Purgatory
Sadlier, Mrs. James, 1820-1903
English
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PURGATORY:
Doctrinal, Historical and Poetical,
BY
MRS. J. SADLIER
LO! PURGATORY! DOCTRINE BLEST,
ENGARLANDED WITH LEGENDS WILD,
HISTORIC LORE AND POETRY'S FAIR FLOWERS!
_"Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just
wait for me, until thou reward me."_
Ps. CXLI 8.
DEDICATION
TO THE GRACIOUS MEMORY OF MY DEARLY-BELOVED SON, REV. FRANCIS X.
SADLIER, S.J. WHOSE TENDER DEVOTION TO THE Souls in Purgatory LED HIM
TO TAKE A DEEP AND ACTIVE INTEREST IN THE PROGRESS OF THIS WORK, BUT
WHO WAS NOT PERMITTED TO SEE ITS COMPLETION, BEING CALLED HENCE,
SCARCELY THREE MONTHS AFTER HIS ORDINATION, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MONTH
CONSECRATED TO THOSE Holy Souls, _November 14th, 1885._
R. I. P.
INTRODUCTION
I have written many books and translated many more on a great variety
of subjects, nearly all of which, I thank God now with all my heart,
were more or less religious, at least in their tendency; but the circle
of these my life-long labors seems to me incomplete. One link is
wanting to the chain, and that is a work specially devoted to the souls
in Purgatory. This omission I am anxious to supply while the working
days of my life are still with me, for, a few more years, at most, and
for me "the night cometh when no man can work."
As we advance into the vale of years and journey on the downward slope,
we are happily drawn more and more towards the eternal truths of the
great untried world beyond the grave. Foremost amongst these stands out
more and still more clearly, in all its awful reality, the dread but
consoling doctrine of Purgatory. When we have seen many of our best
beloved relatives, many of our dearest and most devoted friends--those
who started with us in "the freshness of morning" on the road of life,
which then lay so deceitfully fair and bright before them and us--they
who shared our early hopes and aspirations, and whose words and smiles
were the best encouragement of our feeble efforts--when we have seen
them sink, one by one, into the darkness of the grave, leaving the
earth more bleak and dreary year by year for those who remain--then do
we naturally follow them in spirit to those gloomy regions where one or
all may be undergoing that blessed purification which prepares them for
the eternal repose of Heaven.
Of all the divine truths which the Catholic Church proposes to her
children, assuredly none is more acceptable to the pilgrim race of Adam
than that of Purgatory. It is, beyond conception, dear and precious as
one of the links that connect the living with the vanished dead, and
which keeps them fresh in the memory of those who loved them on earth,
and whose dearest joy it is to be able to help them in that shadowy
border-land through which, in pain and sorrow, they must journey before
entering the Land of Promise, which is the City of God, seated on the
everlasting hills.
When I decided on adding yet another to the many books on Purgatory
already existing even in our own language, I, at the same time,
resolved to make it as different as possible from all the others, and
thus fill up a void of which I have long been sensible in our English
Purgatorial literature. Doctrinal works, books of devotion, e have in
abundance, but it is, unhappily, only the pious, the religiously-
inclined who will read them. Knowing this, and still desirous to
promote devotion to the Holy Souls by making Purgatory more real, more
familiar to the general reader, I thought the very best means I could
take for that end would be to make a book chiefly of legends and of
poetry, with enough of doctrinal and devotional matter to give a
substantial character to the work by placing it on the solid
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