Let us, therefore, reverently confess that we believe in "the life everlasting."
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho' mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.
—In Memoriam. Tennyson.
XI
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD
The wisest of men have little to guide them when they approach that mysterious realm from which no traveler has ever returned. With humility and the consciousness that we must, at the best, walk in the twilight, I take up one of the most mysterious and fascinating of themes. No one has any right to speak positively on such a subject, and I shall not do so. Those who have the assurance of sight when they write about what lies beyond the grave are both to be envied and to be pitied,—envied because of their confidence, pitied because they may be self-deceived.
Let me make my exact purpose as plain as I can by an illustration. A dear friend, one with whom you have associated for years, enters the silent life. The morning following, as has long been your custom, you offer your prayers to the Heavenly Father, and, as usual, mention that friend by name. Suddenly you stop and say to yourself, "I can no more offer that petition, for my friend is now beyond the need of my poor prayers." Then, suddenly and swiftly, come the questions, Although my friend is called dead is he any less alive than when he was in the body? Will not all that constituted his personality continue to grow in the future as in the past? Does the death of the body do anything more than change the mode of the spirit's existence? And the result is that you say to yourself, "I will continue to pray for my friend, for, if he is alive now, every reason which led to prayers before his death justifies their continuance."