Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/107

 upon their admission to the sacraments, and upon the forgiveness of their sins, it is obvious that the priest who may debar them from the one, and refuse the other, receives in his consecration the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In their communications to the Almighty through the mediation of such priests, men are in possession of an instrument of the very highest efficacy.

The terrible reality which the belief in the ecclesiastical privilege of forgiving sins may sometimes have, is graphically exhibited in M. de Lamartine's touching poem entitled "Jocelyn." Therein a bishop, taken prisoner and condemned to death in the French Revolution, sends for a young deacon who was living in concealment in the Alps with a maiden who loved him deeply, and whom (since the irrevocable vows of a priest were not yet taken) he intended to marry. Regardless of all his pleading the Bishop, under the threat of his dying anathema, forces the unhappy youth to receive priestly orders at his hands, solely in order that he may then listen to the episcopal confession and forgive the episcopal sins. Marriage was now rendered impossible by the vow he had taken; and thus two lives were consigned to enduring misery that a bishop might die in peace. Surely the morality which could lead to such a consummation is self-condemned!