Chapter XVI. Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead. 217 no grounds in Scripture, tradition or reason itself? If a brother leaves you to cross the broad Atlantic, religion and affection prompt you to pray for him during his absence. And if the same brother crosses the narrow sea of death to pass to the shores of eternity, why not pray for him then also? When he crosses the Atlantic his soul, imprisoned in the flesh, is absent from you; when he passes the sea of death his soul, released from the flesh, has gone from you. What difference does this make with regard to the duty of your intercession? For what is death? A mere separation of body and soul. The body, indeed, dies, but the soul "lives and moves and has its being." It continues after death, as before, to think, to remember, to love. And do [223] not God's dominion and mercy extend over that soul beyond the grave as well as as this side of it? Who shall place the limits to God's empire and say to Him: "Thus far Thou shalt go and no farther?" Two thousand years after Abraham's death our Lord said: "I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living."296 If, then, it is profitable for you to pray for your brother in the flesh, why should it be useless for you to pray for him out of the flesh? For while he was living you prayed not for his body, but for his soul. If this brother of yours dies with some slight stains upon his soul, a sin of impatience, for instance, or an idle word, is he fit to enter heaven with these blemishes upon his soul? No; the sanctity of God forbids it, for "nothing defiled shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven."297 Will you consign him, for these minor transgressions, to eternal torments with adulterers and murderers? No; the justice and mercy of God forbid it. Therefore, your common sense demands a middle place of expiation for the purgation of the soul before it is worthy of enjoying the companionship of God and His Saints. 296 Mark xii. 26, 27. 297 Apoc. xxi. 27.