Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/249

Rh persevere in my errors. The Pope himself has said “that I might become a Saint Brigitta for my country!” And they think that with reasoning of this kind they can move me. They attribute my obstinate, wicked will to pride, to selfishness, to the devil, whilst I feel ever more and more clearly that it is our Lord himself in His revelation of the light and the liberty of the gospel. There are nevertheless two subjects on which I should like to hear Sœur Geneviève speak; these are the doctrine of purgatory, and the uninterrupted connection with the departed—those whom we call the dead—doctrines which, when they are divested of their childish forms, constitute the requirements of every feeling, thinking, human, soul, and of which the most ancient traditions and the paintings also in the Catacombs, testify, and which I believe that all persons, with heads, and hearts, secretly believe in, when their spirits are not fettered in the prison-house of certain dogmatical doctrines. They seem to me so important both for life and consciousness, that they alone might attract souls into the church which retains them, from that which has rejected them, if one looked exclusively at them, and did not feel one's self able to receive them into a higher church, the church of Christ, the church of the eternal Comforter in spirit and in truth.

Judge for yourself, my R——! You have a child, a dear relative, or friend. The beloved one dies, and dies in a state of the soul which most assuredly would exclude him from the communion of the saints and from heaven. Are you forever separated from him?