36. Many who are prejudiced against the word "Confession" will gladly avail themselves of the thing, if suggested to them with tact, and without abruptness.

37. To do this, the Priest may suggest to the patient such considerations as the comfort of making a clean breast; the danger to himself of underrating or ignoring real evils; and the greater likelihood that the Priest can give him useful advice and real consolation, if he knows what kind of life he has hitherto led. Quotations from the Exhortation to Communion may be cited with advantage.

38. In case the sick man has wronged another either by word or deed, the fullest restitution possible should be urged upon him.

39. Where enmity has existed, the sick man shall be asked whether he can fully and freely assent to the following declaration of forgive

LORD JESUS CHRIST feeds our souls with His Body and Blood, and that he come to the Sacrament with sorrow for past sins, and resolve of amendment.

43. It is well to have a district visitor or other fit person to make the responses, who might also be instructed to prepare the sick room for the Celebration.

44. The Priest should inquire as to the sick person's capability of swallowing or retaining food. If the answers are so unsatisfactory as to involve the risk of any irreverence, he should confine himself, for the time being, to the use of the Office for Spiritual Communion (p. 75.)

45. Before beginning to celebrate, he should inquire who among those present design to communicate, and should arrange them conveniently.

46. In chronic cases the sick should communicate at least as frequently as during previous health. The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day may be fitly used.

47. Unconfirmed children, if intelligent, and otherwise fitly disposed, should be communicated, however young, when in danger of death.

48. Adults of feeble mind, and deaf and dumb persons, may also be communicated, if they show faith and penitence according to the measure of their capacity.

49. Insane persons may be communicated during lucid intervals, provided their previous life has not made them unfit.

50. Idiots, and insane persons, during aberration, are never to be communicated.

51. During the death-agony spiritual consolation is especially needed. The Priest should therefore endeayour to be present at each death-bed in his parish. To insure this, he should instruct the friends of persons in dangerous sickness to summon him when death seems to be approaching.

52. As a visit of this nature may

be indefinitely protracted, the devotions used must be such as can be made to extend over a considerable time.

53. The Harmonized Passion Lections should always be used, and three or four Passion Collects inserted after each portion. Hymns and Litanies may also be fitly introduced.

54. The Priest would often do well to confer with the medical attendant as to the exact condition of the sick person. He may thus, by reminding those about the sick of the medical instructions as to diet, ventilation, visits of friends, &c., assist the cure, and also aid in checking infection and panic in epidemic cases. He may often prevent the spread of sickness by recommending attention to personal cleanliness, drainage, ventilation (especially in bed-rooms), warm clothing, &c.

55. Wine or brandy should not be provided without the permission of the medical man.

56. As a personal precaution, the Priest should take food before visiting infectious cases, except, of course, when about to celebrate the Holy Communion, and should stand to "windward" of such patients.

57. In case of sudden insensibility from faintness or loss of blood, with pallor of face, let the patient be laid horizontally, and the head low. Loose the dress about the throat and chest, and give warm brandy and water. If accompanied with struggling and redness of face, the head should be raised, after loosening the dress, and no stimulants given. The room must be cleared, and cold water sprinkled on the face.

58. In case of poisoning, the stomach should be relieved by copious draughts of warm salt and water or mustard and water. If by opium, keep the patient awake by any means till the arrival of the medical man; e.g., by making him walk barefoot on a stone floor. No antidotes should be given without medical advice.

1. The Confessional is the tribunal of mercy, not that of justice.

2. The practice of CHRIST in dealing with sinners is the pattern which a Confessor should set before him.

3. Therefore the qualities of a good Confessor are (1) gentleness in receiving sinners; (2) penetration in dealing with them; (3) vigour in rebuking and applying remedies.

4. The church, or at least its vestry, is the proper place for hearing Confessions. Avoid hearing them, especially those of women, in private houses, save in the case of sick persons.

