tion of a priest at that moment was in itself absolutely indifferent? At all times the Bible and the enlightened conscience repeatedly assure us that that which commends a departing spirit to its Creator and Judge is not the accidental circumstance of his listening to a particular form of words uttered by a particular person, but the sincerity of repentance, the uprightness, the humility, the purity, the faithfulness of the man himself.

It may be a consolation to us to hear from well-known lips which speak to us with tenderness, with knowledge, and with justice, the assurance that we are regarded as innocent: it may be a consolation to hear with our outward ears the solemn declarations that the Supreme Father is always ready to receive the returning penitent; that the soul which returns from evil and does what is lawful and right shall surely live. But this assurance, by the nature of the case, is well known to us already from hundreds of passages in the Bible, and from the knowledge of human nature. And also it can come from any one whom we respect, from any one whom we may have injured, from any one who will give us a true, disinterested verdict on our worse and on our better qualities. It is finely described in a well-known tale "The Heir of Redclyffe "that when the obstinate Pharisaical youth, at last, in bitter remorse acknowledges his fault to the wife of the man whom he has mortally injured, she takes upon herself to console him and absolve him, and her absolution consists in repeating the words of the Psalmist: "The sacrifices of God are a troubled spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, wilt Thou not despise." No Pontifical decree could say more; no true forgiveness could say less. Whenever any man is able to see clearly that his fellow-man has truly repented, or that a course of action is clear and right-then, whoever he be, he can declare that promise of God's forgiveness. In all cases each man must strive to act on his own judgment and on his own conscience. The first duty of the penitent is to try to minister to his own disease. "The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy."

Why should we faint or fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heav'n has will'd, we die?

The next duty may be to get sound advice on his future

course. But that advice can be given by any competent person, and the competency depends not on any ministerial or sacerdotal character, but on personal insight into character to be found equally in layman and clergyman.

It is a duty to cultivate the conviction that we all alike need to be guided and be forgiven, and to have our course made clear. All alike, according to the several gifts which God has bestowed on the vast family of mankind, have the power to forgive, to assist, to enlighten each other. In the last resort there is no one to be considered or regarded, but our own immortal struggling souls and the One eternally Just and Merciful God. Our own responsibility must be maintained without shifting it to the keeping of any one else. We, all of us, each with some different gift, are the inheritors of the promise to bind and to loose-that is, to warn and to console our brethren, as we in like manner hope to be warned and consoled by them.

meaning.

V. Such is the summary of this question needlessly complicated by irrelevant discussions. The texts on which the popular theory and practice of absolution are grounded Its true are, as we have seen, altogether beside the purpose. They no more relate to it than the promise to Peter relates to the Popes of Rome, or than Isaiah's description of the ruin of the Assyrian King under the figure of Lucifer relates to the Fall of the Angels, or than the two swords at the Last Supper relate to the spiritual and secular jurisdiction, or than the sun and moon in the first chapter of Genesis relate to the Pope and the Emperor. In all these cases, the misinterpretation has been long and persistent; in all these, it is acknowledged by all scholars, outside the Roman communion, that they are absolutely without foundation.

And, as the misinterpretation of the texts on which the theory of Episcopal or Presbyterian absolution rests will die out before a sound understanding of the Biblical records, so also the theory and practice itself, though with occasional recrudescences, will probably die out with the advance of civilization. The true power of the clergy will not be diminished but strengthened by the loss of this fictitious attribute. Norna of the Fitful Head was a happier and more useful member of society after she abandoned her magical arts than when she

practised them. In proportion as England has become, and in proportion as it will yet more become, a truly free and truly educated people, able of itself to bind what ought to be bound, and to loose what ought to be loosed, in that proportion will the belief in priestly absolution vanish, just as the belief in wizards and necromancers has vanished before the advance of science. As alchemy has disappeared to give place to chemistry, as astrology has given way to astronomy, as monastic celibacy has given way to domestic purity, as bull-fights and bear-baits have given way to innocent and elevating amusements, as scholastic casuistry has bowed before the philosophy of Bacon and Pascal, so will the belief in the magical offices of a sacerdotal caste vanish before the growth of manly Christian independence and generous Christian sympathy.

