UNCONSCIOUS FAITH.

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not born Christians, but they become Christians with so little effort, that they seem to owe to the beneficence of their nature what others obtain only at the expense of painful conflicts or of long reflection: So that these latter may say, "With a great price bought I this freedom;" while the others, at least in one sense, may reply, "but I was free-born.”

Acts, xxii., 28. These souls sometimes betray themselves by wondrous signs at the solemn hour of death; but during life no one observed them; and had any one interrogated them, he would have obtained a very imperfect account of their faith. It is even possible that the imperfection of their theory reveals itself in some measure in imperfection of practice, and that they have not said as often and as loudly as others, Lord, Lord! Their faith remains in a state of involution and of synthesis. They have thought little of their religion because it was not in their nature to think much. We can not say that they have laid down their arms; for, to say the truth, they have never resisted. But by slow degrees they have conformed themselves to the Christian spirit, it has entered into their habits of life; they feel all that others think, and that which others, yet more happy, both think and feel; they renounce from the heart all righteousness, they embrace with the heart the mystery of mercy; their conscience has become tender; without method they practice a severe self-discipline; they know nothing, and they know every thing. Seek out these souls; they are more numerous, perhaps, than you suppose. Learn to encourage and cherish them: Turn them not out of the course which their nature prescribes to them: Force not these instruments of music to give forth sounds which they can not give forth; disturb them not with formularies; deprive them not of their naïveté ; accept their language-accommodate yours to theirs; and do not undertake to correct their expressions unless required by regard to their religious welfare, and only as far as this demands.

The fervor of their first

II. We pass to the new converts." love is useful directly by the works it produces: There are important ones among them which are peculiar to this period of the spiritual life. This fervor is also useful as a rebuke to those who have suffered the gift which was in them to be impaired : It is a leaven which God is incessantly casting into the mass of the Church. But this period is not ordinarily that of moderation and balance of mind; and we know that the primitive Church interdicted the ministry to new converts. It is ordinarily the period of bitter zeal, of a controversial spirit, of severe judgments: we forget what we were the evening before, and we forget it the more, it seems, because we have ascended from so great a depth. Though we know that we ourselves have been the objects and the monuments of so` great a patience, we are too ready to say impatiently of our neighbor, as the man of the parable, “Cut him down; why cumbereth he the ground!" It is also the time when we abuse Christian liberty; the time of presumption: We would preach to and school all the world, and perhaps the very person from whom we obtained our first light, whence results a danger to this last, also, who may not be always disposed to say with Moses, "Would to God all the Lord's people were prophets."-Numb., xi., 20. Let all this show the pastor that new converts should be treated with indulgence and with severity. He must not depress the spirit which is in them, nor permit a demon to enter through the breach which an angel has made.

III. Another class is that of the awakened, although very often he whom we call awakened is a true convert, and the convert, as we term him, is but an awakened person. The awakening of a soul is the emotion of interest or inquietude which, after long unconcern, it feels toward spiritual things, and which differs from emotions of the same kind which it may have before felt, in that it has become an habitual and dominant state. It is a delicate matter to direct such souls.

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 not 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 públic 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.