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Show The Solace of Confession. The following beautiful thoughts arc from a discourse by the illustrious convert, con-vert, Cardinal Newman: "How many are the souls in distress, anxiety or loneliness, where the one need is to find a being to whom thsy can pour out their feelings unheard by the world. Tell them out they must. They cannot tell them out to those whom they see every hour; they want to tell them and not to tell them. And they want to tell out, and yet be as if they were not told; they wish to tell them, yet are not strong to despise them; they wish to tell them to one who can at once advise and sympathize with them; they wish to relieve -themselves of a load in order to gain a solace; to receive the assurance that there is one who thinks of them, and one to whom they can betake themselves, them-selves, if necessary, from time to time, while they are in the world. , "How many a .Protestant heart would leap at the rfews of such a benefit, putting aside all ideas of sacramental sac-ramental ordinances altogether. If there is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Catho-lic Church looking at is simply, as an idea surely next after the Blessed Sacrament, confession is such. And such it is ever found, in fact; .the very act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the cross, hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low and the words of peace and blessing, declare it. Oh, what a soothing charm is there whieh the world can neither give nor take away! Oh, what a piercing, pierc-ing, heart-subduing tranquility, provoking pro-voking tears of joy, is poured almost substantially and physically upon the soul the oil of gladness, as the Scripture Scrip-ture calls it when the patient at length rises, his God reconciled to him, his sins rolled away forever! That is confession as it is in fact, as those who bear witness to it know by experience." |