CHAPTER VIII.

ECCLESIASTICAL VESTMENTS.

Ar a time when all Churches are or ought to be occupied with so many important questions, when so many interesting inquiries have arisen with regard to the origin and the interpretation of the Sacred Books, when the adjustment of science and theology needs more than ever to be properly balanced, when the framework of the English Prayer Book requires so many changes and expansions in order to meet the wants of the time, when measures for the conciliation of our Nonconformist brethren press so closely on the hearts and consciences of those who care for peace and truth, when so many social and political problems are crying for solution, some apology is due for treating of a subject so apparently trival as the Vestments of the Clergy. But, inasmuch as it has nevertheless occupied considerable attention in the English Church, its discussion cannot be altogether out of place.

What has to be said will be divided into two parts: the first, an antiquarian investigation into the origin of ecclesiastical vestments; the second, some practical remarks on the present state of the controversy in England.

I. The antiquarian investigation of this matter is not in itself devoid of interest. It belongs to the general survey of the origin of usages and customs in the early ages of Christianity. The conclusion to which it leads is that the dress of the clergy had no distinct intention-symbolical, sacerdotal, sacrificial, or mystical; but originated simply in the fashions common to the whole community of the Roman Empire during the three first centuries.

There is nothing new to be said in favor of this conclusion. But it has nevertheless been, and is still, persistently denied. In spite of the assertion to the contrary of Cardinal Bona, Père Thomassin, Dr. Rock, and our own lamented Wharton Marriott, it has been asserted, both by the admirers and de

preciators of clerical vestments, that they were borrowed in the first instance (to use Milton's phrase in his splendid invective against the English clergy) "from Aaron's wardrobe or the Flamen's vestry;" that they are intrinsically marks of distinction between the clergy and the laity, between the Eucharist and every other religious service, between a sacerdotal and an anti-sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry-that if they are abolished, all is lost to the idea of a Christian priesthood; that if they are retained, all is gained.

In face then of these reiterated statements, it may not be out of place to prove that every one of them is not only not true, but is the reverse of the truth; that if they symbolize anything, they symbolize ideas the contrary of those now asIcribed to them.

II. Let us, in our mind's eye, dress up a lay figure at the time of the Christian era, when the same general costume pervaded all classes of the Roman Empire, from Palestine to Spain, very much as the costume of the nineteenth century pervades at least all the upper classes of Europe now.

Dress of the ancient world.

*

The Roman, Greek, or Syrian, whether gentleman or peasant, unless in exceptional cases, had no hat, no coat, no waistcoat, and no trousers. He had shoes or sandals; he wore next his skin, first, a shirt or jacket, double or single; then a long shawl or plaid; and again, especially in the later Roman period, a cloak or overcoat.t

1. The first, or inner garb, if we strip the ancient Roman to his shirt, was what is called in classical Greek, chiton; in classical Latin, tunica; a woollen vest, which sometimes had beneath it another fitting close to the skin, called subucula or interula, or, in the case of soldiers, camisia.

Inner dress.

* As the vestments in question are chiefly those of the Latin Church, these remarks apply more to the dress of the Western than of the Eastern population of the Empire. But in general (as appears even from the New Testament alone, without referring to secular authorities) the dress even of the Syrian peasants was substantially the same as that of the Greek or the Roman.

For the general dress, see, for the Greek, Bekker's Charicles, pp. 402-20; for the Roman, Bekker's Gallus, pp. 401-30; for the Syrian, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, under Dress; for the ecclesiastical dresses, Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, under the different words.

St. Jerome, Epist. 64, ad Fabiolam. He apologizes for using so vulgar a word as camisia.