work and are, therefore, presented to the reader as weird fragments of
the legendary lore of Purgatory.

Taken altogether, I think this work will help to increase devotion to
the Suffering Souls, and excite a more tender and more sensible feeling
of sympathy for them, at least amongst Catholics, showing, as it does,
the awful reality of those purgative pains awaiting all, with few or no
exceptions, in the after life; the help they may and do receive from
the good offices of the living, and the sacred and solemn' duty it is
for Christians in the present life to remember them and endeavor to
relieve their sufferings by every means in their power. To answer this
purpose I have made the dead ages unite their solemn and authoritative
voice with that of the living, actual present in testimony of the truth
of this great Catholic dogma. The Saints, the Fathers, the Doctors of
the Church in the ages of antiquity, and the prelates and priests of
our own day all speak the same language of undoubting faith, of solemn
conviction regarding Purgatory,--make the same earnest and eloquent
appeal to the faithful on behalf of the dear suffering souls. Even the
heathen nations and tribes of both hemispheres are brought forward as
witnesses to the existence of a middle state in the after life. Nor is
Protestantism itself wanting in this great and overwhelming mass of
evidence, as the reader will perceive that some of its most eminent
divines and secular writers have joined, with no hesitating or
faltering voice, in the grand _Credo_ of the nations and the ages
in regard to Purgatory.

What remains for me to add except the earnest hope that this book may
have the effect it is intended to produce by bringing the faithful
children of the Church to think more and oftener of their departed
brethren who, having passed from the Militant to the Suffering Church,