Why, then, it will be asked, should they not be used in the Church of England? The first and chief answer is that, in substance, they are used. In the Burial Service we pray “that it may please Thee shortly to accomplish the number of Thine elect and to hasten Thy kingdom that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of Thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in Thy eternal and everlasting glory.” That is a prayer in the very spirit described by Bingham and Ussher as that of the primitive Church. Nor can I interpret in any less comprehensive sense the prayer in our Communion Service, “that we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His passion.” Field’s statement (vol. ii., Cambridge edition, p. 97) is fully justified by these prayers. “Touching Prayer for the Dead, it is well known that Protestants do not simply condemn all prayer in this kind; for they pray for the Resurrection, public acquittal in the Day of Judgment, and the perfect consummation and bliss of them that rest in the Lord, and the perfecting of whatsoever is yet wanting in them.”
If, therefore, in the Revision of the Prayer Book now pending, or in official forms of intercession now under consideration, it is contemplated to add anything to the language of the Prayer Book, what we have to ask is that such additions may be kept within these scriptural and primitive limits, and may not introduce petitions which imply suppositions respecting the condition of the soul in the intermediate state, of which Scripture tells us nothing. Even the Archbishop’s language might give some encouragement to such suppositions, when he speaks of praying “for him ... who still lives and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength, in truer purity and in deepened reverence and love.” Whoever believes that does so without warrant of Scripture, and prayer based on such a belief has no authority in revelation. The hope of the Christian is not that his soul will be gradually purified after death, but that, in the words of the commendatory prayer in the Service of the Visitation of the Sick, it may, in death itself, be washed in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, and presented, when it leaves the body, “pure and without spot” unto God. Prayers, in short, which have any tinge of a purgatorial view are unauthorized by Scripture, and inconsistent with a most blessed element of Evangelical hope and faith. Short of this, I could wish, for my own part, that we might imitate the purer forms of prayer in the early Church by more specific mention of the departed, as in what seems to me the beautiful expressions of the earlier Burial Service. “We commend into Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed, and his body we commit to the earth, beseeching Thine infinite goodness to give us grace to live in Thy fear and love, and to die in Thy favour; that when the judgment shall come, which Thou hast committed to Thy wellbeloved Son, both this our brother and we may be found acceptable in Thy sight.” After all, in presence of the mysteries of death, and of the condition of those we have lost, what prayer can be more comforting than one which simply commends to our Father’s gracious hands, through our Saviour’s merits and grace, the beloved soul after which we yearn? That is a Prayer for the Dead which may be offered without scruple and without cessation, and in which we may find, day by day, and in every moment of sorrow and distress, our refuge and our consolation.
Christ and the Soldier.
ADDRESS AT THE CHURCH PARADE, IN THE NAVE OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEPT. 27, 1914.
“Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me.”—St. John xiv. 1.
My brethren, when your Commanding Officer did me the honour to ask me to address you, I thought I would try to bring before you, in the simplest and briefest form, the special message which is brought by the Gospel of Christ to men in such a position as that in which you now stand—a position of great anxiety and solemn responsibility. You will meet that responsibility, of course, in the manly and cheerful spirit which has marked soldiers of great races at all times, from the Jews, Greeks, and Romans to our own days. But the Gospel of Christ has the characteristic privilege of bringing good news to human nature in all circumstances. It sheds a new and blessed light on life and all its duties, on death and all its fears, and I would fain impress on you, in one sentence of our Saviour, what is the supreme blessing and guidance which it affords, especially to soldiers.
That blessing is contained in the few words of my text: Ye believe in God; believe also in Me. They are the first words of our Saviour’s address to His disciples, at the moment when they were in great trouble and anxiety, on account of His having told them that He was about to be violently taken from them. It was no ordinary trouble that they were about to encounter, but one of the greatest and bitterest that ever befell human beings. Yet He begins, at once, by bidding them not be troubled. Let not your hearts be troubled, He said. But how were they to avoid it? He gives them a short and sufficient reason: Ye believe in God; believe also in Me. Remember who they were. They were Jews, full of the faith of the old Covenant; familiar with the psalms which we sing every day, believing in God as Abraham did, as David did, as Isaiah did, and as He Himself had taught them to believe. That was and is, a grand faith to live in. But our Lord brought an addition to it, which made it, and makes it, infinitely better. Ye believe in God, He said; believe also in Me. He uses the same word of belief in Himself which He had used of belief in God. “You put your trust in God,” He seems to say; “You give yourselves up to Him, to obey His will for life and for death. Do the same for Me. Give yourselves up also to Me, to obey Me, to trust Me and to love Me.” The privilege of doing that is the reason He gives them for not letting their heart be troubled. If they would obey and trust Him with the same faith which they gave to God, they would have still surer ground for comfort and strength than if they only believed in the God of their fathers.
This was a great claim for our Lord Jesus Christ to make. But He went on to shed His blood on the Cross in attestation of it; and, according to His promise, He rose again after being put to death, to assure us that He was the living Son of God He claimed to be; and that is our sufficient reason for believing it. For that reason we take His word for it, and trust everything He said. But why does this assurance bring that special comfort to His disciples, and to ourselves, which He promises? There are many reasons; but on this occasion I will mention only the one which He Himself proceeds to state. He goes on to declare at once what is perhaps the greatest of all the comforts which He brings. He tells us what is our eternal Home, whither He was Himself going, and where we are meant to go. He says at once: In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also. Every one of us must ask himself, sooner or later, where he is going; what is his eternal Home? More especially must we ask ourselves this question when we are brought face to face, in any way, with the great issues of life and death. When nations are marching in their millions to conflicts which must mean an early death to many of them, we must crave for an answer, more than ever, to the question, What is beyond death? What is the life into which we shall pass from this world?