PRAYER FOR THE DEAD, the practice which prevails in the Roman Catholic, Greek, and other oriental churches of praying for the souls of the deceased, with the intention and expectation of obtaining for them an alleviation of their supposed sufferings after death; on account of venial sins, or of the penalty of mortal sins, remitted but not fully atoned for during life. The practice of praying for the dead supposes the doctrine of purgatory (q.v.), although perhaps the converse is not necessarily true. Practically, however, the two may be regarded as forming part of one and the same theory, and especially if taken in connection with the doctrine of the communion of saints. It being once supposed, as the Roman Catholic system supposes, that relations subsist between the two worlds, that their members may mutually assist each other, it is almost a neces sary consequence of the doctritm of purgatory that the living ought to the relief of their suffering brethren beyond the grave. We can but present an outline of this doctrine and of its history. It seems certain that some such doctrine existed in most of the ancient religions, and especially in those of Egypt, India, and China. It gives significance to many of the practices of the Greeks and Romans in reference to their dead. Its existence among the Jews is attested by the well-known assurance in 2d Maccabees, chap. xii., that " it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." The continued maintenance of the practice among the Jewish race is plain from their sacred books; and a still more interesting evidence of its use has recently been discovered in the insbriptions disinterred in several Jewish catacombs of the first three centuries, at Rome and in southern Italy, which abound with supplications: " May thy steep be in peace!" "Mayest thou sleep in peace!" "Thy sleep be with the good!" or "with the just!" etc. Roman Catholics
contend that the doctrine, as well as the practice, is equally recognizable in the early Christian chtrch. They rely on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke xvi. 19-31) as establishing the intercommunion of this earth with the world beyond the grave; and on Matt. xii. 32, as proving the remissibility of sin or of punishment after death; as well as on 1st. Cor. xv. 20, as attesting the actual practice, among the first Christians, of performing or undergoing certain ministrations in behalf of the dead. The fathers of the 2d, 3d, and still more of the 4th and following centuries, frequently allude to such prayers, as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and especially St. John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Augustine. The liturgies, too, of all the rites without exception contain prayers for the dead; and the sepulchral inscriptions froni the catacombs, which reach in their range from the 1st till the 5th c., contain fre quent prayers in even greater variety, and more directly intercessory, or rather more directly implying release from suffering than those of the contemporary Jews. In the services of the mediaeval and later church, prayers for the dead form a prominent and striking element. See REQUIEM. The Abyssinians have separate services for the dead of all the several conditions and degrees in life, and continue to offer the mass daily for 40 days after the death. The Protestant churches without exception have repudiated the practice. In the burial•service of the first book of common prayer, authorized in the church of England, some prayers for the deceased were retained; but they were expunged from the second book; and no trace is to be found in that sanctioned under Elizabeth. , • •