Are not his wife and daughters as precious to him as those horses? Is there not greater danger of indiscretions, mismanagement, irreparable and fatal errors on the part of the priest, dealing alone with the wife and daughters, than when driving the horses? No human act of folly, moral depravity, and want of common sense, can equal the permission given by a man to his wife to go and confess to the priest. That day he abdicates the royal--I had almost said divine--dignity of husband; for it is from God that he holds it: his crown is forever lost, his sceptre broken! What would you do to any one mean enough to peep or listen through the key-hole of your door, in order to hear or see everything that was said or done within? Would you show so little self-respect as to tolerate such indiscretion? Would you not rather take a whip or a cane, and drive away the villain? Would you not even expose your life to free yourself from impudent curiosity? But what is the confessional, if not the key-hole of your house and of your very chamber, through which the priest can hear and see your most secret words and actions, nay, more, know your most intimate thoughts and aspirations? Are you men to submit to such sly and insulting inquisition? Do you deserve the name of men who consent to put up with such ignoble affront and humiliation? "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the Church." "Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands, in everything" (Eph. v.) If these solemn words are the true oracles of divine wisdom, is not the husband divinely appointed the _only_ adviser, counsellor, help of his wife, just as Christ is the _only_ adviser, counsellor, and help of His Church? If the Apostle was not an impostor when he said that the wife is to her husband what the body is to the head, and that the husband is to his wife what the head is to the body--is not the husband appointed by God to be the light, the guide of his wife? Is it not his duty, as well as his privilege and glory, to console her in her afflictions, strengthen her in her hours of weakness, keep her up when she is in danger of fainting, and encourage her when she is on the rough and uphill ways of life?