Let Tertullian [1] speak for the next age. He tells us how carefully devout people in his time kept the anniversaries of the dead, and made their constant oblations for the sweet rest of their souls. "Here it is," says this grave author, "that the widow makes it appear whether or no she had any true love for her husband; if she continue yearly to do her best for the comfort of his soul." ... Let your first care be, to ransom him out of Purgatory, and when you have once placed him in the empyrean heaven, he will be sure to take care for you and yours. I know your excuse is, that having procured for him the accustomed services of the Church, you need do no more for him; for you verily believe he is already in a blessed state. But this is rather a poor shift to excuse your own sloth and laziness, than that you believe it to be so in good earnest. For there is no man, says Origen, but the Son of God, can guess how long, or how many ages, a soul may stand in need of the purgation of fire. Mark the word _ages_; he seems to believe that a soul may, for whole ages--that is, for so many hundred years--be confined to this fiery lake, if she be wholly left to herself and her own sufferings. [Footnote 1: Tertull. _De cor. mil. c 3; _De monogam, c. 10.] It was not without confidence, says Eusebius, of reaping more fruit from the prayers of the faithful, that the honor of our nation, and the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, took such care to be buried in the Church of the Apostles, whither all sorts of devout people resorting to perform their devotions to God and His Saints, would be sure to remember so good an emperor. Nor did he fail of his expectation; for it is incredible, as the same author observes, what a world of sighs and prayers were offered up for him upon this occasion. St. Athanasius [1] brings an elegant comparison to express the incomparable benefit which accrues to the souls in Purgatory by our prayers. As the wine, says he, which is locked up in the cellar, yet is so recreated with the sweet odor of the flourishing vines which are growing in the fields, as to flower afresh, and leap, as it were, for joy, so the souls that are shut up in the centre of the earth feel the sweet incense of our prayers, and are exceedingly comforted and refreshed by it. [Footnote 1: St. Augustine's views on this subject may be seen from the extract elsewhere given, from his "Confessions," on the occasion of the death of his mother, St. Monica.] We do not busy ourselves, says St. Cyril, with placing crowns or strewing flowers at the sepulchres of the dead; but we lay hold on Christ, the very Son of God, who was sacrificed upon the Cross for our sins: and we offer Him up again to His Eternal Father in the dread Sacrifice of the Mass, as the most efficacious means to reconcile Him, not only to ourselves, but to them also.