In 1884 the three hundredth anniversary of the foundation of a Society of the Annunciation, which has multiplied in all Catholic lands under the title of Sodalities of the Blessed Virgin, was observed. These are for adolescents, and there are branches for either sex. The papal bull creating them refrained from prescribing details of either plan or purpose, so that there are many local differences. Their gen- eral purpose is to quicken piety, charity, and personal purity of heart and life by increasing devotion to the Holy Mother, who asks the young to join their hearts day by day to a more perfect likeness of her divine Son. They are especially designed for youth from fourteen to twenty, but there are branches for older youth in colleges, and even for children who are younger. Constant war against passion, an an- nual retreat, self-examination, cheerfulness, temperance, and religious offices are prescribed, and they have a special devotional manual and litany.
(C) In the Greek Russian Church, confession takes the place of first communion and confirmation, and occurs at about the age of eight. The many religious ceremonies of in- fancy in Russia require sponsors, one of which is usually a boy or girl of fourteen or fifteen, and this, as it is a solemn office, involves full Church responsibility.
At the age of about twenty-four hours the infant is visited by the priest, who names it after the saint on or near whose day it was born, holds it before the sacred pictures, and has the sign of the cross made over it and prayers read. In the christening ceremony, at the age of eight days, the young godfather participates, and provides and puts on the neck of the infant a tiny gold cross, which must never leave it. Baptism must be administered at the age of forty days. First, the priest, in cope, blows in the face of the naked infant three times, CHURCH CONFIRMATION 2 73 crosses it on the brow, lip, and breast, and, laying his hand on its head, reads the prayer of exorcising the devil and all his hosts from the body and soul. The priest then asks the infant if it renounces the wicked one, and the sponsor, looking to the west where the sun sets in darkness, answers, " I have renounced him." They then blow and make the gesture of spitting at man's great enemy in token of hate and horror. The Nicene Creed is thrice repeated, and the spon- sors say in responses that their young charge has confessed and be- lieves in Christ. After prayers the parents, even though they be the Czar and Czarina, leave the room, in token that the child is entirely left to its sponsors and godparents. Then, in full canonicals, the priest blesses the water by blowing on it, moving his hand through it, and crossing its surface with a feather dipped in oil, symbolic of peace and previously consecrated, and after a first anointment the child is deftly plunged thrice completely under the water. Baptism of water is immediately followed by that of the spirit or the anoint- ing proper, which has its own litany and ritual. During the mass, a small quantity of wine, is passed with a spoon into the child's mouth and the lips wiped by an assistant. Eight days later the hair, the only offering an infant can make, is ceremoniously cut in four places in the form of the cross. All these rites are detailed and performed with music and prayer, paid for with small fees to the priests, and if the mother wishes to be churched, the baby's face is pressed against a silver-covered picture at the altar, and from behind the screen the words are chanted, " The servant of God, A. B., is admitted to the Church of Christ." The sponsors then assume, at least formally, a serious responsibility, and must therefore set worthy example and give wise counsel.
Communion in one kind is observed semiannually thereafter by each child, who attends church and learns prayers, which are far more numerous than those of the English Church, and more difficult in the Slavonic dialect, also the Lord's Prayer, the Nicene Creed, the Ten Commandments, hymns, and stories from the Old and later from the New Testament. The expressions of piety are so formal and so many that the children, who are imitative, and who are brought up in an atmosphere charged with them, seem exceptionally religious, and the parents' constant fear of their remorse and of its consequences to their offspring, should they die unshriven, is so great that the pressure of the home for early consummation of church membership has crowded the first confession and full communion in both kinds to the unusually early age customary here. The significance of these infant rites here is that there is much reason to believe that many if not most of them were once pubescent, and have been gradually removed to an earlier age, like circumcision among the Jews. The priest comes to the house twice a week for a month or two, where there are chil- dren at the ages of from seven to ten, to explain the simple catechism, teach the rudiments of sacred history, and interpret the child's prayers and hymns. This special preparation may begin at Christmas and 274 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE last till Lent, during which the ceremony must occur. When the feasting week of carnival festivities changes to the Lenten period, when no food ever so remotely connected with animal life can be par- taken, there are three days of devotional preparation, with early rising and frequent daily church services. On Friday, after vespers, each child goes alone behind a screen in the church corner, where the priest awaits him, and after prayer exhorts that the confession be complete, questioning each touching the chief sins of childhood; some confessors are indulgent, others severe, and most have special lines of misdeeds for which they question. After this, if the confessor does not find any of the one hundred and fifteen crimes and overt sins which debar, and a real desire to lead a new life is apparent, the priest lays his hand, with the end of his cope beneath it, on the novitiate's head, as a token that he is now under the protection of the Church, and pro- nounces absolution, praying God to pardon, as his minister now does. Each is signed with the cross, kisses the crucifix, and leaves a fee and a candle. This is usually in the evening, and the penitents bathe, re- tire early, and take no food till after communion at matins next day.
