The vast cathedral and the village shrine
Unite in mercy's choral strain divine.
HISTORICAL.
THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY, OR A MIDDLE STATE, AMONG THE PAGAN NATIONS
OF ANTIQUITY.
BY THE REV. A. A LAMBING, A.M.
[This very interesting article was originally published in the "Ave
Maria."]
The attentive student of the mythology of the nations of antiquity
cannot fail to discover many vestiges of a primitive revelation of some
of the principal truths of religion, although in the lapse of time they
have been so distorted and mingled with fiction that it requires
careful study to sift the few remaining grains of truth from the great
mass of superstition and error in which they are all but lost. Among
these truths may be reckoned monotheism, or the belief in, and the
worship of, one only God, which the learned Jesuit, the Rev. Aug.
Thebaud, in his "Gentilism," has proved to have been the primitive
belief of all nations. It may not, however, be so generally known that
the doctrine of Purgatory, or a future state of purification, was also
held and taught in all the religious systems in the beginning. While a
knowledge of this fact cannot add anything to the grounds of our faith
as Catholics, it will not be wholly without interest, and it will,
besides, better enable us to give a reason for the faith that is in us.
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