A BROAD-CHURCH VIEW OF PURGATORY.

THE Rev: Orby Shipley, the editor of the High-Church . essays -called the Church and the World, which caused so much discussion abOut a-year ago, has just commenced a new

series of Traiti fa. the Times,* of which this second is on " Pur- .

Published by Longman&

gatory." Mr Shipley is a man of very deep convictions, and no one who reads anything he has written can doubt for a moment that he does believe.the High-Church views which he and his colleagues so ably expound and enforce to be the true spiritual, moral, and intellectual remedy for the evils of our existing civili- zation. For our own parts, we should have supposed that the tracts in question were,—we do not say more obviously intended, but more obviously suitable, for almost any century between the third and the nineteenth, than for the nineteenth itself. And we are glad, therefore, to seize the opportunity of a tract on a doc- trine which is not only not repugnant to, but in its general drift, and so far as it goes, in perfect keeping with the special tendencies of the time, to ex-plain where it is that in our judgment the principle of thought Which animates these earnest men fails to effect any sort Of coiiraet-.with the age to which they preach. If there is ‘..,....4any one poittrof doctrine on which the High Church and the Roman CathOlic-Clihreh from which it derives, ha's an advantage over common Protestantism, it is in the doctrine of the gradual purginj'. of even the highest human _characters from the sins and frailties with which they are still-burdened when they leave the body. Mr. Grove cannot assert the principle of continuity more positively for physical causation, than the best modern thought would be disposed also to assert it for moral causation. It is contrary to all reason and experience to - believe that the mere fact of death could extinguish the moral force of either good or evil habits of the will, and consequently, of course, that without further mental or moral life, the character in which these habits have been formed can be made fit either for perfect joy or perfect suffering by a mere spiritual coup (fele. This is not, according to the surest clues of modern insight, in the style of God's providence at all. Nor is it, we argue, with the author of this tract, in the least in the style of thought of any one of the great preachers of the Gospel of Christ. "St. Paul," says the writer, "was certainly not one who thought that a sudden break would be occasioned in the soul's progressive state, and so progressive happiness, by Death. He speaks (Phil. i. 6) of Him who hath begun a good work in you, carrying it on to its completion, up to the Day of Christ.'" And certainly it is not the nineteenth century which ought to preach moral discontinuity,. when the first held so clearly to the doctrine of moral continuity. So far, then, as the doctrine of a purgatorial purification after death, is High Anglican, High Anglican doctrine has, we take it, a special right to's place in Tracts for the Times.

Nor, agaiii,ris there' anything which is out of date in preaching that it is right to pray for those who are no longer withì us. • This would follow, indeed, necessarily from the previous assumption of a real moral continuity between the-state previous and subsequent to death. Whatever desires it is natural and right to expresS.tci God for the living, it cannot be wrong, as it is clearly not unnatural; to express to Him for the dead, in the absence both of proof and of presumption that they are beyond the reach of that Store- of divine help which is reserved specially to give a new meaning and force to the intercourse between' God and man, in answer to prayer. Summing, as all who believe in the revelation of Christ do suppose, that the preliminary metaphysical and scientific diffi- culties about the effect of prayer are superable, it is obvious that if we believe those who are dead to be still in need of divine help, it is as natural to pray for it for them as it was while they were still with us. The natural complement therefore of the doctrine of absolute moral and spiritual continuity in the condition of those who die, is absolute moral and spiritual continuity in the state of the minds of survivors. Those who pray therefore for the living will not cease to pray for the dead.

So far the purgatorial doctrine of the writers of Tracts for the Times seems to us to be really suited to the generation to which it is addressed. But very few who wade through this obscure and confused tract will discover even thus much of its suitability for an age which has conquered new ground,—both physical and moral,—in the direction of the law of continuity. The tract is made up of technical quotations from the fathers, early and late, and from other ecclesiastical writers on this subject, with one or two highly.gnestionable expositions of Scripture, and some very -perplexed and Perplexing discoveries as to the amount of common agreement and of difference in the authorities whose opinion is supposed to constitute the rule of Faith. We venture to say that very few laymen indeed who read it through will carry away any clear impression from it, except, perhaps, thus much,— that there has been a great deal of confused and a great deal of divergent and inconsistent thought on the subject, and that there is no particular reason assigned by the writer why any one should believe what our author lays 'down as the residual truth, than why he should believe what our author rejects as the individual eccentricity of particular thinkers. These are the four statements which this High-Church author supposes to be matter of faith