5. Let all be done with as little mystery as possible, and as openly as is consistent with the nature of the ordinance.

6. The Priest, when hearing Confessions, should be vested in cassock, surplice, and violet or black stole.

7. A quarter of an hour is usually a sufficient time for an ordinary Confession.

8. Cases may occur when a longer time is required, such as a first Confession, or a general Confession made at a subsequent period. The Priest should not hurry the penitent, nor betray weariness or impatience at the time which is occupied.

9. Therefore it is well not to fix such a time for hearing Confession as must insure great briefness, e.g., just before Divine Service.

10. Before hearing the Confession of a stranger, it is expedient to in

quire his occupation and position in life; whether he have ever confessed before, and if so, how long since, and why he has changed his Confessor; whether he have complied with the directions last given him; whether, if he be an ignorant person, he knows the Creed and the Ten Commandments; but the Priest has no right to ask his name.

11. In ordinary cases, it is well that the heads (but only the heads) of the confession be written down by the Penitent, that the Priest may refer to them in making his comments. The order of the Decalogue is the most convenient.

12. Penitents who come without previous preparation should be sent back, unless the want of preparation arises from ignorance, or from some sudden cause needing prompt at

tention.

13. The Priest should pay special attention to class sins; e.g., dishonesty amongst traders, drunkenness amongst the poor, sloth and luxury amongst the rich, formalism amongst Clergy, &c.

14. He is not to interrupt the penitent, as a rule, so long as he goes on with his confession, but he may interpose to help when fear or ignorance has checked him.

15. He is to interrupt in any of the following cases: (1) if the penitent import the name of any person into his confession-he is there to confess his own sins, not another's; (2) if he begin making excuses for himself; (3) if he be prolix, or wandering from the point; (4) if he be coarse.

16. The Priest is to be especially careful not to allow any token of astonishment or disgust to escape him, lest he should repel or dishearten the penitent.

17. As a general rule, he is to avoid questioning the penitent (except in case of absolute necessity), and especially as to kinds of sin to which he has made no reference in his confession. Questions are worse than useless when he can gather as

much as is needful for him to know without them.

18. He should always inquire whether the penitent has performed the penance last enjoined him, and whether he has tried to make amends in case of wrong-doing. Other cases in which he should question are(1) when a penitent is too ignorant, too nervous, or too timid to make a continuous statement; (2) when the Priest has reason to suspect that some important particular, which either aggravates the offence or is necessary to account for it, is kept back; (3) when it is needful for him to know whether the sin confessed is an isolated act or part of a chain of habit; (4) when he has from other sources knowledge of sin which the penitent has not confessed; (5) when he has reason to believe that the penitent is unconscious of, or underrates, some sin. In a word, the duty of a confessor is to ascertain what is the real burden on the penitent's soul.

19. The Priest should take most especial care not to suggest any new sinful idea to the mind of the penitent, nor to 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.

20. When a penitent is afraid to confess any particular sin, the Priest may often encourage him by assuming that his sin is much graver than any which he is likely to have committed.

21. A frequent change of Confessors is to be discouraged: for such change is often due to mere caprice, or to an unwillingness to break off habits which the former confessor has condemned, and which it is hoped that the new one may overlook.

22. Cases in which Absolution should be refused or deferred are as follows: (1) when the Confession appears to be merely formal, without any real penitence; (2) when the

penance enjoined at a previous Confession has been neglected; (3) when no signs appear of any effort being made to overcome the besetting sin; (4) when the penitent declines to avoid company and places, out of the path of his duty, which tempt him to sin; (5) when he continues, without absolute necessity, in a calling which tends to lead him into sin; (6) when no attempt at forgiveness, amends, or restitution has been made in the case of enmity, scandal, or wrong-doing; (7) when the Priest knows that the penitent is keeping back some sin which he ought to confess, unless such knowledge is derived from the confession of another person, in which case he has no right to use it against the penitent.

23. The Priest should carefully impress upon penitents that penances are in no respect payment or atonement for sin. They are merely (1) tests of contrition, by showing readiness on the part of the penitent to undergo punishment; (2) remedies to prevent the repetition of sin.

24. Penances must be adapted to the age, sex, condition, and spiritual needs of each penitent; e.g., fasting is unsuitable for invalids and children, and long forms of devotion for the ignorant.

