some of us the heaven which the ghostly reporters describe through their fleshly mediums would lead to the suspicion that the locality where they supposed they were might well be some other place.

Just how the spirits occupy their time, if there is such a thing as time where they live, does not appear entirely plain from the revelations made. There is a vagueness as to details which is most disappointing. The connections between this world and the spirit world seem to be imperfect and conversation is difficult and intermittent. Very little appears to be revealed that one with some imagination could not have easily summised. Souls in the other world seem strangely at times to be weary or perplexed, perhaps even they are a little bored at being summoned to the celestial telephone and made to talk when they don't feel like talking or would rather do something else. Such a thing is not unknown here.

Perhaps it would not be worth while to deal with spiritism seriously if it were not for the fact that the names and standing of its proponents, or some of them, seem to give it an undue importance. Otherwise the banalities and the trivialities which characterize the supposed revelations would seem sufficiently to proclaim the same to be a preposterous delusion, if not a gross fraud. The cult of spiritism is not a recent one, in fact, it is very ancient and many of the phenomena, however they may be explained, have long been familiar to students of the occult. There may be, and personally I am inclined to credit the theory a natural explanation found in the domain of hypnotic suggestion, thought transference or some of the psychic forces of which at present we know so little. It may even be, as devoutly held in some quarters, that malevolent spirits of diabolic character employ spiritualistic phenomena to delude and ensnare the unwary and lure them on to their destruction. Certainly this explanation is not lightly to be dismissed, for observation shows that those who long continue to pursue these uncanny investigations tend to lose their moral stability if not actually to exhibit mental aberrations suggestive of demoniacal possession. Prudent persons would be well advised to refrain from dabbling in this unwholesome field lest they imperil their moral health and perhaps also their mental sanity. Certainly

the vast majority of those who indulge in such practices do not stand forth as representing the best elements in the community, far less are they conspicuous for their devotion to Christian. ideals.

To a devout and instructed Churchman it would seem incredible that whatever can be discovered regarding the state of the departed should have been hidden from the consciousness of the Catholic Church with its long experience of mystical phenomena and revealed to those who repudiate its divine authority and claim to obtain their knowledge under such bizarre and meretricious conditions as commonly pervade spiritualistic seances and the automatic writings of mediumistic pens. Nay, more, the reputed revelations are marked by such gross materialism and such unspiritual characteristics on the part of the supposititious informants as to excite suspicion and incredulity. The Almighty we feel is not likely to lift the veil which hides the secrets of the spirit world for the benefit of a group which denies the fundamental verities of the Christian faith and often violates the most primary moral obligations. It is easier to believe that diabolical agencies, the "lying spirits" of whom Scripture speaks, are responsible for the delusion than to think that a God of holiness deigns to impart such knowledge under such fantastic conditions.

The general subject of the state of the departed has for all of us a deep and pathetic interest. We naturally wish to know whatever may be known regarding the matter both for the sake of those who have been taken from us by death as well as for ourselves who may at any moment be called to join them in the place whither they have gone. Let it be said at the outset that whatever knowledge of this mysterious subject we are capable of acquiring rests wholly on Revelation. We have neither experience nor analogy to guide us in the matter. Unquestionably the whole subject is shrouded in a mystery that it is not intended we should penetrate beyond certain well-defined limits.

It is recorded that Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, the friend of Jesus, returned to his earthly life following his death and burial, but so far as we know he never told to others the secrets of the under-world. Perhaps no one dared

to ask him about his experience there, or like St. Paul who was caught up into the third heaven it may have been that he saw things which it was not lawful to utter to ears of flesh and blood.

Where wert thou brother, those four days!
There lives no record of reply
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise,

Behold! a man raised up by Christ,
The rest remaineth unrevealed.
He told it not or something sealed
The lips of that Evangelist.

Regarding many things concerning which we desire assured information we must be content to remain in ignorance. We must avoid a dogmatic spirit where Scripture is silent and learn to say "I do not know."

