Alas! in this life what direful contamination clings to the steps of irresolute mortals! Who has not wavered in the darksome paths into which the straight road so often deviates?
The infinite justice of the God of purity perhaps retains them in the dungeons of death. Alas! for long and long the Haven of eternal life may be closed against them! Oh, let us pray; our voices will open the abode of celestial peace unto the imprisoned soul. The God of consolation gave us prayer, that love might thus become eternal.— The Lamp, Nov. 5, 1864.
AN ANGLICAN BISHOP PRAYING FOR THE DEAD.
Foremost among later Anglican divines in piety, in learning, and in the finer qualities of head and heart, stands the name of Reginald Heber, Bishop of the Establishment, whose gentle memory,—embalmed in several graceful and musical poems, chiefly on religious subjects,—is still revered and cherished by his co-religionists, respected and admired even by those who see in him only the man and the poet—not the religious teacher. I am happy to lay before my readers the following extract from a letter of Bishop Heber, in which that amiable and accomplished prelate expresses his belief in the efficacy of prayers for the departed:
"Few persons, I believe, have lost a beloved object, more particularly by sudden death, without feeling an earnest desire to recommend them in their prayers to God's mercy, and a sort of instinctive impression that such devotions might still be serviceable to them.
* * * * *
"Having been led attentively to consider the question, my own opinion is, on the whole, favorable to the practice, which is, indeed, so natural and so comfortable, that this alone is a presumption that it is neither unpleasing to the Almighty nor unavailing with Him.
"The Jews, so far back as their opinions and practices can be traced since the time of Our Saviour, have uniformly recommended their deceased friends to mercy; and from a passage in the Second Book of Maccabees, it appears that, from whatever source they derived it, they had the same custom before His time. But if this were the case, the practice can hardly be unlawful, or either Christ or His Apostles would, one should think, have, in some of their writings or discourses, condemned it. On the same side it may be observed that the Greek Church, and all the Eastern Churches, pray for the dead; and that we know the practice to have been universal, or nearly so, among the Christians a little more than one hundred and fifty years after Our Saviour. It is spoken of as the usual custom by Tertullian and Epiphanius. Augustine, in his Confessions, has given a beautiful prayer which he himself used for his deceased mother, Monica; and among Protestants, Luther and Dr. Johnson are eminent instances of the same conduct. I have, accordingly, been myself in the habit, for some years, of recommending on some occasions, as, after receiving the sacrament, etc., my lost friends by name to God's goodness and compassion, through His Son, as what can do them no harm, and may, and I hope will, be of service to them."