Passing Souls

We have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.

The Epistle to the Hebrews

I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom.

JAMES, FIRST DUKE OF ORMONDE

I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy Spirit Be with me then, to comfort and uphold;

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, I merit, Nor street of shining gold.

Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned, And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace —

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place;

Some humble door among Thy many mansions, Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,

And flows for ever through Heaven’s green expansions The river of Thy peace.

WHITTIER

Passing Souls
ET me transcribe a hymn lately
given me: —

‘For the passing Souls we pray;
Saviour, meet them on their way;
Let their trust lay hold on Thee
Ere they touch Eternity.

‘Holy counsels long forgot Breathe again ‘mid shell and shot; Through the mists of life’s last pain None shall look to Thee in vain.

‘To the hearts that know Thee, Lord, Thou wilt speak through flood or sword; Just beyond the cannons’ roar Thou art on that further shore.

‘For the passing Souls we pray;
Saviour, meet them on their way;
Thou wilt hear our yearning call
Who hast loved and died for all.’

Question upon question comes whispering into the bereaved heart. Death looks so strangely like the end of all; is

1 By Lady Coote.

it so? Is there indeed survival, so that the self outsoars that seeming end? If so, is it in consciousness that it goes forth? And what do we know of that other life, its conditions, its scenery, its occupations, its continuity with the past, its difference, its transcendence? Can we hold communion, intercourse of spirit, with the dear outgoers? Can we do anything for them? Can we look forward with assurance to reunion, to recognition?

Again, what shall we think about the spiritual state in which they went out? Were they ready for the great transition, into the unseen and eternal, the region where all things seem as they are indeed, and evil and good are not mingled and confused as here? Were they prepared to meet God?

I have written down a long list of

questions. Not that I may try to answer

them one by one, and say precisely that

this is the solution. Not one of these is

there which does not ’ go off into mystery.’

Very few questions about things invisible

i Cor. admit of answers neatly rounded off. * I

xiii. 12 know in part ‘; * we see through a glass,

darkly.’

But some reverent answers ’ in part ’ are possible, and some humblest guesses and suggestions. Let me attempt a little thus, in this chapter and in the next. To begin at the end, with that tender, awestruck asking, Was he ready? I assume the question to be put, deep in the silent heart, in some case where longing affection hesitates to say that in life the beloved one showed that he loved God.

Let me not minister too easily and lightly to such a soul-penetrating care. Nothing is more evident in the Bible than its insistent, its anxious, appeal to come, and come now, to the open arms of the Lord; Deut. to ’ choose life ‘; to c make your calling x**- x? sure ‘; to ’ fly for refuge to lay hold Q e upon the hope set before us.’ And the Heb. vi. Book is, to say the least of it, profoundly l8 reserved as to saving processes beginning after the parting of soul and body, that complex state of our being with which I think revelation closely connects the laying of the lines of character. But on the other hand some incontestable certainties lie upon the side of humble and hopeful encouragement. It is not we who are to limit ’ the mercy of the Merciful. It is not our function to prescribe to Him the precise methods in which He shall be pleased to bring the passing soul and the sacrifice of Calvary together. Assuredly the hem of the garment of His Son has long fringes. It Micah is certain that the Holy One ’ delights in mercy,’ that He understands every extenuating circumstance, and is glad to remember it, that it is grievous to Him

isa.ivii. that ce soujs should fail before Him.’ It is certain that He will save to the uttermost that may be, and that His resources are past our finding out.

Human experience gives us one far-reaching suggestion as to the possible action of ’ the mercy of the Merciful ’ in the very article of death. The verse is well known: —

* Betwixt the stirrup and the ground Mercy I sought, mercy I found.’

I can add to this an incident, told me by a friend, formerly vicar of the Essex parish where it occurred. A woman of some sixty years died there in his time. She was well known to pastor and people as a loving Christian soul, true in life and death. In youth she had been violently passionate. One day, half demented with anger, she ran from the cottage, and threw herself down the open well — that familiar thing in East

Anglian gardens. Almost dead, she was drawn up, and slowly recovered her senses. Her first words were, ‘If I had died in the well I know I should have been saved; as I was falling down, I remembered all mother taught me, and I believed it with all my heart.’ Forty years, lived c in newness of life,’ were the sequel of those moments.