In the morning, not only children but parents array themselves in their best, new dresses for the occasion being customary, and kiss every member of the household as a token of good-will. At church, the sacred elements are brought in with a solemn liturgy, the re- cipient repeats slowly after the priest the articles of belief, stating the nature and meaning of the sacrament, and a morsel of bread, moistened with wine, is placed in his mouth with a spoon. He then rises and passes to the reader's table, takes more wine and water, to rinse and clear his mouth, and eats a tiny loaf, from the side of which the part used in communion had been cut with the sacred spoon. At home, congratulations and feasting follow, with vespers later and final mass next day.
(D) Confirmation by first communion is required of all children of the Episcopal Church in England and America. Girls are rarely confirmed under twelve or boys under fourteen, and the average age is probably a year or more older. It is one of the most solemn duties of parents to bring their children to what is one of the central rites of the Church. Both the official requirements and the ceremonials, as found in the prayer and service book, are simple and brief, so that what may be called the minimum of both the preparation and the initiation ceremony itself is somewhat slight and formal. This not only leaves room for a wide range of individual practise, but all the degrees of difference between the extremes of High and Low Church views are expressed in the many manuals and guides for confirmation.
CHURCH CONFIRMATION 275 The order of the Church demands only the memorizing of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the shorter catechism. The latter sets forth that the sponsors at the baptism in infancy also gave the child its name, and promised that it should re- nounce the devil, worldly pomp and sinful lust, believe the articles of faith, and keep God's will and law. These vows the child now assumes for himself with solemn affirmation. In twelve questions and answers, the nature of the two sacraments necessary to salvation by baptism and the Lord's Supper is set forth. The minister of every parish is required to instruct and examine on these essentials, which are often greatly amplified by those who devote themselves to this work with zeal.
The order of confirmation requires the presence of the bishop, be- fore whom, as he sits near the Holy Table, the candidates stand. The preface, stating the purpose of the rite, is first read, while the con- gregation stand. The minister then presents the children, and the les- son is read from Acts, on the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. The solemn. question is then put by the bishop: "Do ye here, in the presence of God and of this congregation, renew the sol- emn promise and vow, that ye made or that was made in your name at your Baptism; ratifying and confirming the same; and acknowledg- ing yourselves bound to believe and to do all those things which ye undertook or your Sponsors then undertook for you? " and the momen- tous words, " I do," are pronounced audibly by every candidate. The bishop's prayer that follows is for the daily increase of each of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, after which he lays his hands upon the head of each, saying, " Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that he may continue thine forever; and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more until he come unto thy everlasting king- dom. Amen." After this follow the collects and benediction. It is earnestly expected that every newly confirmed person shall attend the Lord's Supper without delay.
