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story. Cruelties almost too inhuman for belief are revealed, and cruelties also against the purity of the poor religious slaves. Says Rev. Pierce Connelly, once a Roman priest:

"I know of more than one instance of an ENGLISH girl of the higher classes, STRIPPED NAKED AND BEATEN in an English fashionable convent boarding school, and that only because she was what it is the glory of an English girl to be."-English Convents, by PROTESTANT TRUTH SOCIETY, p. 6.

During the trial respecting the treatment, in 1852, of a certain H. Griffiths, she herself made affidavit that nunnery pupils (this was at Norwood), after being prostrated, face downward, on the floor with the arms extended *:

"WERE FLOGGED ON THE BARE FLESH with a heavy rod, that they received from twenty to fifty blows, and that she herself at one establishment had seen a NOVICE, AGED TWENTY-FIVE, submitted to this infamous ceremony. 'A PRIEST WAS ALWAYS PRESENT,' she said, 'WHEN I SAW IT DONE""!!—(Passage from Daily Telegraph, March, 1859, on this case) quoted ibid., pp. 13-14,

This was in England, mind you, reader-the land of protection for the assaulted; but who can penetrate within the solid walls of the convent? And the poor young penitentshe dare not speak of her penance, for even the Ritualist says (page 95): "You should not mention your penance to any one.' Solitary instances, say you. Listen to the Canadian nun again on penances :

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"There were other acts occasionally proposed and consented to which I cannot name in a book. Such the Superior would sometimes command us to perform, many of them things not only useless and unheard of, but loathsome and indecent in the highest possible degree. Things were done worse, etc., etc."—. Monks and their Maidens, p. 107.

Not only in plein courière of the sisterhood, but in presence of their tyrants, the active agents of a filthy and debauched god, if God is like their representation! and worse than all, these crafty ruffians and villains can find scriptural quotations enough and to spare for their purpose, as any one will find who reads for himself the books of

* Behold how the Ritualist copies !!

Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, etc. Is this the sort of thing that the priest means when he quotes Christ's words as an inducement to enter the religious life: "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life shall lose it and He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it " !*

Selon the priest, pervert Christ into the holy Father, the masculine pronoun into the feminine, and it will exactly fit. I quote again, and trust Christ's promise was fulfilled on the poor enslaved souls who suffered His death, as He should know by experience their sufferings:

"In some of the convents in Paris, not so very long ago, a horrible representation of the Crucifixion was enacted on Good Friday. Women were literally nailed through the hands and feet to crosses, and left to agonise for several hours in memory of Calvary. One woman at least died in great agony after the nails had been drawn from her hands and feet."-Baron Grunn's Correspondence (published 1877), quoted in Woman, p. 202.

And now, reader, in the name of our common Creator and Father, arise and save your sisters from a Moloch's superstition. Can the bountiful God, who made the wonders of creation, only have made us in His image, to have it tortured, defaced, and destroyed? Are there no men in England who will take up this subject of penances? Creeping slowly, goes the Ritualist along the Roman ways-afraid yet awhile to attempt such cruelties, but crying out for sterner "discipline "even on his penitents in the worldt-and what of the contemplative Anglican sisterhoods? No voice has as yet reached us, but barred, locked, imprisoned, as are the inmates, it cannot be expected. On these facts, whither are we hurrying? Is the alarm unduly sounded? What are the penances proposed for the Anglican sisterhood? We have seen at least cruelty, filth and dirt. Cleanliness is next to godliness, but not, it appears, in the Church. No, there dirt of mind and body, blindness of soul and eyes are needed to find Christ, and alive with irritating vermin, it

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is supposed to be conducive to our salvation to kneel in adoration of a nearly nude representation of God the Son, and to rhapsodise about coming naked to His Bosom, etc.!!

Having called attention to these facts, the reader must deal with the matter-if a man and an Englishman, as best applies to his conscience-whether he will any longer allow the female sex, whether Romanist or Ritualist, to be martyred, or to martyrise themselves; and to my women readers, I, from a mother's burning heart, cry unto them :"Send not your daughters within the influence of either convent or sisterhood," for of what they consist the next chapter will attempt to shew.

CHAPTER V.

Convents or Sisterhoods, with Comparisons between Ritualist and Romanist. Pernicious Doctrines Taught in the latter.

It appears from the perusal of both Romanist and Ritualist works that the end and aim of the religious life is to enter a sisterhood or nunnery, and to devote oneself to God— that having done so, a heavenly peace descends on one's soul, and in daily communion with one's Saviour, one's spirit wings its way upward into Heaven! Whether, by the use of the cruel penances suggested, practised, and given in the foregoing chapter, that desideratum can ever be attained, it is for the reader's common sense to decide. It is, however, necessary to see the kind and age of the persons who are induced to enter these conventual houses. These are a few

One was a young man of 17, known to Mr. Newdegate, M.P., who was enticed by the Roman priests into a monastery. Miss Reed (Six Months in a Convent) was about 18 when she entered. Edith O'Gorman was 19. Maria Monk was about 14. Charlotte Myhill (Three Years as a Nun) about 17. Caroline Selby, who escaped from the Colwich Nunnery in December, 1856, says: "I embraced the convent life at the early age of 18." In 1890 the Protestant Standard of Philadelphia gives an account of the escape of a nun of apparently about 18. Maude, the Anglican sister, was, it appears, much about this age, and lastly, Sister Mary Agnes was 15.

"The age of 14 is ordinarily the earliest for admission as a novice, and the age of 33 the earliest for the attainment of full or professed

"This child has been with the Sisters ever since" (she became an orphan) "having been made when two or three years old a

membership." -Jesuits, by A. DUFF, p. 20.

"A girl more than 12 years of age wishing to take the habit of a nun is to be examined by the ordinary, and again before making her profession.". -Council of Trent, sess. 25, ch. 17.

"In whatever Order, whether of men or women, the profession is made, let it not be made until the completion of the 16 years, and let no one be admitted to make the profession in a less time than a year after taking the habit in the noviciate." - Ibid., ch. 15, quoted in Popery in its Social Aspect, R. P. BLAKENEY, PP. 238-9.

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What can any one with common sense think of a religion that forces children and girls into confinement in this manner, away from the joyous companionships of youth, I ask? Can you part with any of these "household jewels" given you by your beneficent Father, for them to be incarcerated within these "religious" jails, howbeit they be termed in mockery abodes of happiness? Is this so, when such tortures (penances forsooth!) are used in extremis by the Romanist, and with little less severity by the Ritualist? Do, reader, understand that the public and the devotees are deluded by the term" active orders.” Once admitted thereto, it is but a lure to draw the active "Sister into consenting to become an enclosed" Nun"; that these severe penances are not generally used in the active orders; that these sisters can leave, if they like to incur the venomous rebukes of Mother Angelicas and Fathers—, and appear as reprobates from holy religion and obedience, and even if they do leave they must suffer from perpetual spiritual espial. implore the readers and the public generally to realise that it is in the enclosed orders that the Nun, whether Romanist or Ritualist, NEVER comes out to tell the world how she suffers; that whether Romanist or Ritualist, these convents have underground cells or dungeons where these cruelties are or may be used unheard and unknown; that it is from the last that we hear of escapes (and rightly so too; would there were more of them); and that not only moral force

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