Chapter XVII. Scruples

A scrupulous man teases God, irritates his neigh bour, torments himself, and oppresses his director. Il would require a whole volume to prove these four infallible propositions; the reader must, therefore, either take them on faith, or make the acquaintance of a scrupulous man. Every one who is in trouble and disgrace deserves commiseration; but our pity is lessened when the sufferer has no one to blame hut himself, and it well-nigh departs altogether when he remains in his suffering of his own obstinate will. Now this is the case with scrupulous persons during all the earlier stages of their complaint, before they become incurable. They are the opprobrium of spiritual physicians, and so intensely difficult is their cure that God has sometimes allowed those, who were hereafter to be the guides of souls, to pass through a supernatural state of scruples, that they might be the better able tc minister to the disease in others. It is a great part of the science of the spiritual life to know a temptation from a gin; and a scruple may almost be defined to be the culpable ignorance of this Another man may discern that my scruple is not a «in; but if I discerned it for myself, it would not be a scruple; and if I took it on faith whon my director told me, I should not be a scrupulous man This lets us into the secret of the malice of scruples. They are not sins, but they are so full of wrong dispositions that they can become sins at a moment's notice, besides being sources of many sins under the pretext of good. They are little centres of spiritual death spotting the soul, a kind of moral erysipelas.

It is unfortunate that scrupulous persons are always spoken of with great compassion, far more than they deerve. Hence they elevate their scruples to an interior trial of the soul; which they sometimes are, but very seldom. It is unfortunate also that in common conversation the word scruple is often used in a good sense, as if it were something respectable, and a sort of vague synonym for conscientiousness. It would, therefore, be a great thing if men could get well into their minds this ascetical truth, that there is nothing respectable about a scruple. It has no intellectual worth. It merits no moral esteem. It has not the faintest element of spiritual good in it. It is simply a perversity and a wrongness, deserving of pity certainly, but of the same kind and amount as we have for a man who is going to be hung. Francesca of Pam peluna saw many souls in purgatory only for scruples; and when this surprised her, our Lord told her there never was a scruple which was wholly without sin. This was, of course, not meant to apply to supernatural scruples, which we shall consider presently. But scruples are not only bad in themselves. They give rise to countless other mischiefs; and one of the most provoking of them is, that men are often deterred from the pursuit of perfection and the constraints of the interior life by the feai of scruples.

A scruple is defined in theology to be a vain fear of ein where there is no reason nor reasonable ground for suspecting sin; and it is sometimes explained in etymology to mean a stone in a man's shoe which makes him walk lame, and wounds him at every step, which is not an inapt figure for expressing its consequences in the spiritual life. We may also compare a scrupulous man to a norse shying at shadows, and so making little progress, backing, disobeying the rein, often endangering the ridei, and always trying his temper. Moreover, he runs into real sin from startling at the shadow of imaginary sin; and all this is so connected with pride that the tender St. Philip gave no quarter to scrupulous persons who would not pay blind obedience to the rules given them. Thus scruples are quite distinct from delicacy of conscience, which is known by its not only being reasonable, but much more by its being tranquil) neither is a scrupk the same thing as laxity, but Gerson thinks that it it almost worse.

The first question for us to consider regards the causes of scruples. These are three: God, the devil, and ourselves, or the human spirit; and to these last the body contributes as well as the soul.

First, then, scruples may be from God. These are what I have called supernatural scruples. God may permit us to fall into them for various reasons. Sometimes it is to prepare us for the office of directing souls, in which it is important that we should have an experimental knowledge of scruples, so as to guide others safely through them. Sometimes it is as an exterior trial, or what mystics call a purgation of spirit; and their use is one while to wean us from an excessive attachment to spiritual sweetnesses and the extraordinary favours of God, and another while to let us have our purgatory on earth, and another while to destroy the lingering activity of self-love. He thus cleanses us from our past faults by a most apt, yet extremely severe penance, confirms us in a salutary fear, and humbles us in the ver\ matters wherein humiliation is felt most distressingly. His share in the process is simply the withdrawing of the gratuitous light in which he allowed the soul to walk before. It was under this subiraction that St. Bonaventure would not say mass, and St. Ignatius refused to eat, that Ippolito Galantini was swallowed up in a sea of scruples, that St. Luitgarde said her office so many times over that God sent an angel to forbid her, and that St. Augustin, as he tells us in his Confessions, was so teased with scruples about his natural pleasure in eating and drinking.