At the High Church extreme, the instruction for first commun- ion is elaborate and chiefly ecclesiastical, the manuals prescribing a knowledge of the seven daily offices of the psalter from matin to com- pline, and some historical matters, but especially and in great detail, of the liturgy as celebrating the eucharist, which is the chief act of worship, because it commemorates the sacrifice of Christ, which is the central fact in Christendom. Unlike the Roman Church, the modern English tractarian invites, on the part of the communicant, a high degree of metaphysical activity, to which the mind of bright adoles- cents is often so prone. " It is well," says Ewer,1 " for the class to understand distinctly what the doctrine of transubstantiation is as distinguished from transaccidentation, and to know why as Anglican Catholics we decline to admit its truth." Hence, it is explained at length that Christ is not impanated in the sacred species. His body, 1 Manual of Instruction for Classes preparing for Communion, p. 24.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE soul, and divinity are not to be divided, as by the Roman theory of communion in one kind, but are wholly present in the bread and wine. Their res ipsissima is not present under the outward form, the acci- dents of which remain unchanged. The presence is real and objective, not local, but supra-local. While the phenomenal color, form, taste, smell and weight of the bread and wine remain unchanged, the noume- nal " thing in itself " of the holy emblems is not absent, but actually although mystically present. Water must be always mingled with the wine to symbolize the union of divine and human. While the body assimilates natural food, the process here is reversed, and the recipient is himself assimilated and transformed into the higher divine life, and the self of Christ is identified with his own.
The liturgy, which, like the Roman, constitutes the august rite of mass, is traced back to the apostles, and represents the perpetual obligation; it is at the same time historically commemorative both of the Last Supper of our Lord and of the later stages of his life, his death, and his ascension. When the celebrant enters, he may medi- tate of Jesus's entrance into the garden; when he bows over his se- er eta, he may think of Jesus's falling on his face in prayer; when he salutes the altar, of the treacherous kiss; when the sacred vessels are unveiled, of Jesus spoiled of his garments; at the prayer, of Jesus scourged; at the lavabo, of Pilate washing his hands; when he kneels, of Jesus falling under the cross; at the hymn, of his death; at the " Our Father," of his resurrection; at the Gloria, of his ascension; and at the benediction, of the descent of the Holy Ghost. In the service something goes up to God, though our thanks be no more than the burnt offering of a grain of chaff, and something descends from God to man, for the eucharist is a fountain of grace. To eat and drink unworthily and without discernment is damnation. We must there- fore lift up our hearts and hunger for the meat that perisheth not.
We were grafted into the true vine in baptism, but now the intus- susception is complete, and every scion shoots as with spring-tide.
While the Greek Church permits only leavened and the Roman only unleavened bread, the Anglican Church allows either. The com- municant may stand or kneel, but never sit; must, as in most of the churches since the apostles, only partake of it fasting, that it may sen- sibly affect body as well as soul; must receive the bread in the hollow palm, supporting it with the other, and forming a cross, consume the smallest particle, to avoid desecration, and offer some form of solemn and adoring salutation. The priest only can place the elements on the altar, because it is a sacrificial act, and can not be properly under- taken by either the sexton or a woman. An odd number of collects should be read, because the Lord's Prayer has an uneven number of petitions; the pro-onaphona must be said on the epistle side of the altar; the protasis must commemorate some special attributes of God, and the apodosis must ask a special blessing for the exercise of the same attributes.
Careful self-examination, repentance, new resolutions, and the cul- CHURCH CONFIRMATION 277 tivation of faith and charity, and sometimes even penance, should pre- cede. Afterward communion ought to be partaken at least thrice yearly, and some partake weekly with advantage. Spiritual, as dis- tinct from actual or sacramental communion, can be more frequent. The former is like opening a door from a dark into a light room; the latter is like bringing in the light. The former is the slow rise of a tide keeping pace with a river, and damming it so that it rises higher and sets back; the latter flows up and flushes the river as with a tidal wave and with complete intermingling of waters.
(E) The Lutheran, the mother of Protestant churches, and also the largest of them all, claiming seven million adherents in America and fifty million in the world, confirms over three hundred thousand children a year in Prussia alone, and expects all Lutheran parents to cooperate in the preparation for this rite. Save in a few essentials, the polity of the Church varies widely, the Scandinavian organization being episcopal, the German consistorial, and the American synodical; the age, preparation, and details of confirmation also vary much. The Lutheran ideal is the Bible in the vernacular actively taught, and hymns fervently sung in every household, especially with children. Piety is first of all a family matter. This Church, for the first time in history, sought to bring each indi- vidual into immediate personal relation with the divine. In its service, preaching became again very prominent, and the congregation took active part in worship, especially in song. Its liturgy is regarded as a form, unchanged for a millennium, by which communion with God is sought as a bond between the Christian past, present, and future, between the Church militant and triumphant, visible and invisible.
