lected the information from several persons who visited the chapel with the view of investigating the matter, and were eye-witnesses, as far as possible, of the drama. A large space in the interior of the chapel was railed off, and concealed from the gaze of the general congregation by a thick curtain. Within this enclosure the Jesuits had placed their confessional-boxes. Two narrow doors in the wall in rear of the boxes opened on small apartments, dimly lighted by tapers, whose flame and odour resembled ignited brimstone. One of the chambers was designated the "Bottomless Pit," the other "Purgatory." By some occult process, figures of human beings, clothed in various garbs, were seen to glide in rapid motion amidst the blazing tapers, uttering terrific shrieks and awful moans. Some of the foreign priests acted as interpreters to the privileged spectators. They most cordially warned the visitors to be quite sure none of them had concealed anything in thought, word, or action from their father confessors, before venturing to look into these direful abodes, because the least thing concealed would nullify their absolution, and render them unworthy to look upon the divine mysteries on which Christ's Church was about to permit them to gaze. The likenesses seen in the infernal chamber were declared to be the souls of Orangemen and other heretics, doomed by God and His Church to endless torment for their apostacy and unbelief. Before the door of the other apartment could be opened, Mass was recited upon the altar. As the ceremony proceeded, the door gradually opened and remained a-jar. Spectral forms were seen within flitting amongst the flaming tapers, writhing in agony, and crying for the prayers of friends, and for mercy from the blessed Virgin and her Almighty Son. As the Mass reached a certain stage, a bell rang; then, for a brief space the sacerdotal guides crossed themselves and performed some genuflections, at the close of which the denizens of the sulphurous abode became invisible, and the cries and moans ceased. The guides now solemnly affirmed that the souls so recently beheld in pain are released for ever from their torments, and are borne by winged angels to the realms of light and glory.

But as this blasphemous histrionic exhibition was advancing to a happy issue, an untoward event occurred which had well-nigh unmasked the jugglery, and covered the chief actors with confusion. The Jesuits, however, proved themselves equal to the emergency. A charwoman, out of her scanty wages, paid the necessary sum for a special mass to release the soul of her deceased mother. She had also attended the confessional and obtained absolution, not only to possess the salvation of her own soul, but that she might be properly qualified to see the visions and salute the spirit of her emancipated mother, as had been promised. Alas! her filial attachment was so intense that, on seeing what had been

pointed out by the sacerdotal guides as her dear parent, she stepped over the threshold of the sulphurous chamber to grasp her parent's hand. On her touching the object, whatever it was, her nervous system received such a shock that her reason gave way, and in a few weeks after, the poor imbecile was placed an inmate in a lunatic asylum. A shriek of horror passed through the dense assembly. In frenzied terror they bowed before a huge crucifix and the Host that had been then exalted by the officiating priests to receive the homage of the congregation. At first it was affirmed that the woman was drunk, but as her conduct convinced all that she was not drunk, the priests at once construed her pitiable condition into proof of their sacerdotal authority. They boldly declared her insanity was a judgment from God, for her having concealed something from her confessor which he ought, as Christ's representative, to have known; that, in consequence, her absolution had been made void, and God had, by thus visiting her, for a warning to others not to conceal anything in the confessional, showed that she was utterly unworthy to look upon those heavenly visions which Christ empowered his Church to exhibit. This explanation was received in solemn awe and grief by the lunatic's friends, and believed as true, and as a righteous judgment for having attempted to deceive the priests, by the superstitious assembly.

Could the infatuated monarch of Israel witness anything more hurtful and demoralizing in the sorcerer's cot at Endor than the scene we have just described? The priests of Rome cannot be the successors of the Apostles of Jesus; for they never attemped to reveal to mortal eyes the Tartarus lake. The priests are manifestly the successors of the diviners and wizards of ancient Chaldea and Egypt. The Papacy is a mighty melo-drama which, according to times and circumstances, exhibits the humours and fooleries of comedy, or deepens into the horrors of tragedy. It is not only a system which counterfeits all the doctrines of the Gospel, but is pervaded by a spirit of imposture and necromancy. Some of the Roman missils are books of sorcery, filled with recipes or spells, for doing all manner of supernatural feats-as exhorting demons, working miracles, and infusing new qualities into beings. They contain recipes for manufacturing holy salt, holy bells, holy oil, and holy water. A priest, clothed in his appropriate vestments, on uttering certain mysterious words, can exorcise the devil out of oil, out of water, out of buildings, and out of the bodies of men. The summons pronounced by sacerdotal lips, and addressed to the supposed occupant of every infant brought to the baptismal font, "Come out of this body, thou unclean spirit," is nothing but a magical incantation. The more one considers the dogmas and worship of the Church of Rome, the more he is convinced that she is a huge Corporation of conjurors; and that her worship is a system of

divination. Can any doubt that she is the emblematical personage "clothed in scarlet," that filled with "wonder" the Apocalyptic Seer; or the Man of Sin whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders" (2 Thess. ii. 9)? And yet this is the religion the Anglican Ritualists fraternize with, and are endeavouring to substitute for that of the glorious Reformation, planted in this empire by the toil and blood of the martyrs, and which has placed England in the van of civilization.