Secondly, scruples may be from the devil, who is a positive cause of them, which God can never be. St. Lawrence Justinian says: It often happens by the disposition of God that the evil spirits confound the consciences of the weak by doubtfulness and by a host of pricking fears, so that they cannot move their foot through the excess of these terrors of conscience. Nay, their persuasions and importunities can actually bring it to pass that what is a very little sin, or no sin at all, may be turned into a mortal sin. The devil's object is, of course, always real sin; and he knows well that scruples are a sure though a circuitous road to it, and not the less sure for being circuitous.

But thirdly, the greatest fountain of these dishonourable unworthinesses is in ourselves. It is partly in our soul, and partly in our body. This is the most practical part of our subject, and must be considered at greater length. The causes of scruples from our soul are c'/>aer intrinsic or extrinsic. The intrinsic are five in nui ter. 26

The first is the want of discernment in temptations, so that a man does not distinguish between temptation and consent. Of this I have spoken in the last chapter. It is difficult to exaggerate its importance, as so many things are vitiated by this unhappy ignorance. The second is a hidden pride, which takes the shape of self-opinionatedness. There are few men who have not some pet opinions to which they cling with an unreasonable tenacity. They may be very humble in other matters. They may even have a certain amount of intellectual humility. But they cannot be made to discern the inordinateness of this tenacity. If it be on a question of theology, ten to one it becomes implicit heresy in a short time. They cannot see the force of any arguments on the other side. They unsuspiciously interpret in their own favour the mos< plain counter-statements in theologians, whose authority they dare not call in question. From conversations they retire with an exactly opposite impression of the interlocutor's opinion from that which he distinctly meant to convey. Is there any subject on theology which we can never discuss without either sadness or irritability? We may be sure we have got hold of a wrong opinion about it. When this tenacity of judgment fastens upon a question of the spiritual life, it becomes a source of scruples, and a source which is itself poisoned by wrong dispositions. Out of this came Jansenism and Quietism; and in the secret of private and even conventual life it is, aa great writers tell us, unceasingly destroying souls. Safe and happy is the man, if such an one there be, and enjoyable the office of his guardian angel, who, outside the limits of the catholic faith and the approval of the Church has ik opinion which it would not give hiui Un minutes uneasiness to abandon!

The third cause is an excessive fear of God's justice or a distrust of His mercy; for it may take either of these forms. Thus if a man has laid to heart what has been said before of looking on God as a Father, he will escape this snare. It is not that scruples have any real worship of the divine justice, which through an intellectual infirmity leads them to underrate the riches of His mercy Scruples have nothing to do with God for His own sake. There is no devotional spirit about them, not even a mistaken one. The disguise may be varied almost infinitely, but it is always self-love which is beneath the veil. It is our fear, not God's honour, which leads us to exaggerate the one attribute and to depreciate the other. The fourth ^ause is an inordinate anxiety to avoid even the appearance of sin, and to have a full certainty that such and such actions are not sins. We are impatient of tiie uncertainty in which it has pleased God that we should often walk-We would fain change the assurance of faith for the evidence of sight, or the conviction of reason. God has made faith the light of life. We wish for a light more undeniable and more bright. He who loves God wishes to avoid sin; but to wish to avoid the appearance of sin is by no means an infallible proof of sanctity and love. Short of scandal, the saints have seen almost a shelter in the semblance of sin. It is sin, and not the appearance of it, which wounds God's honour. So that here again it is self, our own outward reputation or our own inward satisfaction, which we are seeking under the false pretence of God's glory. I cannot repeat it too often, so that we may be inspired with a greater disgust for these plague-spots; — there is lo search after God in scruples. Self ifi their centre, and they revolve round it with odioas accuracy and fidelity. The fifth cause is an indiscreet auste' rity, which shows itself in avoiding the company of others, as if perfection consisted in being morose. There are very few souls which can bear solitude. For the most part it makes them a prey to sin instead of deepening their habits of the presence of God. Hence it was that the old conobites of the desert were so tardy in allowing the vocation of those who thought themselves called to the hermit's life. With people in the world the same principles are at work in their measure. To shun society and shut ourselves up, as if to keep out of the way of sin, to avoid rash judgments, to do penance, and to practise prayer, is a line of conduct which rarely answers. It is beset with temptations, and an atmosphere of delusions is spread all over it. In spite of the fertility of sin which we find in temerarious criticism, and an ungoverned tongue, and an irritable exacting temper, the majority of men sin less when they are with others than when they are by themselves.

