Remember your prelates who have spoken the Word of God to you. Heb. c. xiii. v. 2.
Of the forty-six Fathers who sat in the Second Plenary Council, only sixteen still survive. More than this. During the few years that have since elapsed not only have thirty bishops and archbishops gone to the house of their eternity, but in several instances, their successors, too, have passed away, so that the Solemn Requiem offered this morning for the prelates who have died since the last Council is chanted for forty-two consecrated rulers. For these, "as it is a good and wholesome thought to pray for the dead," we send up our sighs and our prayers in the spirit of fraternal charity, and as a tribute of love and gratitude to our Fathers in the faith who had the burden of the day and the heat, and who now rest from their labors. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit,… for their works follow them."
In the commemorative services and solemn supplications offered in this cathedral, the first place, dear brethren, is deservedly due to your own lamented archbishops…. Besides these, memory turns, with fond regret, to a long list of Right Reverend Prelates, who were all present at the late Plenary Council, and who have since, one by one, passed away…. As we repeat each well-known name, hosts of pleasant memories come crowding on the mind just as by-gone scenes are awakened to new life by some sweet strain of once familiar music. Venerable forms loom up again before us with the paternal kindness, the distinguished presence, the winning ways we knew so well of old; and while the vision lasts we seem to hear a still small voice saying: "To-day for me, to- morrow for thee," or the echo of the words spoken by the wise woman of Thecua to the king on his throne: "We all die, and fall down into the earth, like waters that return no more."
"Star differeth from star in glory." The bishops, whose virtues we commemorate, differed in gifts of mind, in habits of thought, in nationality, in early training, in personal experience, in almost everything else but their common faith. This golden bond united them to each other and to us. There was still another point of resemblance and another link that bound them all together—the participation in the divine work of the Good Shepherd which was laid upon them all….
PART IV.
THOUGHTS OF VARIOUS AUTHORS ON PURGATORY.
The fuel justice layeth on,
And mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought
Is men's defiled souls.—SOUTHWELL.