The inconceivable but proved rapidity of some dreams may help us to understand that, in the mysterious borderlands of conscious life, whole processes of spiritual change are possible, * in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye ‘; almost as if time were another thing as it touches eternity.

To return, for a moment, to thoughts written on a previous page. Let us be sure, across all mysteries, that the Merciful will not have less mercy than His wont when the passing soul, more or less consciously, is giving itself in the agony of battle for the lives and homes of others.

I remember long ago hearing a Christian man, as lofty and as orthodox a believer as I have ever known, reading aloud, with a voice often broken, a rough, powerful American ballad, telling of the death of the apparently godless stoker of a Mississippi steamer, who somehow saved boat and crew from a great explosion at the cost of his own certain death. It ended: —

‘And Christ ain’t a-goin’ to be too hard On a man as died for men.’

Let us never, for one moment, for our selves, in our normal hour, dare, ever so little, to trifle with the mercy of God. But it is another thing to remember that mercy over a beloved life suddenly put out.

With a trembling but holy hope, looking to the Crucified and Risen, we commit the soul, and commit our hearts, to the hands, infinitely kind, of ’ a faithful Creator.’

Upon the grave and tender problem of prayer for the departed, the Bible, so I venture to think, after long reflection, is absolutely reserved. I cannot think therefore that the warrant for such prayer is a fact of revelation. Christians who so pray should have a reverent regard, when there is any occasion for such a feeling, for the misgivings of others, in whom, very probably, the thought of spiritual communion with their vanished ones is just as strong and warm as in themselves, and who continually greet them in the Lord, reaching them in Him through the veil. Only, they do not see the warrant for intercessory prayer for them.

They do think, perhaps, and most justly, that at least the too easy use of such prayer may tend to muffle the divine appeals to man to seek salvation to-day.

Misgivings about prayer for the dead are wholly justified, if the prayer in question means necessarily prayer for deliverance from gloom and pain, rather than a breath of loving aspiration sent after the spirit into its abode of light, asking, as a certainty may be asked for, for the perpetual growth in the emancipated being of the graces and the bliss of the heavenly rest, and its holy progress and education in the knowledge of its Lord. It is undoubted ( that such prayer for the departed is found in the fragmentary remains of very early Christian literature, certainly within half a century of the last apostles. Never there, nor ever in the inscriptions of the Roman catacombs, I think, does it suggest a purgatorial belief. It might almost be said to be, as regards its spirit, as much salutation and aspiration as petition. But in form it is prayer. And I for one cannot condemn such exercises of the soul, where reverent thought invites to it, in the private devotions of a Christian.

Before me lies a prayer composed for such private use. It is beautiful in its restraint and tenderness. * Grant that [his] life may unfold itself in Thy sight, and find a sweet employment in the spacious fields of eternity.... Tell [him], gracious Lord, if it may be, how much I love [him]... and long to see [him] again; and, if there be ways in which [he] may come,... grant me a sense of [his] presence, in such a degree as Thy laws permit..,. Pardon, O gracious Lord and Father, what ever is amiss “in this my prayer, and let Thy will be done; for my will is blind and erring, but Thine is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think; through Jesus Christ out Lord. Amen.’

One prayer on behalf of the sacred

Dead lies, beyond all question, within our

Christian right. It is the prayer that the

absent Lord would hasten His coming,

descending with joy to His waiting Church,

i Thess. bringing with Him * them also which

iv- x* sleep in Jesus.’ Then, and not till then, will

1 Its introduction into public worship is, in view of differing beliefs, another matter, on which I do not speak here.

their being, even as ours, receive its ’ perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul.’ Resurrection will complete the receptacle of the eternal life and joy, and so the whole range of the heavenly happiness will begin to be realized. For this, in their dear interest, we pray.

Amen, even so; for their final glory, as for ours, COME, LORD JESUS!