The Lutheran children do not look forward to conversion. If they have been baptized in infancy and daily nurtured, they must not be assumed to be unregenerate, but as already in a state of grace. The germs of a spiritual life were early planted, and have grown with their growth, and they need no violent change or drastic religious ex- perience. Religion is a growth, not a conquest; but adolescence is the critical season of development, during which special care is need- ful. Even confirmation is not indispensable, and although it has spir- itual sanction and is almost a matter of course, it is not authorita- tively enforced.
In Europe, confirmation at fourteen or fifteen is the rule, as it is wherever there are good parochial schools to look after both pre- 278 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE paratory and subsequent training. Where these are lacking, as they still are generally in this country, where there are yet but about three thousand, the age is commonly from fifteen to twenty. It is preceded by one or two winter courses of instruction by the pastors, who some- times hear the catechumens in a Sunday-school class by themselves, with extra work outside, for from four to six months, for one or two years, with from one to three sessions weekly — some rules prescribing one hundred hours in all. The essential subject-matter is Luther's smaller catechism, which is chiefly an exposition of the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, and the Augsburg Confes- sion, which is the oldest Protestant creed. Lutheran and general Church history are often added, and doctrinal, devotional, and eccle- siastical matters frequently dwelt upon in the manuals most in use. The form of instruction is catechetical, by questions and answers, and considerable verbal memorizing is required, but the pastor seeks chiefly to reach the heart.
The Lutheran Church rediscovered the Bible, causing a renaissance of its study, and reversed former methods by making the sacred book and not the Church and its institutions basal; in its teaching no religious body insists more strongly that Scripture contains the very words of God, or is more impatient of the higher criticism. Luther, at Worms, with his hand on the open Bible and saying, " Here I stand, I can not do otherwise. God help me, Amen," which Froude calls the finest scene in modern history, fitly became the Spir- itual father of a Church which has sought to mold its creeds, the- ology, liturgy, hymns, and life more closely after the Bible than any other, that can accept no theories of a fallible authenticity of its divine oracles, or a human and merely exemplary Saviour, and that is proud that it has no heresy trials, although originating in the same fatherland where most heresies have sprung. With this cardinal principle, we should expect great stress to be laid upon direct Bible teaching. While this is done more than in the Catholic or perhaps even Anglican preparations for first communion, it is mostly by way of memorizing proof texts for sacraments and creed.
Toward revelation the chief Lutheran doctrine is faith that makes for justification, and not reason that makes skeptics. Faith, the mightiest of all words in the soul's lexicon, is the key to man's lost paradise; it conditions and is larger than conduct, is the source of all the authority of conscience, the chief of all the duties, and has done all the real miracles in history; it is the best criterion of the vigor, health, and maturity of the soul, and man's only possible ground of salvation. Faith enlarges the soul of the individual to the dimen- sions of the race, enabling him to be a citizen of all times and a spec- tator of all spiritual events, and is the organ by which we see and apprehend, not facts of sense or proof of intellect, but the true mys- teries or sacraments of instinct and feeling. By it Christ's propitia- tory and vicarious sacrifice is imputed to us.
The focus of the Lutheran theology is the doctrine of communion CHURCH CONFIRMATION 279 that Christ's body and blood are, as the Augsburg Confession says, " truly present under the form of bread and wine." Some manuals for first communion teach that the divine elements are invisible, or inseparable, yet unmixed with the actual food elements, or that the latter participate in the former, as Plato made real things partici- pate in ideas, or that they inhere, as the schoolmen made attributes inhere in substance; the union is called not carnal but sacramental, or they say that there is not a real change but a means of change, while the doctrines of both transubstantiation and consubstantiation are rejected. Faith is said to appropriate the passion and merits of the divine sacrifice in an inexplicable way.