When the causes of scruples are in the soul, but are so in consequence of external circumstances, they come either from the permission of God or the temptation of Satan, both of which we have already considered, or from conversing with scrupulous persons, or reading books of spirituality and moral theology which a prudent director would have prohibited our reading. These two last causes explain themselves, and need not be commented upon.

There remain two more causes, both of which arise from the body rather than the soul. The first is a cold, melancholy, and hypochondriacal temperament, and the second is weakness of the head. The scruples which come from a melancholy temperament are of all the most difficult to cure. This is especially the case when persons of that disposition are given to immoderate corporal austerities, which seem at once to thicken the gloom of their minds and to strengthen the obstinacy of their self-will. It is very rare indeed that such a person is ever completely cured. Indeed, as we shall see by-and-bye, complete cures of this disease are altogether rare. These temperaments have a constitutional aptitude for turning sweets into bitters, and thus the very remedies re-inforce the malady. The weakness of head is sometimes natural, and sometimes the result of inordinate study, eager application to prayer, or a foolish abridgment of sleep. It is not easy for a spiritual man to be guilty of either of these three things without sin; so that in this case even the physical causes of scruple we prepare for ourselves, by our own disobedience or the indulgence of self-will. What sight is more provoking, and alas! what more common, than to see a devout man doing a right thing in a wrong way, and maintaining he is right?

The signs of scruples may be inferred from their causes. The first is pertinacity of will and way. It is very rare indeed that a docile man is scrupulous; and when he is so, his scruples are, for the most part, supernatural, and therefore sanctifying. Disobedience is the counterpart of scrupulosity. Pertinacity is the opposite of the spirit of Jesus.

The second sign is a greedy desire to know our own interior state. This comes to pass when self-love entirely possesses us, as if it were a living demon. We are unable to use the words of Innocent the Third, to " explode 'he light and rash credulity of our conscience." We must 26* u know whether we are in a state of grace. We will not go a step further till we do know. We must be told whether the sin we have confessed be grave or not. We remain dumb till our confessor has told us. God must give us a mathematical certainty in moral questions, or we shall faint. We will give up holiness. We will not try to persevere. " Human reason cannot take in the infinity of particulars," says St. Thomas, "so that our providences must remain uncertain." This is God's will, but it is not ours. A scrupulous man measures nothing by God's will, but everything by his own. What! are we not to know whether what we are doing is certainly pleasing to God? No! says St. Bonaventure; "to know that we have charity is not necessary to salvation; it is the having of it which is so." Thus because we will have more light than God's light, we walk in the darkness, and down the precipice: our first step is in perplexity, our second in cowardice, our third in sadness, and our fourth in irremediable perdition.

The third sign is a frequent change of our opinion for reasons of no moment, together with an inconstancy and perturbation in action. We are not only prone to give way to frivolous fears, but we are fluctuating and unequable in our very fears. We are disquieted and agitated by them, even while we persist in caressing them. If we are asked whether there be sin in such or such an action, we answer that there is not. Yet we are frightened of acting even on the conviction of our own reason, coupled with the admonitions of obedience; as if forsooth our soul were worth so much more than the souls of others.

The fourth sign is what Descuret calls the feeding of ourselves with extravagant reflections on the most trivial circumstances of our actions. It belongs to the perverse genius of scruples to give its attention to what is unimportant, and to withdraw it from that in which the whole gist of the matter lies. In other words it is an essentially impertinent spirit, in the etymological sense of the word. It is always busy, but never at its own business; always at work, but its work is one of confusion, not of order. It hovers among the flowers, lights upon them, turns their cups topsy turvy, and empties them of their crystal dew, but gets honey out of none of them Some animals make a noise, not to express their emotions, but to give vent to their self importance; and scruples are like one of these. They are neither of use ncr ornament; but that they can tease is a grateful sign of power.

The fifth sign is a fear of sin even in actions which the man himself perceives to be undeniably excellent There is something amazing in the stupid ingenuity with which the mind tries to make out a case against good works, and something still more amazing in +,he power it has of believing in itself, a belief which is not a whit shaken by the manifest disbelief of the whole world besides. Occasionally it makes us suspect that there is truth in what som§ one said, that all men were mad, and that what we agree to call madness is only a question of degree. It is useless to argue with men in thi? disposition: our duty is to command them, our temptation is to strike them.

