ard, Savanarola, Pius, Gregory, St. Therese, St. Liguori, on the
unspeakable and irreparable ruin spread all along the ways and all over the
countries haunted by the Pope's confessors, and they will know that the
confessional-box is the daily witness of abominations which would hardly
have been tolerated in the lands of Sodom and Gomorrha. Let the
legislators, the fathers and husbands of every nation and tongue,
interrogate Father Gavazzi, Hyacinthe, and the thousands of living priests
who, like myself, have miraculously been taken out from that Egyptian
servitude to the promised land, and they will tell you the same old, old
story--that the confessional-box is for the greatest part of the confessors
and female penitents, a real pit of perdition, into which they
promiscuously fall and perish. Yes; they will tell you that the soul and
heart of your wife and daughter are purified by the magical words of the
confessional, just as the souls of the poor idolaters of Hindoostan are
purified by the tail of the cow which they hold in their hands when they
die. Study the pages of the past history of England, France, Italy, Spain,
&c., &c., and you will see that the gravest and most reliable historians
have everywhere found mysteries of iniquity in the confessional-box which
their pen refused to trace.

In the presence of such public, undeniable, and lamentable facts, have not
the civilized nations a duty to perform? Is it not time that the children
of light, the true disciples of the Gospel, all over the world, should
rally round the banners of Christ, and go, shoulder to shoulder, to the
rescue of women?

Woman is to society what the roots are to the most precious trees of your
orchard. If you knew that a thousand worms are biting the root of those
noble trees, that their leaves are already fading away, their rich fruits,
though yet unripe, are falling on the ground, would you not unearth the
roots and sweep away the worms?

The confessor is the worm which is biting, polluting, and destroying the
very roots of civil and religious society, by contaminating, debasing, and
enslaving woman.

Before the nations can see the reign of peace, happiness, and liberty,
which Christ has promised, they must, like the Israelites, pull down the
walls of Jericho. The confessional is the modern Jericho, which proudly and
defiantly dares the children of God!

Let, then, the people of the Lord, the true soldiers of Christ, rise up and
rally a