ick on purely coquettish principles, with her confessor
and director, her "merit" storing up, her patron saints, her privileged
relation to the Almighty, drawing his attention as a professional
devote, her definite "exercises," and her definitely recognized social
pose in the organization.

In most books on religion, three things are represented as its most
essential elements. These are Sacrifice, Confession, and Prayer. I
must say a word in turn of each of these elements, though briefly.
First of Sacrifice.

Sacrifices to gods are omnipresent in primeval worship; but, as cults
have grown refined, burnt offerings and the blood of he-goats have been
superseded by sacrifices more spiritual in their nature. Judaism,
Islam, and Buddhism get along without ritual sacrifice; so does
Christianity, save in so far as the notion is preserved in transfigured
form in the mystery of Christ's atonement. These religions substitute
offerings of the heart, renunciations of the inner self, for all those
vain oblations. In the ascetic practices which Islam, Buddhism, and
the older Christianity encourage we see how indestructible is the idea
that sacrifice of some sort is a religious exercise. In lecturing on
asceticism I spoke of its significance as symbolic of the sacrifices
which life, whenever it is taken strenuously, calls for.[306] But, as
I said my say about those, and as these lectures expressly avoid
earlier religious usages and questions of derivation, I will pass from
the subject of Sacrifice altogether and turn to that of Confession.

[306] Above, p. 354 ff.

In regard to Confession I will also be most brief, saying my word about
it psychologically, not historically. Not nearly as widespread as
sacrifice, it corresponds to a more inward and moral stage of
sentiment. It is part of the general system of purgation and cleansing
which one feels one's self in need of, in order to be in right
relations to one's deity. For him who confesses, shams are over and
realities have begun; he has exteriorized his rottenness. If he has
not actually got rid of it, he at least no longer smears it over with a
hypocritical show of virtue--he lives at least upon a basis of
veracity. The complete decay of the practice of confession in
Anglo-Saxon communities is a little hard to account for. Reaction
against popery is of course the historic explanation, for in popery
confession went with penances and absolution, and other inad