Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/115

Rh confession will be treated in the next chapter; extreme unction is a ceremony in which only a keen faith, keener than usually flourishes in the nineteenth century, can take a religious interest. But it is in the ceremony of baptism, especially, that the most unreasonable rites survive and the most diverting incidents occur. There is a long series of questions to be put to the sponsors, and the Church, unmindful apparently of the march of time, still insists on their being put in Latin and repeated afterwards in English. One lay-brother who used to assist me in baptising thought it more proper for him to learn the Latin responses instead of allowing me to answer myself; unfortunately he muddled the dialogues, and to my query: ‘Dost thou believe in God the Father, &c.?’ he answered, with proud emphasis, ‘I renounce him.’

In point of fact, however, I was little occupied with sacerdotal functions. Even before my ordination I had been appointed to the chair of Philosophy, and as soon as I became a priest I entered upon the duties of professor. My application to that science had been noticed by our authorities, and probably attributed to a natural taste for the subject. The truth was I had fallen upon a period of acute religious scepticism, and I knew that philosophy alone could furnish the answer to my doubts, if such answer were obtainable. My misgiving had commenced six years previously, in the novitiate, and I had duly