constant that the house was called, by some of the sisters, a glass house. The epithet "Holy" attached to the Rule of Obedience, and the spirit of the rule, make it evident likewise, that it was not merely a "useful principle, essential in all societies which would possess elasticity, harmony, and efficiency." "It is," says Miss Sellon," much more than this: it is a religious principle, it is acted on for the sake of things spiritual, not for the sake of things earthly." And she adds, that spiritual gifts are muliplied by the exercise of obedience.

The Rule of Purity says:-" You shall be diligent in reading Holy Scripture, the Psalter, the Breviary according to the use of Sarum provided for the Society, the Book of Common Prayer, the Imitation of the Life of Christ, and the Devotions of Bishop Andrews." 66 Ye shall not

read any other words, except by the express direction of the Superior. And the Superior shall be very careful that she suffer not this rule to become corrupt through innovation." "Ye shall not speak to any one out of the Society, except with the permission of the Superior. It is not permitted to any Sister to give messages or commissions, to receive letters or send replies, without direction or permission."

The Rule of Humility affirms"You will gain more in the love of God by meekly receiving an affront, or a discipline you do not understand, than by fasting ten days on bread and water." What is meant by "receiving meekly a discipline you do not understand," will be illustrated by the following statement of a young lady, who, by her own shewing, certainly seems to have been a very troublesome inmate of the house. On one oc

casion she was sent to bed, where she was kept for two or three days under the plea of illness, though, as she emphatically protests, she was in perfect health. For another offence she was ordered to lie in the Oratory, in the form of a cross, for twenty minutes daily, during several months. One day Miss Sellon entered while she was thus prostrate, and bade her think of something to humble her. Miss Sellon then left the apartment; and soon returning, enquired what she had thought of. The young lady had thought of nothing; when the Mother replied that she had not thought enough, or not properly." Opening my mouth with her hands, she enquired if that humbled me. I replied that it was very uncomfortable, but not humbling. She sat displeased, and fixed her eyes on me, gazing in a most unaccountable manner; every now and then bending my arms, opening my mouth and lips, and putting her fingers into my mouth. At last she asked if treating me as a child would humble me. "Yes," I said, turning crimson, "to be put in a corner and treated as a child would indeed be humbling; but I hope you will never try it, for I could not stand it." She said she would do it before any and every one if she chose." Sister Catherine was then summoned to put the young lady to be like a child. She resisted, but the Mother said it must be done. Without a word spoken further she was led up stairs, undressed, and lifted into bed, where she was laid with her hands crossed on her bosom. "Silently, and as I thought sorrowfully, Sister Catherine kissed me, and then knelt in prayer for a space.'

The canonical hours-Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones,

Vespers, and Complines-were observed daily in the Oratory, by way of commemorating the periods and events of the day of our Lord's Crucifixion. These services were engaged in by all the Sisters, who were not working elsewhere. On special occasions what is termed a 66 Chapter" was held, when the Sisters confessed their sins against charity, or their rules, to each other and the Mother; at the conclusion the Mother washed her "Children's" feet. Miss Goodman says:66 To several of the Sisters this act appeared in the light of an awful mockery: moreover, they said it was by no means conducive to love and charity in the house, for a Sister to tell every unkind and censorious thought about another which had crossed her mind, or every little depreciating remark they may have made."

Space will not permit us to multiply our illustrations of the internal economy of the Devonport Sisterhood; nor to indicate all the false principles involved in it. Some future opportunity may be afforded us of showing, that sin against society, against God, and against their own souls, is involved in the very mode of life the Sisters have adopted. Though so few years have elapsed since the formation of the Devonport Sisterhood, some of the worst evils of Romish conventualism have already been manifested. But we confine ourselves now to the influence of the Conventual System on the daily life of the Sisterhood itself, noticing only some of its effects on the personal spiritual life of the sisters, their intercourse with each other, and the charitable work to which they are devoted. Miss Sellon herself visited, in 1848, a London Sisterhood, and she says of it that "the strictness of

rule appalled her; she hated it. When she woke in the morning, she felian overwhelming oppression on her heart before fully conscious, and on regaining her memory, she knew what was crushing her-the idea of another day of this fearful rule; and yet the rule she afterwards invented was more crushing and fearful." Any one who knows what Paul means when he says, "by the law is the knowledge of sin," will understand how fearful are the temptations and struggles we prepare for ourselves when we multiply minute requirements and meaningless restrictions. The members of a Sisterhood are taught to attach to their rules, written and unwritten, the sanctity of Christian obligation. The life on which they enter is the "religious" life; the voice of the Superior is as the voice of God. The fear that God will reckon with them for unfaithfulness, even in thought, to their rule, must be a constant burden on their spirits.

