ssing to
myself, has at times been very strong. But I recognised that the
general English mind--yes, I'll grant you, the general _healthy_
English mind--had its prejudice too; a prejudice so sturdy against
Confession, that it seemed to me I should alienate more souls than I
attracted and breed more ill-temper than charity to cover it.
So--weakly perhaps--I never spoke of it in sermons, and by
consequence no Brother of St. Hospital has ever sought from me that
comfort which my conscience all the while would have approved of
giving."

Brother Copas bowed his head for sign that he understood.

"But--excuse me, Master--you say that you found profit in Confession
at Cuddesdon; that is, when I dare say your manhood was young and in
ferment. Be it granted that just at such a crisis, Confession may be
salutary. Have you found it profitable in later life?"

"I cannot," the Master answered, "honestly say more than that no
doubt of it has ever occurred to me, and for the simple reason that I
have not tried. But I see at what you are driving--that we of St.
Hospital are too old to taste its benefit? . . . Yet I should have
thought that even in age it might bring comfort to some; and, if so,
why should the others complain?"

"For the offence it carries as an infraction of the reformed doctrine
under which they supposed themselves to order their lives and
worship. They contend, Master, that they are all members of one
Society; and if the doctrine of that Society be infringed to comfort
A or B, it is to that extent weakened injuriously for C and D, who
have been building their everlasting and only hope on it, and have
grown too old to change."

"But," answered Master Blanchminster, pinning his finger on the
paragraph, "you admit here that even the reformed Church, in the
Order for the Visitation of the Sick, enjoins Confession and
prescribes a form of Absolution. Now if a man be not too old for it
when he is dying, _a fortiori_ he cannot be too old for it at any
previous time."

Brother Copas rubbed his hands together softly, gleefully. He adored
dialectic.

"With your leave, Master," he replied, "dying is a mighty singular
business. The difference between it and growing old cannot be
treated as a mere matter of degree. Now one of the points I make is
that the Church, by expressly allowing Confession on this singular
occasion, while saying nothing about it on any other, thereby
inferentially excludes it on all othe