"Here in Algiers, do we not see, every Friday, the Mussulman Arab, wandering pensively through his cemetery, placing on some venerated and beloved grave bouquets of flowers, branches of boxwood; wrapped in his bornouse, he sits for hours beside it, motionless and thoughtful; lost in gentle melancholy, it would seem as though he were holding intimate and mysterious converse with the dear departed one whose loss he deplores.... "But for us, Christians, nourished, enlightened by the truth of God, what special homage, what profound reverence we should manifest towards the remains of our fathers, our brethren who died in the same faith! Oh, let us remember the first faithful--the martyrs--the catacombs! The cemetery is for us the land where grows invisibly the harvest of the elect; it is the sleeping world of intelligence; sheltered are its peaceful slumbers in the bosom of nature ever young, ever fruitful; the crowd of the dead pressed together beneath those crosses, under those scattered flowers, is the crowd that will one day rise to take possession of the infinite future, from which it is only separated by some sods of turf. "Hence how lively, how motherly has ever been the solicitude of the Church in this respect! She wishes that the ground wherein repose the remains of her children be blessed and consecrated ground; she purifies it with hyssop and holy water; she calls down upon it by her humble supplications, the benediction of Him who disposes according to His will of things visible and invisible, of souls and of bodies; she wishes that the cross should rise in its midst, that her children may rest in peace in its shade while awaiting the grand awaking; even as a temple and a sanctuary, she banishes from it games, noise of all kinds, and even all that savors of levity or irreverence."--_Dictionnaire d'Anecdotes Chrétiens, p_. 993. OPINIONS OF VARIOUS PROTESTANTS. Some say, like Lessing in his "Treatise on Theology," "What hinders us from admitting a Purgatory? as if the great majority of Christians had not really adopted it. No, this intermediate state being taught and recognized by the ancient Church, notwithstanding the scandalous abuses to which it gave rise, should not be absolutely rejected." Others, with Dr. Forbes (_controv. pontif. princip., anno_ 1658): "Prayer for the dead, MADE USE OF FROM THE TIMES OF THE APOSTLES, cannot be rejected as useless by Protestants. They should respect the judgment of the primitive Church, and adopt a practice sanctioned by the continuous belief of so many ages. We repeat that prayer for the dead is a salutary practice."