At the close of the rainy season, when the brethren were making ready for their wanderings, another solemn conference for self-purgation was held. In this exercise of the Pâvârana or Invitation no one known to be under the burden of scandal could take part, but all who were consciously clean, from the oldest to the youngest, invited the brethren to name any offence which during their common retreat they might have noted in their conduct. “I invite, venerable ones, the Order; if ye have seen anything offensive on my part, or have heard anything, or have any suspicion about me, have pity upon me, and name it. If I see it, I will make amends.”[297] It may be asked whether such an institution as this could ever have flourished in Christendom, although the purest of our Churches might adopt it with profit. These Buddhist brethren could not pray the one for the other, but they could confess their faults one to another by a simpler and more effective method than has ever been attempted by the confessional. That institution in Christendom has tended more to corrupt and degrade than to purify and elevate society, for it has interfered with the divinely instituted and much more ancient confessional of home. In its secrecy, sealed by affection to father or mother, or brother or sister, can be told out the things that burn within; and no priest or ecclesiastic can usurp this parental or brotherly function without injuring what they must earnestly desire to protect. This confessional, however, of the one to the whole little brotherhood, making them watch for and consider one another, must have tended to mutual edification. It seems of all the observances of the Sangha to have most nearly realised one great purpose of the Church, that of being helpful to each other’s salvation. St. Paul and St. James would have felt at home in such a conference. They would probably have warned the brethren against judging one another, and they would have instructed them that only One whose knowledge is perfect, because His love is infinite, could try the lives of men; but they would have commended them for this honest endeavour to fulfil one of the precepts of the perfect law of liberty: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”