" REQUIESCAT IN PACE."
[To TIM EDITOR OF THE " SFICITATOR.1 Sin,—" J. E. K." seems to me to have failed completely in his attempt to refute the reasoning of your thoughtful article on prayers for the departed. I agree with you, that what it is legitimate to hope for, it is legitimate, on grounds alike of Scripture and reason, to pray for. "Prayer, in the sense of petition," "3. E. K." thinks, "looks exclusively to the future for its answer, whereas hope will apply also to the present." Surely hope looks always to the future ; and when your cor- respondent says, "I hope that you are well," he means, "I hope to hear that you are well." Hope is always expectant ; its very essence is the desire of an enjoyment as yet future. When "I hope that you are well," I am wishing for a cer- tainty which is not now present to me. The rest of E. K.'s " illustrations seem to me as .foreed as they are irrelevant. To quote De mortuis nil nisi bonum as an equiva- Aent to Requiescat in, pace is surely presuming a little too much on the credulity of your readers. Does your cor- respondent seriously believe that any one who has ever placed that pious wish or prayer over the tomb of a departed relative or friend intended only to bid living detractors to "let the departed rest in peace "?
"3. E. IC." seems to think that prayer for the departed is inconsistent with "the teaching of the Gospel." The Jews do not so understand the Old Testament, for they have prayers for the departed in the ritual; and I know nothing in the New Testament which bears out your correspondent's view. The earliest liturgies have prayers for the departed ; and I believe the best commentators, ancient and modern, think that Onesiphorus was dead when St. Paul prayed for him (2 Tim., 18). Oneeiphorus is mentioned in the past tense ; and in that passage, as well as in 2 Tim. iv., 19, "the household of Onesiphorus " is greeted, not himself. Such a prayer for a departed friend would come naturally from a Christianised Jew. Indeed, prayers for the departed seem to me to be a natural instinct of the human heart. Who that has lost any one greatly loved can help following the departed into the unseen realm with longing prayers, inarticulate or expressed, for his welfare P See how naturally Tennyson ends his great "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" with the prayer, 'God accept him, Christ receive him." The truth is, that the popular objection to prayers for the departed is based on a total misconception of the spiritual world and its inhabitants. The common view is that death arrests a man's moral progress and fixes his character unalter- ably. But that is a view opposed both to reason and Scripture ;• to reason, because progress is a universal law of human life everywhere,—progress upward or downward; to Scripture, which teaches in a variety of passages that heaven is not one place, but many. "In my Father's home," says our Lords "are many abiding-places ; if it were not so, I would have told you,"—words which imply that this was a conclusion so natural, so consonant with reason and common-sense, that Ho would have made a special revelation of the fact if it were otherwise. In the prayer which Christ taught his disciples, the expression is the heavens," not "heaven," as in our Eng- lish version. St. Paul also speaks of having been caught up into the third heaven, In fact, heaven is mentioned as plural almost throughout the Old and New Testaments. And, of course, that must be the conclusion of any thinking person. Human beings pass out of this life in every stage of ethical development, and death makes no breach in the continuity of their characters. As they leave the earth, such is their moral condition when they open their eyes in the spiritual world. What a vista that fact opens out as to the necessary grada- tions of abodes suited to the infinite varieties of characters, from the invincibly ignorant sinner in faith or morals, who, has had no chance here, to the perfected saint who, on leaving the body, may be fit for the Beatific Vision ! He who arrives there fit only for "the lowest room" may one day reach the highest, while he who has passed at once into the highest to which man can attain on leaving this world will still mount higher and higher in the realm of being, as the faculties expand by toil-less activity ; always getting nearer, though never getting near, the uncreated Creator.
That is the scriptural view of heaven, and it follows that it intercessory prayer is a legitimate and effective instrument in the spiritual progress of man in this life, it must be so also in the next. To condemn the practice of prayer for the departed is to undermine the doctrine of prayer for the living. They stand or fall together, except on the untenable view, at once unscriptural and irrational, that at the moment of death every human being passes at once into one of two places, with a character unchangeably fixed for ever.
Nor is this a view confined to one party in the Church of England. I trust that it would not be rejected by Evan- gelicals. It is, I believe, held by the Broad Church party as well as by the High. Of that I had once a special proof, which may interest some of your readers. Some years ago, the late Archbishop Tait received a communication from the Holy Synod of the Greek Church in Athens, saying that the Synod had instructed the clergy throughout Greece to per- form the usual rites of funeral, including the prayers for the departed, for any member of the English Church who might die in Greece without an opportunity of being buried by an English clergyman. The Archbishop instructed his chaplain to acknowledge the Synod's letter with thanks, but to add that "prayers for the dead were not allowed in the Church of England." I was at the time, as I am still, a member of a clerical debating society in London, of which the late Dean. Stanley was, and his successor is, a member. We meet once a month and discuss a paper read by one of the members. On the appearance of Archbishop Tait's reply to the Greek Synod, Dean Stanley wrote to ask me if I would read the next paper, and suggested prayers for the departed for a sub- ject. I read a paper accordingly in defence of the doctrine, and my impression is that none of the members, most of whom were Broad Churchmen, made any objection to the doctrine. Dean Stanley himself was good enough to approve of my paper, and got it published in the .Contemporary Review, then edited by the present editor of the Nineteenth. Century. I have reason to believe that Archbishop Tait regretted afterwards, as Dean Stanley did at the time, his hasty condemnation of so ancient and reasonable a' practice,. and one in perfect harmony with the spirit of the Church of England, pace Chancellor Espin's recent decision.—I am,
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