The sixth sign is a habit of bodily attitudes, postures, gestures, strugglings, half-aloud ejaculations, fidgets, inability to sit still, which an old Benedictine writer calls Bimply ridiculous, but which modern manners would rather deem distressing. I suppose the meaning of this is, alter tne lashion of Gorres' mystical explanations, that the disease of the soul has spread out and transferred itself into the organization, and has now reached the feet and the finger-ends. This can only be cured as we cure children who rub their eyes and bite their nails, whether those practices come of idleness, eagerness, temper, or abstraction.

The seventh sign is a perpetual hankering after our past confessions, a wish to rake them up and overhaul them, and see if we cannot find matter for some choice scruplo in them. We do not know what is wrong about them. We even shrink from specifying, lest the charm should £0. But it is a delightful misery, a wretchedness in which a scrupulous spirit revels. He fondles it, as an Englishman nurses his beloved melancholy. We are dying to make a fresh general confession, but not at all inclined to take any great pains to prepare for it, or any vigorous measures against present faults. But it establishes our empire over our director. We triumph over his reluctance; and we go to it infallibly sure of one thing, that what he mistakenly conceives to be our besetting sin, is just the one sin, thank God, which does not beset us. Any one but that. Certainly not that. And all this while, we fancy that being in motion is necessarily progress. Alas! we are like the sails of a windmill, always on the move, but only round and round.

But the signs and developments of scruples are somewhat different, according to the causes from which they proceed, and it is very important to notice this pheuo mencn. Foi example, when the scruples arise from our own temperament, they are generally the same. They warn, variety Pertinacity sticks to the same things, and sombre thoughts turn away from change. Thus, we never get out of the identical round which we have paced before, grinding the same clay, to make the same bricks. Our mind is like a staunch protestant with his twenty-times-answered objection, recurring to it again and again, but carefully abstaining from the slightest allusion to the answer. We have but one note. A parrot speaks plain, but its sphere of conversation is extremely limited. When, however, our scruples proceed from the devil, the case is widely different. Then they are very numerous and extremely variable. They are for the most part very dishonourable to God, and fasten by preference either on His ever-blessed attributes, or on the sweet.mystery of the Incarnation, or on the soul-saving sacraments. They are accompanied by a special darkening of the mind, a sort of eclipse of faith, which is a favourite resort of the evil one. We are numb and cold in prayer, oppressed with an enervating languor, and desire exceedingly to r^lax our rule of life, at least for awhile. When our scruples are from God, they cease periodically, and cease all at once, just as a porter slips off his burden and rests it on a lamp-post. This is an infallible sign of their being from God. It would not happen naturally. The natural deposing of a scrupulous conscience cannot be instantaneous and complete. Another mark of divine scruples is that we go on towards perfection in spite of them, or rather secretly because of them. The more they tease us the more constant we are in our spiritual exercises, the more gentle and forbearing with others, the more obedient to our guides and superiors: and we look to God the more smilingly with all the plenitude of a filial confidence, which is equally clear of servile dread or of presuming familiarity; and there is a look of pain on our faces mingling with the smile.

All scruples, which are not supernatural simply turn on two hinges, ignorance and pusillanimity. Let us do away with the first and fortify the second, and these miserable emissaries of evil cannot harm us.

If we cast an eye upon the subjects on which scruples fasten, we shall see still greater reason to turn from them with mingled repugnance and contempt. First of all there is prayer. In an unhealthy state of mind it seems positively to attract scruples to itself. There is no" part of it, mental, vocal, or ejaculatory, considerations, affections, or resolutions, which do not seem to be their favourite food, and out of which they do not suck the marrow of the divine life. The sacraments, especially confession and communion, they haunt with a pertinacity only equalled by their versatility. The dry communion has its own family of scruples; the fervent communion another. With one man's confession it is the penance they settle on, with another's the contrition, with another's the narration, with another's the preparation. All is equal to them; for they taint wherever they touch. The keen air which breathes round the heights on which vows are placed does not impede the respiration of scruples. They are little creatures, but robust; and vows are fine game and glorious food for them. Nothing is higher than a vow, and that is not too high for them. Nothing is lower than a fear of bodily discomfort, and that is not too low for them. They are universal insects, and ubiquitous, worse than those that of old teased the African into being a Manichee. Fraternal correction is a perfec* luxury to them. It lies in the shade, and thore is no

SCRUPLES. all strong light upon it, so that it is hard to see the scruple, to be sure of it, and to get a good aim at it. The motives of actions are their favourite hiding-places. Temptations are their task. Imaginary cases are their romps and games. And predestination is to them like the top of a tree on which a bird sits and mocks us on a Sunday, when it knows we have no gun to shoot it with. When a thing is dangerous and yet not dignified, provoking and yet it eludes us, despised yet it disquiets us, absurd and yet we cannot resist being impressed by it, then thai thing is like a scruple. We scorn it even while we hate and fear it. Yet we are angry in our hatred, and uneasy in our contempt.

