"REQUIESCANT IN PACE," I s reguiescant in pace a prayer or
not If it is not a prayer but only a wish, is it the better for being only a wish and not so much as a prayer ? And is the Church of England to be taught that we may wish that it may be God's will,—though we may not pray that it may be God's will,—to save souls of whose fate we are in doubt? It would appear from the letter of the Rector of Odd Rode, Cheshire, in Mon- day's Times, that the result of the controversy as to asking prayers for the dead which was raised in relation to the inscription on the tomb of Mr. George Hamilton Crump's widow and of his elder son, is that the Court has accepted reguiescant in pace in lieu of the suggested request for prayers on behalf of their souls. We suppose this means that reguies- cant tn pace is something short of a prayer, and is all the bolter for being short of a prayer. It seems to use. very odd sort of theology to maintain that we may legitimately hope for what we may not legitimately pray for. What is prayer, except the ex- pression of a fervent desire subject to the better and purer will of the Almighty ? We pray for rain with submission to God's will if our prayer is not in conformity with it. Why may we not pray for the salvation of human souls under the same conditions P We suppose the view to be that we do not know for certain that God's will in respect to rain may not be in part determined by the character of the prayers we put up ; but that God's will in relation to the salvation of souls is finally determined by the state of those souls at death, and can never afterwards be affected by any human petition. But we should like to know the justification for that assumption. There is none, so far as we know, in any passage of Scripture, nor are we ever warned that we may legitimately hope for that for which we may not pray. It seems to us that the whole assumption that there is a gross superstition in praying for the dead, is rooted in a confusion between the notion that the soul can be bought out of purify- ing suffering by a multitude of purchased masses, and the notion that, with due submission to God, we may pour out our hearts to him in the confidence that by so doing we shall gain something for those whom he has given us the grace to love, as well as relieve and soften our own hearts by frank and passionate prayer. The difference between the two doctrines seems to be this, that in the one case we flatter our- selves that by the mere repetition of a great rite we can alter the will of God, and that in the other we only assume that what God himself inspires us to press upon him with all the urgency of ardent love, it can hardly be perfectly useless • for us to express to him, even as regards the fate of those on whose behalf we pray.
It seems to us that the cut-and-dried theological objection to prayers for the dead strikes at the very root of all prayer. If prayer is not to be the full and free and unreserved pouring- out of the heart to God, it is little or nothing. And it cannot • be the full and free and unreserved pouring-out of the heart to God, if it is to be for ever choked by the supposition that in such matters as these, God acts without any kind of reference to the affections of his creatures. In order that we may not have our hearts choked by that oppressive and suffocating conviction, the whole scope of Revelation has been one long lesson against it. From its very opening we are taught that God does take account of the prayers and acts of his creatures, even when it seems least likely that he will do so ; that Abraham's prayer for Sodom would have been effectual, even if there had been only ten righteous men in it ; that Elijah's prayer brought rain to Israel; that Elisha's prayer brought back the life of the Shuna- mite woman's child ; that the repentance of Nineveh averted its doom; that the Son of God himself prayed for his enemies on the Cross, in the full assurance that his prayer would be heard and answered ; that the first martyr uttered a similar prayer in a similar confidence ;—that God, in short, has given us his assurance in every form in which he could give it, that his will does take account of all prayer that comes from the heart, and, in some fashion which we cannot fathom, shapes the laws of his universe so that they are substantially modified in their course and effects by the prayers which rise from men's feeble lips, even though the actual effects be not precisely those which we specify, but rather those which it would have been expedient for us to specify, ha41 our foresight been greater and our fortitude higher. If this be not the Christian conception of prayer, we know not what is. And it seems to us childish and faithless to exclude on the slenderest grounds one large province from the domain of prayer,—and that, too, one which is the most natural and essential to free communion between man and God. If prayers for the dead are to be excluded by any dogma as to what is and what is not the date at which God's will is finally made up as to man's salvation, how little there is for which we could pray with any confidence. We do not know what is foreordained. Malay who believe earnestly in prayer, yet hold that every- thing is foreordained, including our prayers themselves which are part and parcel of that foreordaining. That isnot, to our minds, a true and natural interpretation of the freedom of the human will, but it is a far truer and better interpretation of the divine will than any which forbids and excludes some of the most natural and irresistible of the attitudes of human emotion in communion with God. Those who forbid prayer for the dead seem to forget that some of the most singular and characteristic doctrines of Christ seem expressly intended to teach us that a perfected and purified human character is intended to form an essential part even in the government of God. The Saints are not merely to be the doers of God's will, they are in some sense to be his colleagues and partners in the rule of his universe, after they have been lifted into the divine sphere. Surely this would never have been revealed to us in our present infirm and helpless state,—to which a lesson of this kind seems quite inappropriate,—if it had not been intended to strengthen that freedom and confidence in our communion with God, which is the natural beginning and germ of such a privilege as that of future co-operation in his divine govern- ment. There is nothing that Christianity seems to labour so carefully, as its endeavour to extinguish that false humilia- tion which is really fatal to true humility, and which, by extirpating all sense of worthiness in man, ektirpates also the sense of his unworthiness too. Indeed, the most char- acteristic difference between Christianity and almost all powerful forms of Oriental religion is this,—that while Mahommedanism and Buddhism, for instance, do all in their power to lower to the last point the self-respect of man and to make him feel his perfect nothingness, Juda- ism and the Christianity which sprang from Judaism did all they could to make him feel of what infinite importance be is in the sight of God, to strengthen his will and elevate his affections, and altogether to invigorate his character by the conviction that he is gradually to be raised to some sort of humble co-operation with God in the active control of the universe as well as the government of the mind. No doubt all this is to be a result of the operation of God's grace, but still it is to be the result of that operation, and for that purpose man has been taught by every way in which he could be so taught that men's affections and hopes and even wishes, so far as they are innocent, are in no way indifferent to God, but are to be taken into the fullest account in the divine government of the world.
It seems to us, then, that there is no earnest wish which men can properly form which should not be, and ought not to be, the subject of prayer,—not of course but that many of our earnest wishes, perhaps the majority of them, are unwise, but that they are much less likely to be unwise if we get into the habit of confiding them steadily and frankly to God, than if we get into the habit of dealing with them as if they were altogether unworthy of being communicated to him. Hartley Coleridge has put this better far than the theologians do, in one of his simple and beautiful sonnets :— " Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou catuit with hope, but over pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay ; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Fax is the time, remote from human sight, 'When war and discord on the earth shall cease, Yet every prayer for universal peace
Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see ; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be ; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to take that wish away."
That seems to us to contain the whole gist of the controversy. Is it right to wish "requieseant in pace" ? If so, it is right to pray for the repose of those who are no longer in this world. Is it wrong to pray for their repose ? Then we should "pray to God to take that wish away," But where is the dogmatist, however sternly evangelical, who could pray to God to ex- tinguish in his heart the wish that " requiescant in pace" breathes ?
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