Consider now the duties and habits of our own Church, in its present practical working, by the side of this of France. In the one, every bishop and priest offers daily the tremendous Sacrifice. Daily he has to appear in that most awful presence, where nothing unclean can stand: daily he is armed against those spiritual conflicts, for himself and others, which he has to undergo, receiving "the holy Bread of eternal life and the Cup of everlasting salvation." In the other, the priest at rare intervals, in the vast majority of instances only once a month, approaches the Source of life and health. But what is the inward condition under which each approaches it? The one is under complete spiritual guidance, taught, as a first element of spiritual life, that constant and rigorous self-examination must be practised, and for every sin willingly committed after baptism penance be undergone and confession made: the other, left to himself in that work most perilous to human frailty, the conduct of one's own spiritual state; nor, again, that thus left to himself, he can work by a chart in which the hidden shoals are pointed out, and his progress noted. All, on the contrary, in this inward life, so unspeakably important, is left a blank. How can he guide others who has never been taught to guide himself, or submit himself to another's guidance? For as to the duties of the priest, in these two Churches--in the one, the very main duty, which is far more important than all others, is the secret guiding of consciences, laden with guilt and in various degrees of purification: all public ministrations are immensely inferior in importance to this. Whereas in the other Church, it is these public ministrations which alone exist in any degree of efficiency. Not one Anglican priest in a hundred has ever been called to receive a confession, or unfold the terms of reconciliation to a guilty soul. Indeed so much is this the case, that the notion of the priest in most parishes is extinct: it is the minister and the preacher who have taken his place. Again, in the one Church a compact body of doctrine and a line of preaching are set forth in the catechismus ad parochos: in the other, it frequently happens that two adjoining priests are at issue on the very first principles of Christian doctrine; whether, for instance, there be or be not a Christian priesthood; whether there be or be not grace in the sacraments. Again, in the one Church, for the more devoted spirits religious orders and councils of perfection exist, and celibacy is the condition of all superior spiritual vocations; in the other it is yet in practice doubtful, whether councils of perfection are not inventions of the Evil One, and whether the putting forth of celibacy as meritorious be not an infringement of the one Sacrifice offered on the Cross.