f temporary purgation. I cannot recall
any doctrine of the Christian religion more consoling to the human heart
than the article of faith which teaches the efficacy of prayers for the
faithful departed. It robs death of its sting. It encircles the chamber of
mourning with a rainbow of hope. It assuages the bitterness of our sorrow,
and reconciles us to our loss. It keeps us in touch with the departed dead
as correspondence keeps us in touch with the absent living. It preserves
their memory fresh and green in our hearts.

It gives us that keen satisfaction which springs from the consciousness
that we can aid those loved ones who are gone before us by alleviating
their pains, shortening their exile, and hastening their entrance into
their true country.

It familiarizes us with the existence of a life beyond the grave, and with
the hope of being reunited with those whom we cherished on earth, and of
dwelling with them in that home where there is no separation, or sorrow,
or death, but eternal joy and peace and rest.

I have seen a devoted daughter minister with tender solicitude at the
sick-bed of a fond parent. Many an anxious day and sleepless night did she
watch at his bedside. She moistened the parched lips, and cooled the
fevered brow, and raised the drooping head on its pillow. Every change in
her patient for better or worse brought a corresponding sunshine or gloom
to her heart. It was filial love that prompted all this. Her father died
and she followed his remains to the grave. Though not a Catholic, standing
by the bier she burst those chains which a cruel religious prejudice had
wrought around her heart, and, rising superior to her sect, she cried out:
_Lord, have mercy on his soul_. It was the voice of nature and of
religion.

Oh, far from us a religion which would decree an eternal divorce between
the living and the dead. How consoling is it to the Catholic to think
that, in praying thus for his departed friend, his prayers are not in
violation of, but in accordance with, the voice of the Church; and that
as, like Augustine, he watches at the pillow of a dying mother, so like
Augustine, he can continue the same office of piety for her soul after she
is dead by praying for her! How cheering the reflection that the golden
link of prayer unites you still to those who "fell asleep in the Lord,"
that you can still speak to them and pray for them!

Tennyson grasps the Catholic feeling when he makes his hero, whos