From the subjects let us pass to the effects of scruples. They are three, blindness, indevotion, and laxity. If scruples proceed from ignorance, they also increase and deepen it. They so perturb the mind that all spiritual discernment is impossible. They confuse the boundaries of right and wrong. They remove the ancient landmarks between temptation and sin, between delectation and consent. They ravel mortal and venial sic inextricably and indissolubly together. They turn precepts into couusels, and counsels into precepts. They call things by their wrong names, and incur the prophet's woe of putting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. The blind can neither lead the blind, nor walk safely on his own road. The spiritual life is brought to a halt, which must be final unless we can break through the enemy's lines. This is the first effect of scrupulosity; and like the first of Monsieur le Maire's reasons for not firing a salute for Henri Quatre, namely, that he had no cannon, it might super ne.de the necessity of investigating the other effects, seeing that this first she has brought us to the pass of a dead halt. But as I am writing with an insatiable hatred of scruples, like the wrath with which a man persecutes a hypocrite, I shall proceed. Let them be anathematized in every possible shape, as a heresy in doctrine, a lawlessness in discipline, and a corruption in morals.

The second effect then of scruples is indevotion. This is as much as saying that the death of devotion is un favorable to devotion. But how is it that they kill devotion? Devotion is peace, and they are trouble. Devotion is single-minded, and they are legion. Devotion is docile, and they are disobedience. Devotion worships God, and they worship self. Devotion lives on holy food, and their life is sustained by corrupting the food on which it lives. They prevent the light of prayer from entering our perturbed minds. They interrupt the operations of the sacraments, and even make them prisoners. They obscure our faith, weaken our hope, and relax our charity. They have all the bad effects of temptations without any of the good ones. But listen to the story of the old Cardinal of Vitry, out of Surius. Once upon a time there was a pious Cistercian who was silly enough to resolve to win his way back again to the state of primitive innocence. What he went through, it would be long to tell. Suffice it to say that he could not attain his object, and he felt painfully how far he was falling short. If when he ate, there was at all a nice taste in the food, he was miserable. If the least indeliberate ripple of anger came over him, he was distracted. If he fell into a trifling imperfection, he magnified it into a mortal sin, and was crushed. From this excess of scruples he fell into a profound sadness, and from this sadness he tumbled, as all sad men do, down

SCRUPLES. 3 IS the precipice of despair. All hope of his eternal salvation being now gone, he ceased to frequent the sacraments; for as S. Bernard says, tribulation had begotten pusillanimity, and pusillanimity perturbation, and perturbation despair, and despair had slain. The monks were broken-hearted. 0 how fervently they recommended their poor brother to God! They admonished him with sage counsels. They rebuked him with sharp reproofs. But all was in vain. Fortunately a saint was at hand, the Blessed Mary of Oignies, and God permitted her to work a miracle upon this poor son of St. Bernard, else says the cardinal, he would doubtless have been damned. For, he adds, I myself have known a man gash his breast with a knife, because of scruples, and 'mother who for the same reason shot himself through the throat and died. It is scruples which produce wLat the French physicians call theomanie, when they write the devil's side of the lives of the saints. With so much justice did that grave Dominican, Louis of Blois, say in his magisterial manner, Excessive fear and inordinate pusillanimity, great sadness and superfluous scruples, unquiet cares and entangled solicitudes, — these things let the ascetic avoid.

The third effect of scruples is laxity. Was any man ever known to be scrupulous in one thing who was not lax in another? The laxest of men are scrupulous men It is very natural. In the first place, we feel as if we had only a certain amount of conscientiousness, and as we have expended more than was due on one thing, we have all the less left for another. If we have spent it all un one exaggerated duty, then we are without any for the rest of our duties; and so actions slip through, which would quite surprise us if we could get a good view of 27 them, and see them in their true light. A man who has overworked himself is always the most dissipated at recreation. Again, scruples are a tyranny and an oppression; and submission has its reactions. These drive us to seek consolations in worldly pleasures and natural affections, in all that is bright, beautiful and tender round about us; and then it is the old story of Annibal's soldiers at Capua. Moreover it follows from our blindness that we fight the wrong foe, and then are too tired to fight the right one; but surrender our sword. Not knowing one thing from another, we strain at gnats and pwallow camels. If we have got wrong by indiscretion in austerities, now we are more wrong by being over head and ears in comforts. A man who has no spiritual pleasures will compensate himself by the abundance of bis bodily enjoyments. And I have found one old writer who says that scruples are a very common punishment for soft and delicate living. And what is all this but laxity? And it is the scruples which the devil causes that mostly set this way.