Instruction especially preparatory to first communion is also given concerning the Church festivals, as Luther especially advised, viz., Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, St. Stephen's Day, and October 3ist, which is the day Luther nailed up his ninety-five theses. There are also lectionaries for minor fes- tivals, and of saints in the Lutheran Christian year, to bring the bio- graphical element to pedagogical efficiency. Confirmation day is on Palm Sunday. All Lutheran churches hold confession to be a fit pre- paratory discipline for first communion. This is not imposed as a necessity, but taught as a privilege, is general rather than explicit and detailed, and all sins need not be enumerated. All Lutheran pastors can give absolution for confessed sins, though this is not absolute, only exhibitory. The disciplinary value of this is high, for it relieves the conscience and evokes advice and comfort where most needed. Luther places these rites next to the sacraments themselves.
Confirmation being preparatory to first communion, there is usually a public examination of the children, held in the church immediately preceding the ceremony or on the Sunday before, in order to see if even the least gifted have been trained to enough knowledge of the fundamental doctrine of the Church to partake of the sacraments prop- erly. They stand before the altar, girls in white and boys in black, and are addressed by the pastor; then, after the Lord's Prayer, the confirmants are asked to renounce the devil and fleshly lusts and ac- cept the Apostles' Creed. They assent to this, and vow to remain true to God, the Church and its doctrine, and the congregation unites in solemn prayer for them. They then kneel at the altar, and the pastor places his right hand on the head of each, invoking the fear of God and hope of eternal life; they are then exhorted to partake of all the blessings of church membership, and renew and assume for them- selves the obligations of their baptism. Scripture by the congrega- tion and a benediction conclude the service, after which each child is given a certificate or diploma of confirmation as a memento.
The Lutheran Church has only lately begun the special work for young people after confirmation. In New York city the " Young Peo- ple's Union " was founded about ten years ago for this purpose, and in the western part of the State associations for young men have been extending for some years. These are now united in the Luther League 280 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE of that State, with its own journal of that name. In Pennsylvania, the Luther Alliance, and among the Germans the Young Men's Asso- ciations and the Young Ladies' Societies, are inter-church organiza- tions for the same end. Elsewhere central associations are formed. A National Union, of which all these are members, is now formed. The problems of this Church for older adolescents are somewhat unique, and few religious bodies have so suffered from proselyting, which has been a spur to this new effort.
The savage and Christian rites each need a volume, for neither have yet been gathered. Here we are at the ethnic beginnings of education, all of which have developed from such initiations. While the Church sees clearly its moral dangers, as primitive races relatively fail to do, both assume a short and sharp rather than a prolonged period of transition and lay stress on external and outwardly impressive cere- monials. It was reserved for ultra and especially American Protestantism, as the next chapter shows, to enter the soul at pubescence and attempt to prescribe and normalize its states and changes. The crying need of a broader comparative study of all these regimens, inner and outer, to determine on the basis of a larger knowledge the better formulation of the pro- portion of elements, and their maximal moral utilizations, is already apparent, as is the higher standpoint to which we must rise above all preference of race, sect, and creed if we would discharge all our duty to youth.
CHAPTER XIV THE ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION Conversion under the New England theocracy — Jonathan Edwards — Revivalism — Statistics and opinions of evangelists as to age of most frequent conversions — Successive changes of heart — The Symposium — Twelve parallels between religious and sexual phenomena — Great luminousness yet partiality of these analogies. I. Conversion as a normal and universal process of growth — Pas- sage from an autocentric to an heterocentric basis. II. Aggravation of this natural transition by a sense of sin — The Seven Deadly Sins of the Church — Impossibility of real counter conversion or devotion to evil — Craving for pen- alty and confession — SerBe of sin as hereditary most of all exasperating — Re- lations of sin to melancholia — Rhythm of depressive and exalted states — The reconstruction after abnormal anxiety perhaps on a lower plane — Increased instability due to sexual aberration — The solutions of Gautama and of Jesus. III. Doubt — Crude ideas of childhood — Pain of rectification — Superiority of Catholicism — Havoc of dogma and need of larger ideas of (a) soul and (b) Scripture. IV. External norms of conversion — Insect world — Spring — Dawn — Plato's cave — The story of the Cross and its effect — Conversion in literature, history, and philosophy. V. Degradations and fourfold perversions of con-