25. The spiritual questions to be considered in imposing penances are (1) the degree of sinfulness; (2) the condition of the penitent; (3) the amount of correction needful. The severity as well as the kind of penance will vary according to these conditions.

26. A good penance is one which is at once punitive, remedial, and simple.

27. A penance is a bad one which is unduly severe or lax, or which

consists of minute or complicated details difficult to be carried out.

28. Remedial penances commonly consist of acts of a nature directly opposite to that of the sins committed. For examples, see pp. 158 -160.

29. In estimating the gravity of a fault, the Confessor should remember that its heinousness depends rather on the premeditation with which it has been committed, than upon the consequences which it involves.

30. The Confessor should endeavour to ascertain what is the besetting sin of the penitent, and should direct his efforts and arrange his penances rather for its eradication than for the suppression of any casual manifestation of sin.

His

31. It is sacrilege of the very gravest kind for the Priest to disclose what has been revealed to him in Sacramental Confession. silence must extend (1) to all things actually confessed, of which he may not speak, out of the confessional, even to the penitent himself, except by the desire or permission of the latter; (2) to the offences of other persons casually referred to in confession, and not otherwise known to the Priest; (3) to all hints, inuendoes, or indirect references as to the matter of confession, and, as a rule, to the names of the penitents. If the Priest meet with a case with which he does not know how to deal, and for whose treatment he must seek advice, he should state it in such broad and general terms as to avoid any probability of identifying the person on whose behalf he makes the inquiries. The obligation to silence on the part of the Priest does not terminate with the death of the penitent, but is perpetually binding.

1. The object of Direction is to form JESUS CHRIST in the soul (Gal. iv. 19), and especially to give a religious tone to secular life.

2. Direction, therefore, is guidance in questions of practical action, afforded to Christians in doubt or difficulty, by one who is wiser in spiritual matters than they.

3. Therefore, unlike the Sacramental rites of the Church, the efficacy of Direction depends on the personal character and abilities of the Director.

4. It follows that although a Priest may not decline the office of Confessor, which is part of his ordinary ministerial duty, he is at liberty to decline that of a Director if he feel himself incompetent to fulfil its requirements.

5. There is thus no necessary connection between the office of Director and Confessor, although for convenience' sake they are frequently combined. Thus the Exhortation in the Communion Office implies that "ghostly counsel and advice" are to be sought for from the Priest who pronounces "Absolution."

6. As no sacerdotal character is necessary for giving advice in spiritual things, the office of Director may be, and often has been, exercised by Laymen.

7. The natural Director of a wife is her husband, of a child its parents, and nothing but grave faults of omission or commission can excuse the interposition of any other person, even of a Priest.

8. Direction has chiefly to do with adjusting the conflicting claims of Society and of the Church, of conventional laws and of Evangelical precepts, and, in general, where temporal and spiritual well-being seem to be opposed.

9. The advice given should be of an eminently practical nature, and

take as a rule the common sense view of a subject.

10. Therefore, whilst the best Director is one who combines deep spirituality with profound intellect, yet, when these qualifications are not to be found united, mental power and experience should have the preference.

11. A Director should confine himself to general guidance, and enter as little as possible into minute details. He should endeavour rather to instil maxims and principles, than to construct a code of minute observances.

12. The amount of detail will vary according to the intelligence of the inquirer; the less instructed he is, the more definite must be the rules laid down for his guidance.

13. The Director should aim at strengthening the sense of personal responsibility in those who consult him, and at increasing the sensitiveness and vigour of their consciences.

14. Over-direction commonly weakens the conscience by leading persons to lean rather upon external aid than upon those natural instincts of right and wrong which have been implanted in them by GOD. A wise Physician will discourage the habitual use of drugs, and will rather urge attention to regimen and exercise.

15. The Director should therefore reserve his aid for matters of real difficulty. If applied to in simple and obvious cases he should rather, by appealing to the conscience of the inquirer, endeavour to draw the answer from his lips.

16. To avoid the grave perils of over-direction, the Director will take care that the interviews which he grants shall be short and infrequent.

17. In matters of doubt or of con