But it seems as if, historically speaking, laxity, an allowable one, for the Church allowed it, was the first cause of scruples. Rosignoli, in his Discipline of Christian Perfection, says that scruples were unknown to the ancient fathers; and he attributes this to the old canonical penances. Men satisfied for sin much more amply than they do now. The Church Triumphant in joy has so widened that it more than counterbalances the Church Militant in sorrow, and so we live under the regime of indulgences, while our fathers watched and fasted under the reign of canonical penances. The relaxation of discipline, says Rosignoli, has produced a new feature in th*

Church, namely, scruples. He finds no fault. No true son of Ignatius ever blamed the Ohurch He only mentions it as what he deems a fact. I will say nothing more of his theory than that it is striking and plausible. Gerson, who is the St. Thomas of modern spirituality, is one of the first and greatest methodical writers on scruples. St. Antoninus and S. Laurence Justinian come near to him; and among the quite modern men, Fenelon is by for the sweetest and most admirable scruple-doctor.

Nevertheless there is the thing, if there is not the name, in John Cassian: and something so like it in St. Gregory and St. Augustine, that the portrait can hardly be mistaken; and Innocent III. comes still nearer the mark. Some of the temptations in St. John Climacus would in modern phrase certainly be called scruples. At the same time it cannot be doubted that in mediaeval and modern systems of spirituality scruples occupy a much more important place than in the moral and ascetical writings of the Fathers, or the anecdotical chronicles of the saints of the desert, in the same way that the confession of venial sins and the whole question of confessions of devotion do. The very term confession of devotion, which has quite passed into ascetical terminology, would have sounded strange to ancient ears; though here again I venture to suspect that there was more of the substance of the thing than Gerson seems to allow. However this is not the place for a history of ascetical theology. The devotional instincts and phrases of the Fathers are subjects of intense interest, about which there is sufficient tradition for us to draw some interesting inferences.

The remedies for scruples have been to a great extent implied in what has already been sa.d. But a paragraph may be devoted to their recapitulation. They find their place naturally after the consideration of the causes, signs, subjects and effects of scruples. As the want of light is the chief cause of the disease, prayer is one of its principal remedies. We should meditate on cheering subjects, and cultivate a filial devotion to our Blessed Lady. We must avoid idleness, and nerve ourselves to bodily mortification. We must not easily change oui director, or consult many persons, which is the way with light-minded men and shallow spiritualists; neither must we talk much with scrupulous persons; for the complaint is catching. We must never reflect on our own scruples; but act as we see other good people act, remembering that God is our Father, and the Church a benignant mother. The precepts of God and the Church, says St. Antoninus, were not meant to take away from us all spiritual sweetness, as the excessive interpretations of the scrupulous and timid would make them do, neither did the Church ever intend by her commands to oblige any man to drive himself mad. Therefore no precepts bind in a time or place when the observance of them would be considered absurd by a discreet man. But the boldest thing of all was the practice of St. Ignatius. He made a man, who was scrupulous about his office, recite it by the sand of an hour-glass, and leave unsaid what was not said when the sand ran down. And the patient was cured. We must be careful to avoid the gestures alluded to before, and not think we can drive a wrong thought out of our minds by shaking our heads, twitching our hands, or beating time with our feet. We must also take the mild side in moral questions. Nothing breeds scruples so much as taking up x stricter theory than you can carry out in the details of your practice. The man who adopts a mild theory, does it consciously and on a principle. He knows how far he can concede, and where he can concede no longer. The rigorist simply cannot carry out his views, either with others or himself; and then being left without a principle to fall back upon, he retires ever so far, as far as you will push him, into the allowance of things plainly wrong, and if you will, much further. The commandments of God, and the precepts of the Church, and the reverence of the Sacraments, are in much safer keeping in the hands of a mild theologian than of a stern one: though of course all principles have their extremes and all exaggerations are wrong. But one remedy is as near a specific as anything can be called a specific which does not cure an incurable disease, but restores a man to a passable valetudinarian kind of spiritual existence. And that is blind obedience. The word explains itself. St. Philip says, that scruples may make a truce with a man, when once they have beset him, but a peace never. If wc have been once scrupulous, and our scruples have not been from God, we shall carry at the least the weakness of them and the nervousness of them to the grave, and as Francesca of Pampeluna implies, the relics of them into purgatory to receive their final cautery. But blind obedience will cure us to all intents and purposes. But how shall we kno\ "'t we are really obedient? 0 most scrupulous of questio*. J! But it shall be answered kindly though briefly. By these three signs. When you never say, 0 but my director is not a saint, or, I would obey if I was scrupulous and if this were a scruple, or, I would obev if I couli explain 27* myself to my confessor, so that he could really understand my case.

