y imposed upon him
who receives it. Priests never divulge what they know from the
confessional. They have been ill-treated, as was Father Kohlmann in this
country; have even been tortured and cruelly put to death, as was St.
John Nepomucene, in order to extort from them knowledge they gained in
the confessional, but without avail. For what they knew through the
tribunal of penance, they knew as ministers of God. And as it is better
to obey God than man, no minister of state could force them to divulge
that which the laws of God forbid.

Only sinners, who after a thorough preparation, a sincere sorrow, and a
good confession, can realize the soothing and beneficial effects of
confession, and feel with David, "Blessed are they whose sins are
forgiven." If you have ever noticed such after leaving the confessional
you could see joy beaming on their countenances, as if a heavy burden
had been removed.

Confession quiets the conscience. But this is only one of the benefits
it confers upon those who practise going to confession. It has also a
salutary influence upon their morals; for one of its necessary
conditions is promise of amendment.

The pagans of the first centuries were aware of the guiding and
reforming power of the confessional. Voltaire, the leading infidel of
the last century, one who made sport of everything Christian, says that
"there is, perhaps, no wiser institution, and that confession is an
excellent thing, a restraint upon inveterate crime, a very good practice
to prevent the guilty from falling into despair and relapsing into sin,
to influence hearts full of hate to forgive and robbers to make
restitution--that the enemies of the _Romish_ Church who have opposed so
beneficial an institution have taken from man the greatest restraint
that can be put upon crime." While his everyday experience forced these
words of praise from the arch-infidel, his hatred of the Church creeps
out in the word "Romish."

Confession of sin, as we have seen, is a _reasonable practice_, because
it was taught by Jesus Christ, and by His apostles and their successors
from Christ's time until the present; but _especially_ because it has
the power of soothing and pacifying the conscience by freeing it from
the torture of sin, the poison of crime. It is not strange, then, that
it is so dear to virtuous souls. It is offensive only to those whose
hearts are so hardened as to blunt the sting of remorse. Confession is
Christianity usin