ALL SOULS

A festival or holiday of the Romish Church, on which special prayers are made for the benefit of the souls of the departed. Its observance has been traced back to the year 998; about which time, we are told, a certain monk, whose curiosity had led him to visit Mount Ætna, which he, in common with others of that age, verily believed to be the mouth of hell, returned to his abbot with the grave story that he had overheard “the devils within complain, that many departed souls were taken out of their hands by the prayers of the Cluniac monks.” (See Clugni .) The compa ionate abbot took the hint, and set apart the second day of November, to be annually kept by his monks as a day of prayer for All Souls departed. This local appointment was afterwards changed by the pope into a general one, obligatory on all the Western Churches. The ceremonies observed on this day were in good keeping with the purpose of its institution. In behalf of the dead, persons arrayed in black perambulated the cities and towns, each provided with a loud and dismal-toned bell, which they rang in public places by way of exhortation to the people to remember the souls in purgatory, and give them the aid of their prayers. In France and Italy, at the present day, the annual Jour des Morts is observed, by the population resuming their mourning habits, and visiting the graves of their friends for many years after their decease. At the period of the Reformation, the Church of England abrogated altogether the observance of this day, as based on false doctrine, and as originating in a falsehood.