Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/85

 During the past few years there have been many examples of men belonging to the hierarchy of the Church, who have wantonly and knowingly outraged every canon of honour and virtue, and their sins appear all the blacker because of the whiteness of the faith they profess to serve. A criminal is twice a criminal when he adds hypocrisy to his crime. The clergyman of a parish, who has all doors thrown open to him,—who invites and receives the trust of his parishioners,—who is set among them to guide, help and comfort them in the devious and difficult ways of life, is a thousand times more to blame than any other man in a less responsible position, when he knowingly and deliberately consents to sin. Unless he is able to govern his own passions, and eschew every base, mean and petty motive of action, he is not fit to influence his fellow men, nor should he presume to instruct them in matters which he makes it evident he does not himself understand.

Quite recently a case was chronicled in the daily press of a clergyman who went to visit a dying woman at her own request. She wished to make a last confession to him, and so unburden her soul of its secret misery before she passed away, trusting in God's mercy for pardon and peace. The clergyman went accordingly, and heard what she had to say. When the unhappy creature was dead, however, he refused her poor body the sacred rites of burial! Now it surely may be asked what authority had he or any man calling himself a Christian minister to refuse the rites of burial even to the worst of sinners? Whatever the woman's faults might have been, vengeance wreaked on a corpse is both