There is quite x consent among theologians that scrupulous persons are allowed certain privileges; and these will come next under consideration. However much there may be of their own fault in what they are now Buffering, nevertheless the reality of their suffering entitles them to certain privileges. These privileges however are not rights only; they are obligations also. If they were not so, the invalids for whom they were intended would never dare to use them. Their first privilege of scrupulous persons is, that provided the}' are so instructed by their spiritual guide, it is allowable for them to aet even with the fear of sinning while they act. Indeed they are bound to do so; and if they refuse, they wilfully commit five separate faults, which approach more or less near to the confines of venial sin, and not seldom overstep it. They presumptuously set up their own opinion against that of their director, which is pride and obstinacy. They refuse him the obedience due to him, and which they nave probably promised him. They hinder their own progress in the spiritual life, and so hold themselves back from the perfection to which their state of life, or the grace already conferred upon them, obliges them. In many instances they hurt their bodily health, and increase the weakness of their head: and they cause their common daily duties to be ill performed, inasmuch as they put away from themselves the means of recovering that light and peace and presence of God, which throw the lustre of perfectior over our ordinary actions.

Their second privilege is that they may be sure they nave not committed mortal sin; unless, with full adver

'tmce, *hey can reverently swear that they have dune so The reason of this is founded on the impossibility of the will's changing unconsciously in one moment from excessive fear to relaxation of morals. It is true that scruples lead to laxity; but they neither produce it by an instantaneous change,- nor do they introduce it into the subject-matter of the scruple itself. The obligation, which is the counterpart of this privilege, is that they should not confess as mortal sins any such dubious actions, nor abstain from their regular communions on their account. But in order that this privilege should have place, one or more or all of the four following signs should be discerned in the conduct and disposition of the scrupulous person. He should habitually loathe the sin to which he fancies he has consented; so that it may be clear what the normal state of his will is upon the matter. As soon as he catches himself, consciously, delaying on the image of temptation, he should have made some sort of effort and experienced some disquietude. If he has been thrown into an oppo: - tuuity of committing the sin, and has not done so, we may argue that his will is sound and whole; and if he cannot remember whether he was all the while fully aware of the temptations that were besieging him, he is not to be disquieted, but the doubt is to go in his favour.

The third privilege of scrupulous persons is that they are not bound to examine matters so exactly as others. Their infirmity is the reason of this. They are spiritual invalids, and the life of an invalid is a life of dispensation, by no less an authority than that of God Himself. The probability is they will never have robust health after this, and therefore the slow strength of convalescence ehould be husbanded. A minute or reiterated examination of conscience or of motives, on the part of a sorupu lous man, would be equivalent to the tying and untying of the bandages of a wound, where stillness of the limb and compression of the hurt were just the two things which the surgeon commanded. Neither, as before, ar they to be allowed in such fretful examinations without grave cause and the permission of their director. For this privilege, like the rest, must be an obligation io the use. We certainly care more for our bodies than for our souls. Yet it is only reasonable that what we readily submit to in the case of the one, we should at all events undergo with a good grace in the case of the other. If we have broken our collar bone, or got the cholera, we know that we have a certain course of treatment to go through which nature does not relish; and we do not quarrel with our surgeon or physician if he combines firmness with his gentleness, if he makes us be still vbm we want to stir, or will not let us have the food we have set our minds upon. So we must make up our mind to let our spiritual physician treat us when we are sick of scruples. Wonderfully difficult as we think our questions of casuistry to be, he will show us no sign of uncertainty or hesitation; so that we shall doubt whether he ha3 weighed it well or heard us rightly. He will give us no reasons for what he advises; for such reasons would only be the seed-plots of new scruples. We must be very open with him, though this will cost us not a little. At the same time we must have a real scruple of exaggerating in confession. This is a common fault of scrupulous persons. They think they make sure of an adequate explanation by an exaggerated one, which is not only an error, but an error on the worst side of the two. Much less mischief would come of an undue extenuation

