their spiritual directors. Without referring to the abuses
which would sometimes occur in the instances of weak or sinister
characters, these religious friendships have often been surprisingly
permeating and transparent. This follows from the nature of the case.
For the most ardent healthy devotees of religion are persons of the
most exalted ideas and affections, most deeply endowed with the
sensibility of genius. Every coarse passion both alien to their souls
and awed away by the infinite realities they adore in common, the
historic abyss of the Church scintillating around them with the
memories and presences of saints, martyrs, angels, it is natural that
all the purer sympathies of their being, enkindled and consecrated,
should yearn together. The woman also confides every secret, unveils
the inmost states of her spirit, to her confessor; takes counsel of
him; holds with him the most confidential communion known outside of
marriage. And the priest, in turn, shut out from the chief personal
ties and vents of family, spontaneously bestows, so far as is
blameless, his best human affections, turned back elsewhere, on the
sister, daughter, mother, friend, fellow-worshipper, who looks up to
him with such affecting trust, opening her heart to him, telling him
her hopes and griefs, her errors, prayers, and fears. Madame de
Sevigne, speaking of the attachment of women for their confessors,
says, "They would rather talk ill of themselves than not talk of
themselves." When pure and beautiful women, wonderfully dowered with
spiritual charms, and noble priests, eminently possessed of every
virtue and authority of character, so often meet, amid such inspiring
circumstances, beneath the august sanctions of the church, drawn
forward by the sublime mysteries of religion, and blending the
potential perfections of heaven with the actual experiences of earth,
it would be no less than a miracle if many friendships of singular
sincerity and power did not spring up. They have sprung up in every
part and period of Christendom; more in the Catholic Church than
anywhere else, because its ritual and doctrine, its organized
religious life and its practice of direction, furnish for them
unequalled facilities and provocatives.

The friendship all divine which Jesus showed for many women, of whom
Mary and Martha, the sisters of his friend Lazarus, are examples--the
friendship which drew such matchless devotion from them, has been
perpetuated in t