The habit of confession to the Superior, and to one another, is destructive of all sincerity. It is simply impossible to confess freely to any one who does not know us fully; we search our hearts before God, because He has already searched us, and knows our ways. "Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man." Shallow souls may be comforted by confession to a Father or Mother Superior, and the discipline appointed by him; but the very effort to be honest in such confession must be, to any earnest soul, an intolerable burden.

"It is scarcely possible," says Miss Goodman, "to conceive the crushing effect this artificial mode of life has upon young fresh hearts, or the bitterness it engenders in the minds of

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restless spirits." While engaged once in conversation with a Roman Catholic we observed," she adds, а lady approaching, whom we both knew to be one of the silliest, and at the same time most self-satisfied and serene beings in existence, unless perhaps it might be a little sparrow. The nun said, speaking of this lady, "Miss X- -is one of the happiest women in the world, she really enjoys life. Do you know why? It is because she is almost a born fool." And a Protestant sister of a kindred spirit, remarked of another who was nearsighted and a little deaf, "that she made a capital nun, and was always happy, because she lacked three of the five senses-seeing, hearing, and feeling." We must not allow the tinge of bitterness in these observations to obscure their substantial truth. To women of feeble mental and spiritual vitality, the convent life may be tolerable. Sincere, true. hearted women must abandon it, as so many have left the Devonport Sisterhood, if they would save their

souls.

To high-minded ladies, seeking in the Sisterhood a nobler life than any they could live in the world, one of the most distressing discoveries must have been that of the petty-spiritedness which their life in community engendered. The Rule of Humility is itself a moral contradiction. Miss Sellon's submissiveness is of a lordly type; the proud tone of her humblest statements is unmistakeable. There is a striking contrast between the unconscious dignity with which Miss Goodman tells us how, in the Crimea, well-born ladies washed the bed-clothes of sick soldiers, and undertook all sorts of menial offices

and the murmuring of the Sisters, when at Devonport they scrubbed rooms, and scoured kettles, and fetched beer from the public-house, doing work which there was no necessity for them to do, and which servants could have done better than they. The very

separation from the world which seems to so many the charm of a religious community, is the cause of its degradation. The little cares, and trials, and vexations which meet us in the world, are intended by God to wean us from selfishness and to elevate our character. Cut off from these by their own choice, compelled to constant watchfulness of themselves and one another, Sisters must ever find themselves a prey to the meanest jealousies; and the life they have chosen is infinitely more petty than that they have sought to escape. The narratives from which our quotations have been drawn, contain sharp, ill-tempered, and selfish criticisms, which it would be difficult to parallel, except in the scandal of the most heartless and flippant "worldly" circles. Miss Sellon's room is too well furnished ; the purple coverlet of her couch is contrasted with the Sisters' poor bedfurniture. Her dress, her gait, the pompousness of her entrance to the Chapter-service; the cup of wine and plate of meat, caught sight of on the supper-table of a Mother-assistant, into whose cell a Sister slily peeps— all these are dwelt upon with an amount of feeling which would provoke our merriment, if we did not remember that the women who appear so splenetic were high-minded ladies; if we did not reflect on the sharp disappointment they themselves must have experienced, at finding that the life which they had hoped to be so ele

