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Show m - C'UXFJGSSIXG- THK VOVK. M In one of the news dispatches from Home is H found a little statement to the effect that a certain H priest I believe it was the brother of the Pope H went in and confessed the eminent patient. The H significance intended had reference to the serious H illness possibly the fatal influence of the Catho- H lie pontiff. But to mo it had another suggestion. H What has that old man to confess? Of course H I understand the obligation, -the established and H perhaps sacred custom tor all members of that H fuith. But there is a man who has lived In utter H absence from wrongdoing. For many, many years H he has sought nothing but the right. We who are Wm alien to the manner of the Hainan church cannot Hj share tht reverent sentiment of worship that devo- H tees of that faith -confess, but we can see that no H man devoted through a very long life to righteous- H ness can have sins that demand confessing. We H speak no criticism' even the remotest of the rule. H But we oan see in the ruling Pope a human being H who has lived in prayer, who haa worked in con- Hj sclous confession of the eye of God, who has worked H .for the ..spiritual- -betterment- of .the millions under H his rule, and whose soul can be nothing but clean. H Do you remember those lines- of Longfellow H wa U not? inspired by the flight of a bird into a H church? He was impressed by the incongruity of H the presence only -heuause of th. Heedlessness of H k. He asked the bird why it fled into the sanc- H tuary. "Thou hast no -sins to be forgiven," he J9 In tbose hours when death walled imminent at UM the portals of the .Vatican thoce could be no disap- H proval of that sacred -tui ag .of the man who H wears the robe of Pope. Taere ean be no thought H but of th. vhi$s noui wljloi htt Q'ono li -work, H which has borne its cross,-, And .which opens the IIIIIHH W HIMIH II ! Ill IHIII jingo of every act far thejgyoqf that Judgment which waited so near at ijNJjd. |