Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical Part 48

Mark this well. The Cardinal is dead. What happens? Does the machinery stagger? Has a great and irreparable calamity fallen on the churches?

Are any plans abandoned? Is the policy affected? Will aggression cease?

Nothing happens but a great and imposing funeral. The plans are not affected. The lines do not waver. No work begun will be suspended.

Everything goes on. If only a deacon should die out of some Baptist church, alas! my brethren, the plate returns empty to the altar. The minister puts on his hat. Consternation jumps on the ridge-pole and languis.h.i.+ng, settles down. When shall we learn? When shall we plan harmoniously, unite our counsels, work within the lines, cease wasting resources, carry forward a common work, and when some man falls, put a new man in his place, move up the line, and keep step? To-day, when a gap is made here, we try to mend it, after a time, by seeking how great a gap we can create somewhere else. What wonder that good men get tired and go where no such folly flies, and where the current flows on and on forever!

And the old Cardinal rests in the crypt, under the high white altar. He sleeps in the mausoleum of the great. He has the reward of his labors.

He carried into his tomb the insignia of his high office. Sealed up in his coffin is a parchment which future ages may read, long after we are all forgot, giving a condensed record of his long and active career.

The bishops and priests have gone home to their parishes; and their tireless labors go on. They are thinking of the mighty but gentle and kindly Cardinal; of the telegrams from the Papal Court, the College of Cardinals, the Pope, and of the imposing funeral; of his own words which they wrung from him amidst the rigors of death:

"I bless you, my children, and all the churches." It was the parting of a prophet. And the priests will live for the Church and mankind. They are whispering, "The faithful are rewarded! Effort is acknowledged! O, Rome has shaken the earth! Rome is putting her armor together again."

Sometimes I hear the creaking of her coat of mail as she mightily moves herself in exercise.