There are therefore Scribes in all ages—­Romish Scribes, who distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its appointed penance and absolution.  There are Protestant Scribes, who have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain methods of appeasing him—­a certain price—­in consideration of which He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the distinction between the different kinds of faith—­faith historical and faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the work that may and the work that may not be done on the Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you a right to call God a Father.  They hate the Romish Scribe as much as the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic.  But in their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.

Now the result of this is fourfold.  Among the tender-minded, despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity.  Ponder it well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us:  Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity.  In this way we have been going on for many years.  In the midst of all this, at last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed.  It is not to be borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and absolve in private.  Yet it is only what might have been expected.

With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have ceased to front the living fact—­we are as zealous as Scribes and Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature, oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real and living.  It cannot live on controversies.  It cannot be fed on protests against heresy, however vehement.  We are trying who can protest loudest.  Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.  “Beware!” is written upon everything.  Beware of Rome; beware of Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan everywhere—­God nowhere; everywhere some man to be shunned or dreaded—­nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion.  Is it any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, “Ye warn me from the error, but who will guide me into truth?  I want guidance.  I am sinful, full of evil!  I want forgiveness!  Absolve me; tell me that I am pardoned; help me to believe it.  Your quarrels do not help me; if you cannot do that, it matters little what you can do.  You have restricted God’s