Another object aimed at by these Jesuit peregrinations through Ireland is to prevent, as much as possible, all friendly intercourse between Romanists and Protestants on religious subjects. They elicited, in the confessional, from a servant maid who resides in a family in whose house I hold a monthly preaching service, that I preached in her master's kitchen. She informed her mistress previous to the evening of my next service that she could not attend my meetings any more, for that her priest stated that it was on the ground of her absenting herself in future he granted her absolution; and that to break her promise would nullify her absolution and expose her soul to eternal torments. Her mistress, of course, conceded to her liberty of conscience. This case, however, clearly shows that the movements of Protestant Missionaries are well known to the priesthood, and that they are using every effort to keep the people in spiritual darkness and bondage. It also proves that Protestants who have Roman Catholic servants are under the eye of the Romish clergy. Ireland, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, is less approachable by the advances of evangelical truth than even Italy.

Rome derived her Purgatory from the Greek and Roman poets and philosophers. Virgil's Elysium had a compartment in which the souls of the departed were purified by sufferings and the sacrifices of friends on earth before they could enter the habitations of felicity. Without purgatory what could Rome do? No one who did not believe in its existence would buy her indulgences, or pay for her Masses, or yield obedience to her arrogant pretensions, or credit her absurd fables. But with purgatory her coffers are replenished to overflowing, and her many millions of superstitious slaves are dragged in abject vassalage after the Papal car, as was the lifeless corpse of Hector after the triumphal chariot of the mighty conqueror of ancient Troy.

Purgatory is a mere fiction. All the statements of the Bible are condemnatory of it. Christ, in his description of the rich man. and Lazarus, refers to the existence of but two places in the future state-heaven and hell. The occupants at death immediately passed into their final abodes-the one blessed with the "comfort" of eternal felicity, the other doomed to unutterable woe. Paul affirms

this glorious truth-" Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." This precious blood of Jesus justifies now-in this present life, the soul that believes on him. This blood saves from wrath; purgatory is unnecessary. Besides, it is nowhere said in Scripture that we are saved through the fires of purgatory. Mother Church is the only mother in existence that dooms her dear children to such sufferings as the flames of purgatory must inflict. Is such agony in accordance with a mother's love? The Church of Christ is the Spouse of Christ. He suffered the awful death of the cross that his Bride might be exempted from all suffering in the future state. Will he, after all he has endured, subject his blood-ransomed spouse to the fires of purgatory? The dogma is a libel upon the God of justice and of infinite benevolence. "Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it." (Eph. v. 25-27.)

The arguments by which the doctrine of purgatory is upheld bear with equal force against the pretensions of Spiritualists. Paul, after his vision of Paradise (2 Cor. xii. 4) does not assume to be a medium between the corporeal and spirit-world. None of those whom Jesus called from the icy embrace of death attempted to become mediums. They communicated nothing of what their disembodied spirits must have seen and heard whilst in the spirit world.

If men's views of religion were based upon the infallible testimony of God as recorded in the Bible, they would be secured against the chicanery of priestcraft and Spiritualism. All the knowledge that a sovereign God has seen fit to communicate as necessary for salvation and eternal glory he has revealed in "the Scriptures of truth." It is both irrational and impious to attempt to discover what God has not revealed. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." JOHN DOUGLAS.

[Several paragraphs of this article have already appeared in the

"True Catholic."]

ART. III. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE.

PHILOSOPHICAL, inquiry is natural to man, for his intellectual

and moral capacity fits him for comprehending, to some extent, his own nature, relationships, and destiny. Man feels constrained to ask himself, what am I? whence came I? what are my surroundings? what are my responsibilities? and what is my destiny? These questions have been asked by men in every age and country. They constitute the essence of philosophy; they are the original incentives to all inquiry; to them philosophy owes its never-ending progress.

The real progress, however, of philosophy is mainly determined by the moral condition of mankind; for earnest thought never characterizes man in a low state of moral development. As nations become morally elevated, the more they become aroused and impelled by the increasing moral force within them to think profoundly and comprehend if possible the mysteries of Being. If a depreciation of the power and importance of moral and religious emotion co-exists with great intellectuality, the spiritual manifestations of Being are almost entirely ignored.

In Greece, India, China, and Persia the earliest and completest systems of philosophy obtained, though the Grecian philosophy was much more complete than the philosophic systems in Asia. With many important points of agreement, a considerable diversity_of thought existed amongst each of the above-mentioned peoples. The intellect largely predominated in shaping the various Grecian systems of philosophy; emotion, on the other hand, was the most active force in the development of the philosophic systems of Asia. Philosophy, properly so called, had almost no existence amongst the Jews until they came under the influence of eastern and western thought. They received much intellectual stimulus during their captivity from their contact with Persia. For their knowledge of super-mundane truth they were chiefly indebted to a special Divine revelation, which in itself may partly account for their unphilosophical turn of mind; but it may be safely affirmed that in the fundamental principles of religion and morality, the proudest achievements of philosophy have not approached the sublime and all-important announcements of the Hebrew prophets, and particularly those of the prophet of Nazareth. The Jewish intellect, however, being in a somewhat uncultured state, not having been accustomed to speculate profoundly, and their moral and religious perceptions being obscured by their low moral condition, they rejected the Light of the world. But a few minds among them, not perverted by false teaching, who, if not philosophers, were yet ready to follow their higher instincts and intuitions, received his teaching with avidity; and through them, in the course of two or three centuries, the religious thought of the Old and New Testaments became incorporated with the living thought of the world.

At an early period the Oriental systems of philosophy came into contact with the Grecian, and together they have exerted a most powerful influence on the whole current of thought in Europe until now. But philosophy has ever failed to show how man can be brought into fellowship with God, even when it held fast the fact of His existence. Christianity professes to do this. But philosophy has been of great benefit to man. philosophy but man feeling after God to find him?

What is

If man