blessing you have received. Try to realize that to obtain your Absolution God was made man, lived on earth, and died on the Cross. The Te Deum, the Magnificat, and some of the Psalms (especially Psalms 30, 32, 40, 103, and 107) supply excellent material for thanksgiving.

You should make your Communion as soon after your Confession as practicable. You will probably be happier than you have ever been in your life; indeed, the testimony of most earnest souls after their first Confession is that their happiness is like a foretaste of Heaven; for it is the happiness of union with God, and of the consciousness of His love.

CHAPTER VIII

OBJECTIONS TO ABSOLUTION

THERE remains for us, in our concluding chapters, to consider and to meet the principal objections which are brought against Confession and Absolution. And we shall begin with those against Absolution, because this logically comes first, though not in order of time; since Confession precedes Absolution, as its necessary condition. But the real question which this little book has attempted to deal with is not so much whether Confession is beneficial, as whether God has provided a means by which sin may be absolved; for, if He has, the conditions upon which we may obtain absolution become only of secondary importance.

The first objection to Absolution is put forth by those who deny that God has provided any sacramental means by which sin may be forgiven, and who teach that the sinner can obtain the forgiveness of his sins from God directly (as the Prodigal Son did from his father), and without any intervention of or assistance from the Church; that, indeed, the only thing needed is that he should desire to be forgiven.

Those who hold this view, to be logical, have to reject the efficacy alike of Baptism and the Holy Communion, and most of them do reject it, at least thus far, that they hold Baptism to be a mere outward sign of admission into Church privileges, a sign which conveys no special grace; while they regard the Holy Communion only as a memorial of Christ's death.

The special grace of Baptism is regeneration. This, however, these make to depend not upon Baptism but upon conversion. So that, according to their view, it requires no objective act, but follows on a subjective change in the sinner's soul. The Church, however, teaches that regeneration and conversion are absolutely different things; that regeneration is the result of the Sacrament of Baptism, and can take place but once in a man's life, since a man can only be born once; and that while conversion is indeed a subjective moral change, the turning of the will to God, it is only the first step towards the forgiveness of sins (since repentance must begin by turning to God); and that penitence involves many other steps going to God as the prodigal went to his father, and using the means provided by God in His Church. For the father, after his son's confession, directed his servants to put on him the first robe. It is not the best robe as in our translation, but the first robe (σTony Tv πрúrηy), that is,

the robe which he possessed before he left his father's house, and which belonged to him as a son.

In other words, the putting on him of the first robe is the restoration of the privileges of sonship; and while this takes place at the father's command, his servants or ministers are the instruments appointed by him to carry out his loving purpose in restoring to his son what he had lost when he left his father's house. Similarly the priests by Absolution, at God's command, restore to the penitent sinner the grace of his baptism, which he has forfeited by sin, and put on him the first robe - the robe of righteousness with which he was clothed in baptism.

Thus we see that in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which is generally quoted as the great authority for rejecting all ministerial intervention or assistance in the work of repentance, is contained an episode which, if it means anything at all, implies precisely what the Church teaches about Absolution, namely, that, while God alone can forgive sins, He uses the ministry of His Church to impart to the penitent that Absolution which is both the assurance of forgiveness, and the restoration of the former grace (the baptismal robe) which had been forfeited by

sin.

We may frankly recognize that there is nothing illogical in the position, that a sinner can go direct to God for forgiveness, that there are no sacra

mental means of grace in the Church, her ordinances being merely outward symbols, of no use as conveying grace, but of value as witnessing before the world to a subjective moral change in the recipient. There is nothing illogical in this view. The only question is whether it accords with the teaching of Holy Scripture, and with the unanimous testimony of Christendom for the first fifteen hundred years of her history (that is, until the rise of sectarianism), and with the belief of the immense majority of Christians since then.

This view also necessarily demands the rejection of the Holy Communion as an objective means of grace. According to most sectarian teaching its only value is to remind the recipients of our Lord's death, and by this remembrance to stir up in them certain emotions of love for Christ and for one another; and, further, to witness to their Christian fellowship. Here again we have the questions, Is this consistent with our Lord's words in Holy Scripture, and is it in accord with the teaching of His Church? To both of which we must reply emphatically, It is not.

For our purpose in this chapter we may divide Christians into two classes: those who reject all sacramental ordinances, that is, who deny that they are necessary means of grace; and those who accept them as ordained by Christ Himself as the ordinary