Protestants and the Dogma of Purgatory
ARE Protestants in the United States inclining toward a belief in the Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory? The Catholic Mirror believes there is evidence warranting an affirmative answer to this query, and mentions a circumstance of recent occurrence which strongly points to this conclusion. “Catholic writers have often noticed,” says the Mirror, “the tendency of Protestant minds to a belief in such a future state as Catholic faith holds purgatory to be. The most advanced thinkers in the Anglican church now regard purgatory as an article of belief in the ritualistic communion, and prayers for the souls of the departed are one of the features of the High Church development in England.” The Mirror finds that the Protestant tendency toward the acceptance of purgatory is not quite as marked in this country as in England, yet is here, and then the Mirror cites this incident:— At Brooklyn, last week, Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, a noted divine of a denomination which has never manifested any “Roman” tendencies, prayed, without arousing comment, for the survivors and victims of the St. Pierre catastrophe. Special prayers were also offered for one of the young men of the church who is thought to have lost his life at St. Pierre. “What means this praying for the dead?” the Mirror asks. Its conclusion is: “It is not for their material welfare, not for their bodies. Then it must be for their souls, and implies a belief in purgatory.” “Dr. Hillis must appreciate this.” A belief in purgatory rests on the conclusion that a merciful God will not consign all sinners alike to an eternity of suffering in hell; hence those whose offenses are comparatively light will be granted probation after death, and their welfare can continue to be a proper object of the prayers of the living. But this conclusion rests, in turn, upon the dogma that man is by nature immortal, and must therefore, if he dies in sin, be eternally tormented in hell unless some provision is made for his ultimate deliverance, and translation to the abode of the saved. Thus the dogma of natural immortality is responsible for the dogma of purgatory, and for the tendency among Protestants to join with Roman Catholics on this point. Adherence to the Protestant rule of making the Bible the sole foundation of religious belief would have prevented the first step in this wrong direction, for the dogma of natural immortality is as unscriptural as was the devil’s first lie to mankind, “Ye shall not surely die.”