of practical divinity called casuistry. Casuistry is the jurisprudence of theology; it is a digest of the moral and religious maxims to be observed by the priest, in advising or deciding upon questions which come before him in confession, and in adjudging the amount of penance due to each sin. As confession discloses the most secret thoughts and acts of the penitent, and as nothing, however impure, is concealed from the confessor,