We must concur with the work without precipitating it; we must assist them in walking, but not carry them; must have respect to their individuality; neither anticipate nor require a series of impressions and of states of mind conformed to a catalogue prepared beforehand; not desire to give a name to each of the states; and especially not to call for the exercise of a principle before the principle has been obtained; not forget that if there are dispositions and actions which at any moment of the spiritual life are to be recognized as bad, there are others the character of which is revealed gradually, and in proportion as Christian principle becomes more distinct and more manifest; and that in the conduct of souls we have reason to stand in doubt of too easy success, or of complaisant sacrifices performed without any sense of their necessity, and consequently of a merely arbitrary nature. IV. There are souls not only awakened, but troubled, in whom inquietude, which is the ground of all awakening, has the character of anguish and despair. We may even say that with many trouble precedes true awakening; and often such souls in whom a strictly spiritual concern does not yet exist are induced to seek the pastor by a vague but insupportable anguish, and come to him in the simple thought that there are remedies for the soul as physicians have them * It may be no less important to guard the awakened against supposing that they may have an excuse for not having the principle; or that because they are without the principle, the exercise of it, or the action in which it expresses itself, is not to be required of them. It is often necessary to admonish them that the exercise of the principle is the sum of their duty; that no right action can be performed while they are destitute of the principle; and that to obtain the principle is what concerns them above all, and before all. "Make the tree good and his fruit good."-Matt., xii., 23. "Make you a new heart and a new spirit, for why will ye die?"-Ezek., xviii., 31. "Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns."-Jer., iv., 3.-Tr. for the body, and that they would be better received of no one than of him. The pastor may always assure himself that this trouble arises from reminiscences that disturb the conscience, and from a need of expiation rather felt than distinctly recognized. This trouble may not cease, and the principle of a new life be formed in such souls unless they make a sincere confession. This we must know how to obtain; but love will obtain every thing. The more this proceeding costs, the greater the reason for it. Often all appears easy after the first effort, and the soul, as if released from a burden which was crushing it, rises up and walks. We may speak here of a class of persons whose soul, in the strict sense, is not troubled, but who are more troubled in mind by doubts or scruples. This, with some, is the effect of a natural skepticism; with others, of a self-tormenting disposition about every thing, or, finally, of an indiscrete curiosity. Religious movement has exceedingly multiplied the demand for counsels and solutions, but it has not proportionably increased by its own activity the resources of religious and moral instruction which we have need of, and which the pulpit is expected to afford. In our Church there could not be a ministry if the secret of confession was not inviolable as it is in the Romish Church: Every one who confesses himself to a pastor should have reason so to regard it; but when the revelation of a secret is the only way of preventing a crime, secrecy on the part of the pastor would involve him in the criminality. But in this case he must give the person no reason to think that he holds himself bound to secrecy, so that he shall have no show of occasion to be surprised when the disclosure is made. The formal absolution which follows Catholic confession rests upon a purely Christian idea. The Catholic Church is only mistaken in adding absolution to the external act of "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall find mercy."-Proverbs, xxviii., 13 confession, and not to the dispositions and motives indicated in the passage we have referred to, Prov., xxviii., 13. The minister should make this well understood, as also the absence of all merit, and of all intrinsic power of reconciliation in the acts of privation and reparation which perhaps should follow confession, and which in certain cases may be useful and praiseworthy. Among these acts, a confession made to others besides the pastor, especially a confession made to the offended person, if there be one, may be of great importance, and sometimes of real necessity. Sometimes, even, nothing short of a public confession can fully satisfy us; but I doubt whether the pastor should ever suggest this idea; he may, indeed, sometimes dissuade his penitent from taking this course; he assumes a great responsibility in confirming him in his purpose; nevertheless, he may see himself called to do so. The scandal of a whole life may demand, at the moment of death, a reparation of this kind. V. We have next to speak of the orthodox, who pervert the faith, not objectively, but in its character, by erecting it into a work, and disconcerting, defeating, so to speak, the purpose of God, while accepting it with the appearance of perfect submission. They verify the observation contained in these lines: "De mal croyant à mécréant L'intervalle n'est pas bien grand."* The cure of this religious disease is one of the greatest difficulty; since here the merit of a most servile strictness may be attached to a belief the most evangelical. Some have the unhappy art of making Christianity a prop to the lowest parts of their nature, and a comfort to them in their licentiousness and their envy. Strictly, what is wanting here is life, and life is to be awakened. The work which seemed to be done, has to be begun again; and it can have no begin "There is not much difference between one who believes in a bad manner and an infidel."-Transl. ning but in repentance. The orthodox man must retravel with his heart and his conscience all the road that he has gone over with his understanding and his imagination, and he must believe in one manner what he has for a long time been believing in another manner. This dead orthodoxy has two shades, which produce their colors under two characters. There are orthodox formalists, who must be taught to worship in spirit and in truth (John, iv., 12); and there are orthodox legalists, who attach themselves to the letter of the evangelical precepts, and let their spirit escape from them. As to these last, however, we must avoid a hasty judgment, since these are slaves of the law who are nowise pharisees, that is to say, nowise filled with a sense of merit and selfrighteousness. We must consider whether, in the servility and anxiety of their obedience, they are not still of the number of those whom the Gospel has at the same time characterized and blessed, in the following declarations : Then Jesus beholding him, loved him, and said to him, One thing thou lackest go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: And come take up the cross and follow me" (Mark, x., 21); “And the scribe said to him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth; for there is one God, and there is none other but he. And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said to him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In persons of the class to which these two belonged, there is the foundation or the germ of a true faith.* * Was not this foundation or this germ that "one thing" which the first of these two "lacked?" What meant his going away "griev ed," verse 22; and the observations which Jesus made to his disciples, after he had gone, verses 23, 25?—Transl. 1 There are souls in a singular state, to which we have given too little thought. They are those which have anticipated, I was going to say taken on credit, the grace of the Gospel ; or who have appropriated the promises before having felt all that grief, that disgust, that fear, that species of death which naturally belong to conviction of sin. They believe, they bless, they confess, they profess intelligently and sincerely, all that is essential to Christian character, but may want, I will not say the joy, which is not the habitual disposition of every true Christian, but the peace, the love, and, in a word, the life of the Christian. We must not confound them with those we call orthodox; they have not their security; they are at the same time in a worse and in a better state; they have not fulfilled all righteousness, but they know that they have not. This state, though singular, is no less common; and though it is difficult to disentangle it, since he who is in it can scarcely give any account of it, a minister whose experience and study of his own interior have rendered him searching can readily discern it. To apply the remedy is more difficult. The degrees, the movements of the spiritual life have been inverted. This Christian is one by anticipation, and, so to speak, by hypothesis. He is used to the profession and the outward joy of the Christianity of the intellect or imagination. His mouth has been before his heart in saying, Lord, Lord! He is familiar with the words, with the forms, with the thoughts of Christianity, without having his soul in them, and consequently in a way rather to be without a taste for them than to be in union with them. To have a taste of life, we must first taste death; but if we may ascend naturally from death to life, we can not re-descend also from life to death, and we can not at once pass at will through all the phases of a sorrowful novitiate. This difficulty is one of the greatest we have to encounter in the spiritual career, and it may put to the proof the patience and the prudence of a pastor. One sign by which these persons may be rec |