He will be very gentle to us while we are docile, but short and abrupt when we are pertinacious. He will not let us repeat things confession after confession, though we are yearning to do so. He will make us learn contempt of our own scruples from his contempt of them; and this is as bad as Greek epigrams to a fourth form boy. He will forbid us to confess scruples, and h will accustom us to go to communion without absolution which, with our morbid sensitiveness, is worse than great physical pain. He will stint our allowance of time for the examination of our conscience, and we shall consequently go to it at first with such a nervous precipitation, that before we have finished our act of the presence of God, the time will have run out. He will also force upon us a compulsory promptitude in deciding whether to act or not in any particular case, unless the thing looks like a sin at the very first sight of it. And when we go to him with long faces, because we have made some mistakes in consequence of acting on that principle, he will treat us with hastiness, and our difficulty with contempt. He will never let us know whether he thinks we are mending or not, but will put off our questions with some unmeaning common-places. Rest being of all things that of which we feel the greatest need, he will allow us none, but fag us unmercifully with endless' and distracting occupations. When we have, as many have, scruples without being habitually scrupulous, that is, when we are over exact in one matter, and proportionately free and easy in another, he will be severe to us, and will make us look only at our laxity. In these cases we shall try his patience, and give him much difficult and tiresome work, before he can discharge us from his hospital. We are patients who give v more trouble, and less credit, than any otheis with whom he has to do.

Persons recently converted have scruples about their general confession, either as to its fulness or its sorrow. A spiritual physician will allow them only to reflect generally on their past sins, and very often will prohibit even that. He will never allow them, in a state of scruple, to dwell on particular sins, least of all on circumstances of sins. For sadness is a snare which the devil ordinarily sets at this stage of the spiritual life. When their scruples have passed away, he may possibly allow them to make a quiet general confession, and after that, never let them mention anything else belonging to the past, unless they are either wholly without scruple, or able to swear that they have remembered some sin, which they knew tc be both mortal and unconfessed. For the sin has been already indirectly remitted; and we are not bound to the material integrity of past confessions, with so grave an inconvenience as a relapse into scruples. If such persons tell their director that they shall be more at peace, if he will allow them to speak, he will still refuse, and will tell them to offer up that inward disquietude as a sacrifice to God. It is a fearful evil to have a convert scrupulous. ] fear the chances are against his ever making a thoroughly good catholic. Scruples fill his veins with the Biuret poison of self-opinionatedness, just when he has eterything to learn and everything to unlearn, and obed»-mce is his sole appointed means of thus changing his w tole inner man. Still, it is our comfort to know that tie Holy Ghost has reparatory ways and means, which &Ude the definitions of our poor spiritual science, bu« whose marvellous healing operations we are continually witnessing.

But I dare not leave the subject without sayiug a few words about reasonable scruples. There are such things. Theology leaves no doubt upon the matter; and nothing of what I have said will apply to them. A prudent fear makes a scruple reasonable, just as a vain fear makes it unreasonable. Thou hast commanded Thy commandments to be kept most diligently, says the psalmist. St. Gregory writing to St. Augustine, of Canterbury, and S. Clement V., resolving some doubts in the Franciscan rule, admit of these scruples, and teach that they are to be respected. For a man is not rightly called scrupulous, who fears and loves God to a nicety, as the saying is, that is, who strives to avoid every venial sin, and every least imperfection. The filial feelings of such men, and the tranquillity of their solicitude for perfection, show that they are not scrupulous in the evil sense. There is such a thing as a wide conscience, and it is wide from the want of reasonable scruples. I only say this to prevent being misunderstood. It were better always to use the word scruple in a bad sense, and to call reasonable scruples by their much truer and more honorable name of conscientiousness.

Let not the imperfect fear, says St. Augustin, only let them advance. Yet, because I do not let them fear, let them not on that account love imperfection, or remain in it when they have found themselves there. Only let them advance as far as in them lies, and all is well.

God be praised! we have done, done little certainly, but all we can, for our scrupulous patients. Npw let up leavo this dose ward, and gc out and breathe.