charity to offer a single Mass for me!' 'Nay,' returned his friend, 'you had no sooner closed your eyes than I fulfilled my promise; and you may satisfy yourself by examining your body, which you will find is not yet cold.' 'Is that so?' returned the deceased. How frightful are the torments of Purgatory when one hour seems more than a year!' Another case was that of an abbot who, on returning from a journey, found that the most promising of his young monks had just died. As the abbot was praying in the choir after matins he saw a phantom enveloped in flames. O charitable Father,' said the novice, with deep groans, 'give me your blessing. I had committed a small breach of rule, not a sin in itself. As this is the only cause of my detention in Purgatory, I have been allowed by special favour to address myself to you. You are to impose my penance, and I shall then be released.' The abbot replied: 'As far as it depends on me, my son, I absolve you, and give you my blessing; and for penance, I appoint you to stay in Purgatory till the hour of prime:' that was the next service, usually held at eight o'clock in the morning. At these words the novice, filled with despair, ran shrieking through the church, crying: 'O merciless father! O heart pitiless towards your unhappy son! What! for a fault for which in my lifetime you would have thought the lightest penance enough, to impose on me so fearful a penalty. Little do you know the atrocity of the sufferings of Purgatory.' And shrieking out, 'O uncharitable penance!' he disappeared. The abbot's hair stood on end with horror; gladly would he have recalled his severe sentence. But the word had been spoken. At last a happy thought struck him. He rang the bell; called up his monks; told them of the facts, and celebrated the Office of prime immediately. But all his life he retained the impression of this horrible scene, and often said that till then he¦ had had no idea of the punishments of the other world, and could not have imagined that a few hours in Purgatory could form so fearful an expiation.

But we shall be less disposed to pity the souls in Purgatory when we learn what exceptional good fortune it is to get there. To the question, 'Are there few that be saved?'

Louvet would return a most gloomy answer. His arguments and calculations are very interesting, but would take me too long to repeat. But (p. 26) he clinches his opinion by a revelation. St. Bernard, it appears, was privileged on two successive days to stand by the judgment-seat of God, and hear the sentences pronounced on all the souls that died on these two days. He was horrified to find that of 80,000 souls only three souls of adults were saved the first day, and only two on the second; and that of these five not one went direct to heaven: all must visit Purgatory.

Louvet, as I have said, builds his speculations solely on the evidence of canonized saints. If he had been content with authentic history, he might have used the following, to which we, at least, ought to take no exception, since the credit of our own country is pledged to its truth.* The Roman Breviary of 1522 relates that St. Patrick, having fasted, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, on the top of a mountain, asked two things of God: first, that at the day of judgment there should not remain a single Irishman on the earth; the other, that God would show him the state of souls after death. Then the Lord led him to a desert place, and showed him a certain dark and deep pit, and said, 'Whosoever shall remain in this cave a day and a night shall be delivered from all his sins.' This passage of the Roman Breviary was afterwards suppressed, then restored, then finally suppressed again, on account of the evil comments of Protestants and Rationalists. 'But,' says Louvet, 'the old Parisian and other local Breviaries accept the story; so do the historians of the Church of Ireland, and, above all, the Bollandists, with their grave authority. And besides, there remain so many histories of actual descents into this purgatory, that unless we accuse a great and illustrious Church of knavery and imbecility, we must admit that the story has a foundation of historic fact. The routine of the descent into this purgatory was as follows: none was permitted to descend without the sanction of his bishop, who did all in his power to dissuade every applicant

*Louvet, p. 42.

from the attempt, reminding him of what was very true, that many had made the venture who had never come back. If, notwithstanding, the postulant persevered, the bishop gave him a letter to the prior of the monastery which was at the place, who also tried to turn him aside from the dangerous enterprise. If the candidate persisted, he was shut up in the church for fifteen days' fasting and prayer; then, confessed and communicated, was sprinkled with holy water, and led in procession, with singing of litanies, to the mouth of the grotto. There the prior made a last appeal. If the candidate persevered, he received the prior's blessing, crossed himself, and disappeared in the darkness. The prior waited a little to see if he would come back. If not, they shut the door and returned in procession to the church. Next day they returned, with processions and litanies as before. If the adventurer was there, they led him back, singing the Te Deum; if not, they returned the next morning: if he did not then appear, the prior sadly locked the door of the abyss, and they gave him up for lost. Some successful adventurers have left records of the sufferings of Purgatory, which they not only saw, but participated in; but Louvet, as I said, declines to use these histories in his treatise. Any of you who have read Carleton's story of the Lough Derg Pilgrim will have learned how the descent was conducted in our degenerate days.