It may be well to state briefly what the Church affirms regarding those who have departed this life. The Church steers a middle course between the gross errors of the Romish doctrine of Purgatory* on the one hand and the crude conceptions of current Protestantism on the other. The Church takes Scripture as her guide. She declines to read into the mediaval theory of purgatory with all its fanciful and grotesque ideas, many of which are the plain product of a superstitious and ignorant age and which have done incalculable harm, but the Church declines also to allow the plain meaning of Scripture to be suppressed to suit ultra Protestant notions. The Church affirms on the authority of Scripture that the souls of those both good and bad who pass out of this life go into an Intermediate State and remain there until the Great Judgment Day. Regarding the present condition and occupation of such the Church makes no dogmatic assertions. That those who have done good are in a state of light, rest and refreshment, and that those who have done evil are in a contrary state, the Church believes implicitly but refrains from any explicit statement of an official or dogmatic character. The current Protestant no

Article XXII of the Thirty-nine Articles condemns the Romish doctrine of Purgatory and Indulgences, but as the learned Dr. B. J. Kidd points out, the doctrine thus repudiated was that of the extreme medievalists or "Romish party," technically so-called, and not that dogmatically held and proclaimed by the accredited theologians of the Roman Church.

tion that souls at death go immediately to heaven or hell, which undoubtedly represents a natural reaction against the gross absurdities and impieties taught and practiced in the Middle Ages, the Church equally declares to be contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture in that such a view ignores the reality of a final great judgment and makes of it simply an empty pageant.

It is probable that the Romish doctrine of Purgatory does not find many adherents among us, but it is by no means certain that the no less false and pernicious Protestant notion does not obtain in some degree. If souls immediately upon death go to either heaven or hell, what is to become of the Scriptural teaching regarding the Final Judgment? That Our Lord taught that there would be a certain definite time when all the souls who have ever lived on this earth would appear before him to be judged for the deeds done in the body is plain from even the most cursory study of the New Testament. That Our Lord furthermore asserted that on that occasion, the secrets of all hearts should be disclosed and that He Himself would then and there pronounce sentence upon the guilty and banish them from His presence into hell and that he would also reward the righteous by making them participators of His glory in Heaven, no one who is familiar with the New Testament will question. If therefore souls immediately after death go to their proper place of final reward or punishment what meaning is there to His words? If every soul at death immediately enters upon a final state of punishment or bliss wherein exists the necessity for any subsequent judgment? Sentence already has been passed and executed on every soul and it is surely a work of supererogation to bring such together for any further judgment. There is an eternal reality about God's dealings with mankind which forbids us to cherish such an idea, at once derogatory to God and insulting to our common sense.

There are grounds for hoping that many of those who have passed from this earthly life without a knowledge of Christ and the salvation He wrought out for men or whose knowledge was meagre and whose love and repentance were imperfect may in another life attain to such saving knowledge and have their love inflamed and their repentance made adequate through the

infinite mercy and loving-kindness of God. That there will also be those upon whom the divine love and mercy will be lavished in vain, who even in Hades will still continue to harden their hearts and will thus pass at the judgment day into a condition of eternal punishment and loss is a revealed truth. The most awful pronouncement regarding the fate of the reprobate was uttered by Him who is Himself Incarnate Love. "Depart from me, ye wicked into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" and again "Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched."

It remains now to say a word as to the condition of those whom we know as the faithful departed.

We are assured from the general tenor of Scriptural teaching that the souls of the righteous are in joy and felicity. There are indeed several passages in the New Testament which directly assure us that such is the case. To mention one, there are those words of St. John in the Book of the Revelation, words which the Church directs to be used over the grave of her children "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, write, from thenceforth blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Even so saith the Spirit for they rest from their labor." Moreover we may believe that such enjoy a clearer vision of God and a more uninterrupted communion with Christ than earthly conditions permit. It would seem reasonable to hold that their state is one of spiritual progress and development if also they are undergoing a process of purgation to fit them for the Beatific Vision. Everything that we know of life here leads us inevitably to believe that such must be the case.

That they pray for us who are still in our pilgrimage we may surely believe, but that they are conscious of all the details of our earthly state is something that has not been revealed to us and therefore it would be presumptous to dogmatize upon the matter.

May we lawfully pray for them? Are prayers for the faithful departed wrong or if not wrong are they surely ineffectual? It is argued on the one hand that the Scriptures afford no clear warrant for such intercessions and that hence they are to be regarded as prohibited and as likely to lead to grave abuses. It is asserted on the other hand that because prayers for the dead