St. Jerome, who gave us the Vulgate, the great Revised Bible of the Western Church, is comforting a mother who has lost a daughter. "She entreats the Lord for thee and begs for me the pardon of my sins." Again to another friend, Heliodorus, he speaks of the life after death. "There you will be made a fellow burgher with St. Paul. There also you will seek for your parents the rights of the same citizenship. There too you will pray for me who spurred you on to victory." Again he vigorously disputes with Vigilantius who asserts that prayers and intercessions must cease after death. "If the apostles and martyrs while still in the body are able to pray for others ... how much more may they do so now.... One man, Moses, obtains from God pardon for 600,000 men in arms; and Stephen, the imitator of his Lord, begs forgiveness for his persecutors; shall their power be less after they have begun to be with Christ?"[2] § 3 But sympathy and prayer must not be on one side only. It must be mutual in the Communion of Saints. They remembering and loving, and thinking about us. We remembering and loving, and thinking about them. They asking from their Lord blessing for us. We asking from Him blessing for them. For surely they are not above wanting His blessings still--not even the best of them though safe with Him, though forgiven their sins, they are still imperfect, still needing to grow in grace, in purification, in fitness for the final heaven by and by. And we can help their growth as they can help ours. Some of the most deeply religious people that I know shrink from the thought of prayer for the departed. There has been reason for it. This beautiful old custom, the custom of the Jews, the custom of the whole Christian Church till the Reformation[3] had grown at that time into great corruption. And one danger of great corruption is that indignant reformers are likely to tear away more than the corruption, "hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." So it was here. Because of the abuse men feared even the use. In their hatred of the sordid traffic in masses for the dead they looked with suspicion on any prayer for the departed. And at length men began to think that such prayers were even wrong. Ah, it was a pity! Our departed ones have more quickly passed into oblivion. The great Paradise life has almost faded from our view. We are the more lonely in our desolate bereavement. Perhaps our dear ones beyond are the more lonely, too, if they know about our life and our prayers on earth. A friend said to me lately, "I was a little child when the news came of father's death far away. That night in my prayers I prayed for father as usual. But my aunt stopped me. 'Darling,' she said, 'you must not pray for father now; it is wrong.' And I can remember still how I shrank back feeling as if some one had slammed the door and shut him outside."