Before I part with Louvet, I must mention another reference of his to Irish history. You may have heard of Malachi, who wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader.' Alas! the true history of the collar of Malachi is very different from Tommy Moore's version. An Irish bishop, praying after his office, saw a pale spectre with a collar of flames about his neck. This was Malachi. He had misused his kingly power; and, to bend his confessor to culpable indulgence, had bribed him with a ring of gold. For punishment he had now to wear this ring of flame about his neck. And his confessor could give him no help; for he was himself condemned to wear a heavier and more painful one. You will be glad to hear that after some months of

prayers the bishop was able to obtain relief for the two sufferers.*

These extracts, long as they have been, give you a very faint idea of the mass of information about Purgatory made known by revelations which respected priests, writing with all the air of grave historians,† relate for the edification of their flocks, in books bought up by thousands. A companion volume to that on Purgatory might easily be made on the revelations about the Virgin Mary, in which the modest doctrine of the Council of Trent, that it is useful to invoke her intercession, is rapidly being improved into the doctrine, that no one who does invoke it can be lost, and no one who does not can be saved. One would think we had a right to know from the infallible authority whether these revelations and the doctrine which they contain ought to be received or not; but he remains silent. Those who, like Father Faber and Louvet, receive these revelations as Scripture, obtain commendation for their piety; but one who treats these stories with complete disregard is visited with no official censure, whatever suspicions private individuals may entertain of the coldness of his faith. But all the time, on the strength of stories which the supreme authority will neither affirm nor deny, beliefs are being silently built up in the Church on which he is likely hereafter to be asked to put his seal.

In the Roman Church the idea seems to be now abandoned of handing down the Faith once for all (änak) delivered to the saints.' It is It is a vast manufactory of beliefs, to which addition is being yearly made. And as when you go into some great manufactory you may be shown the article in all its stages: the finished product, with the manufacturer's stamp upon it; the article near completion, and wanting hardly anything but the stamp; the half-finished work; the raw materials out of which the article is made; so it is in the Roman Church. There you have the finished article: dogmas pro

*Louvet, p. 79.

+ Louvet says of one of his authorities, 'impossible de rien lire de plus sûr comme authenticité et comme véracité,' p. 76.

nounced by Pope and Council to be de fide, which none may deny on pain of damnation. But there are, besides, articles fere de fide, not yet actually proclaimed by infallible authority to be necessary to salvation to be believed in, yet wanting nothing else but official promulgation-so generally received, and acknowledged by such high authorities, that to contradict them would be pronounced temerarious, and their formal adoption by the Church seems to be only a question of time. Somewhat below these in authority, but still very high, are other doctrines supported by such grave doctors that it would be a breach of modesty to contradict them. Below these again, other things owned to be still matters of private opinion, but which seem to be working their way to general belief, and which, if they should win their way to universal acceptance, will deserve to be proclaimed to be the faith of the Church. It is needless to say what help is given towards such general recognition of a doctrine, if a canonized saint, whom it is impossible to suspect of deceit, and disrespectful to suspect of delusion, declares that he has been taught the truth of the doctrine by revelation from heaven. It is inevitable that a doctrinal statement so commended, if no disapprobation of it is expressed by higher authority, comes to the Church with such a weight of recommendation that it can hardly help becoming the prevalent opinion: and then, in process of time, how can the head of the Church refuse to declare that to be the faith of the Church which the great majority of its members, including perhaps himself, believe to be true? If the supreme authority puts off its interference to the last stage, that interference comes altogether too late. It is useless to teach the Church when the Church has already made up its mind.

And surely if Christ has left a vicar upon earth, what more appropriate function can he have than that of informing the world how to distinguish the voice of Christ from that of false pretenders who venture to speak in his name? Anyone who claims to have received a revelation from God must be either as much deluded as Johanna Southcote, or as much inspired as St. Paul. If there be any