HAPPY AND UNHAPPY THEOLOGIANS

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    <strong>  I</strong>

    A mayo woman once said to me, “I knew a servant girl who hung herself for the love of God. She was lonely for the priest and her society,[FN#5] and hung herself to the banisters with a scarf. She was no sooner dead than she became white as a lily, and if it had been murder or suicide she would have bee black as black. They gave her Christian burial, and the priest said she was no sooner dead than she was with the Lord. So nothing matters that you do for the love of God.” I do not wo the pleasure she has in telling this story, for she herself loves all holy things with an ardour that brings them quickly to her lips. She told me ohat she never hears anything described in a sermon that she does not afterwards see with her eyes. She has described to me the gates of Purgatory as they showed themselves to her eyes, but I remember nothing of the description except that she could not see the souls in trouble but only the gates. Her mind yself. I had a sight of it oime in a vision. It had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway, and a straight walk into it, just like what ‘ud be leading into a gentleman’s orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box, but with red-hot metal. And ihe wall there were cross-walks, and I’m not sure what there was to the right, but to the left there were five great furnaces, and they full of souls kept there with great s. So I turned short a away, and in turning I looked again at the wall, and I could see o it.

    “And aime I saw Purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place, and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls standing in it. And they suffer near as much as in Hell, only there are no devils with them there, and they have the hope of Heaven.

    “And I heard a call to me from there, ‘Help me to e out o’ this!’ And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman, and from this ty, and I believe him to be a desdant of King O’or of Athenry.

    “So I stretched out my hand first, but then I called out, ‘I’d be burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.’ So then he said, ‘Well, help me with your prayers,’ and so I do.

    “And Father ellan says the same thing, to help the dead with your prayers, and he’s a very clever man to make a sermon, and has a great deal of cures made with the Holy Water he brought back from Lourdes.”

    1902.

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