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vating, had really fostered in them. the meanest of "worldly" passions. "Tantæ ne animis coelestibus iræ ?" The convent life is inconsistent with the attainment of the charitable ends for which professedly a sisterhood is constituted. The perfect organization, of which the advocates of the system make so much, is interfered with by the institution of the private rule book. Each Sister receives specific instructions from the Superior for each day's work, and no Sister is aware of what precisely her coadjutors are told to do; hence come occasional misunderstandings, and the thwarting of each other's purposes. The results of conventual training have proved most lamentable in the case of many friendless orphans, who at various periods have persisted in leaving the shelter of Miss Sellon's roof. A lady writes:"I have had such wretched letters from some of the dear little orphans I had the care of at ; it makes me quite sad. Some have died in penitentiaries; others, after the accustomed stay of two years, have just come out, and one is actually now wandering the streets of London, creeping into a coach-house or stable, or sleeping in an empty cart. Poor little things! kept as they were so out of the world, what can they know of its ways? what marvel is it that they should be drawn into sin?" The rule of silence in the streets, and of not seeing anything there, is also embarrassing. "In their efforts not to see, the Sisters were reduced to walking with their heads bowed down in a most painful manner; and this, in a further degree, caused them annoyance, in that it called the attention of every passer-by upon them. One of

the Sisters carried this ridiculous custom to the East with her, and of course her usefulness was much impaired ; for what could a woman do there whose head was bowed almost to her feet? She was sent home without having laboured in the wards for an hour; and among other reasons given for her unfitness for the work, it was remarked that a person who was under a vow never to lift her eyes from the ground could only be a burden at Scutari.”

But far more injurious to active usefulness than these minor restrictions, is the depressed vitality produced by the conventual life. A woman to do well the work of mercy, must have all her heart in the work; her perceptions and her sympathies must be fully active; and any system that teaches her to be blind to passing occurrences, and to suppress her spontaneous impulses, must unfit her for the work to which she has devoted herself. The marvellous success of the Sisters during the cholera season at Plymouth, and in their work in the Crimea, is due to this-that circumstances made it impossible for them to adhere to their rule. The work of mercy and the conventual habit are destructive of one another; and the conventual habit is cast aside under the pressing necessities of suffering.

At a time when much attention is directed to women's work in the Church, it may not be amiss to conclude with a notice of the Order of the Sisters of Charity, founded by Vincent de St. Paul. The following description is from the pen of an English lady who saw much of these Sisters in France "The Sister of Charity is not a nun; she wears no veil; she shuns not the face of man-on the contrary, if necessary, she looks

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straight up to it, and acts as one who had nothing to fear, and was not naturally given to fear. She is not a 'penitent; not a contemplative being; she has nothing to do with silence, mortification, and seclusion. There is no formality about her: none in appearance, none in manner, none in speech. Her dress is known, her work respected. She is a privileged person, and can pass scot free where no other woman could. She walks with a very active step, an upright head, and usually a good degree of colour in her cheeks. She is, in general, a frank, lively, merry-hearted woman; whom you like to be with, even when well and happy; with whom you can, if her time permit, chat and laugh; and yet, without a repressing word or look from her, you never feel afterwards that you have gone too far."

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"I would beg of you to mark a feature of this active piety. It is that almost all the women of charity whose names have been rendered memorable from the foundation of the Order to this time, were those actually connected with the closest and dearest ties of human life. They were almost all those of widows, having children, whom they never ceased to watch over, and to consider their first object.

We read of the tender anxieties of mothers, the love of sisters for a brother; never that I know of, do we read of any of these women, who rank among the heroines of charity of the 17th century, believing that it was their duty to separate themselves from those connecting links of love which God had formed for them."

We, too, have had devoted women in Protestant England, and we have them still. Both parish clergymen and dissenting ministers know where to look for them; we find them in the busiest, most carefully watched, and tenderly affectionate households, and there we wish them to abide. It is well that women should make the care of the poor and suffering a real work of life; it is well that they should organize themselves for this work; it may be well sometimes that they should assume a special dress to secure them from insult, and to gain them access to the needy. But we would keep our mothers and wives and sisters for our families, even while we devote them to this service; and they will be the best Sisters of Mercy who rule their own households well, and are most active in the discharge of the sacred, inviolable home duties to which God has called them.

THE Saviour was all alone in this dark hour of His trial. As, just before this, He left behind Him the three favourite disciples in the garden, saying to them," Tarry ye here whilst I go and pray yonder," so now on the

cross He passed alone into this hour of deepest sorrow and suffering, when "The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Several different expressions escaped the sufferer at this time, which, though not addressed to man,