of the faithful, if the pastor press frequently upon their attention, the efficacy and importance of contrition. To make known the truths of salvation should not be deemed a full discharge of the duty of the pastor: his zeal should be exerted to persuade them to the adoption of these truths as their rule of conduct through life, as the governing principle of all their actions. Other pious exercises, such as alms, fasting, prayer, and the like, in them selves holy and commendable, are sometimes, through human infirmity, rejected by Almighty God; but contrition can never be rejected by him, never prove unacceptable to him: " A con trite and humbled heart, O God!" exclaims the prophet, "thou wilt not despise." [1] Nay more, the same prophet declares that, as soon as we have conceived this contrition in our hearts, our sins are forgiven: " I said, I will confess my injustice to the Lord, and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin." [2] Of this we have a figure in the ten lepers, who, when sent by our Lord to the priests, were cured of their leprosy, before they had reached them; [3] to give us to understand, that such is the efficacy of true contrition, of which we have spoken above, that through it we obtain from God the immediate pardon of our sins.
To excite the faithful to contrition, it will be found very salutary if the pastor point out the spiritual exercises conducive to contrition. This is to be accomplished by admonishing them, frequently to examine their consciences, in order to ascertain if they have been faithful in the observance of those things which God and his Church require; and should any one be conscious of crime, he should immediately accuse himself, humbly solicit pardon from God, and implore time to confess, and satisfy for his sins. Above all, let him supplicate the aid of divine grace, by which he may be fortified against a relapse into those crimes, the commission of which he now penitently deplores. The faithful are also to be excited to a hatred of sin, arising from the consideration of its baseness and turpitude, and of the evils and calamities of which it is the poisoned source, estranging us, as it does, from the friendship of God, to whom we are already indebted for so many invaluable blessings, and from whom we might have expected to receive gifts of still higher value, and consigning us to eternal death, to be the unhappy victims of the most excruciating torments.
Having said thus much on contrition, we now come to confession, which is another part of penance. The care and exactness which its exposition demands, must be at once obvious, if we only reflect, that whatever of piety, of holiness, of religion, has been preserved to our times in the Church of God, is, in the general opinion of the truly pious, to be ascribed in a great measure, under divine Providence, to the influence of Confession. It cannot, therefore, be matter of surprise, that the enemy of the human race, in his efforts to level to its foundation the