respecting Purgatory :-- -

"What is of Faith is really very little ; and there is a substratum of unity even in the most dissimilar statements, which should induce us to

be charitable towards what we may consider erroneous. What seems to he agreed upon is :-1st. That no Soul can attain to its full perfection alone; that, until the Judgment Day, the perfection of the Saints is

incomplete ; and that, when perfection is attributed to them, it is to their Spirits that this expression is to be confined. 2nd. That so, also, the pains of the Damned, however dreadful now, will be infinitely

greater when the Body is joined to the Soul in its sufferings. 3rd. That those who are neither with the Saints nor with the Damned suffer great anguish ; so far sensible that their consciences terribly afflict them, and so far negative in that the light of God's Countenance does not shine upon them. 4th. That, meantime, the Souls of those persons are benefited by the Prayers and Offerings of the Church, and by Alms

given in their behalf ; that those who have not died beyond the pale of SalVation receive mitigation in their sufferings and ultimate release; and that, .possfbli, those who are lost gain a mitigation of their suffer- ings, which mitigation may last through Eternity."

If this is the "very little" that "seems to be agreed upon," and

of which is "matter of faith," we fear it would be as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as for the nineteenth °eddy to accept these matters of faith. For the writer seems to us to give us no reason why we should believe this "very Nttle," and a great many reasons, in the evidently profound oonfusion and divergence of thoughts upon the subject throughout the history of the Church, why we should not believe it on the only ground that appears to be offered to us, —that is, upon authority. As regards Scripture, what are the authorities on which the author relies? An exceedingly obscure piece of symbolism in the Apocalypse, —the saying in the first epistle of Fetes that "Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison,"— the saying of our Lord, which most likely had nothing to do with the future state at all, about the casting into prison of him who could not agree with his adversary quickly, concluding with the remark, "Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou haat paid the uttermost farthing,"—the saying at the end of the parable of the unforgiving servant as to his being delivered "to the tormentors till be should pay all that was due Ingo bin,"—the parable of Dives and Lazarus,—the saying of St. Feu/ about every man's work being tried by fire,—and perhaps one or two other passages supposed to contain a reference to what is called "the intermediate state." On such obscure passages as these, and the comments of the Fathers upon them, the High- Church divines build the four technical statements we have quoted, and still more definite statements, such as the following :—

"No longer, as of yore, does the Devil rule in Hades. (Rob. ii. 14-15.) Sur Lord now has those keys [of Hades]. (Rev. i. 18.) Hence, we cannot but believe that mercy is paramount there, as hero. All the pretended visions which were brought in to support the modern views of Purgatory seem to put out of sight this cardinal truth, as clearly rove:tied as any truth ever has been. And though mercy is not incon- sistent with severity, yet all those fictions which represent Purgatory as only inferior to the pains of hell in duration lose sight of that which must constitute the main distinction. Our Lord's inflictions must be surative, or, at any rate, must have in view a future mitigation, sup- posing, which is probable, that even lost Christians do not come under the power of the Devil until the last award."

And those definite and minute inferences as to the Devil's func- tions as jailer, and his having had keys which he has lost, are drawn frequently from texts of the obscurity of which the writer can speak with as much candour as the following, about the new Heaven and the new Earth of the Apocalypse :—

" We find a new heaven and a new earth —the sea has passed away, and the new Jerusalem does not ascend into heaven, but comes down from thence. What this symbolic language may really indicate we can none of us know in our present condition. But then, if this be so, neither do we really know more about the present state of souls. To bear some persons speak with such positiveness as we do about the im- possibilities of spiritual existence, does strike upon one's ear as rather presumptuous. We know nothing of it, and must be guided in the matter by the usual language of Christian men."

If "we know nothing about it," why are we to be "guided by the usual language of Christian men?" Would it not be far wiser and honester not to expect guidance at all from the " lan- guage" of people whose thoughts have so little of substantial foundation? It seems to us that the whole High-Church theory relies on an organization extended into the most minute detail of ecclesiastical assumptions of the most doubtful possible origin, ex- pressed in vague and ambiguous language of the meaning of which no one can speak with any certainty,—probably not always even the writers themselves. Is it not probable that there is much in the Apocalypse which the seer could not himself explain to us, and .quite certain that there is much which no two readers have ever interpreted in the same way ? Is it not as certain as any fact can be, that the Apostles expected a return of our Lord to earth to put an end to the existing order of things in their own life-time, or the kb-time of some of them? How, then, can we, with any reason or right, build up elaborate ecclesiastical systems on obscure inci- dental sayings of writers whom we know to be fallible, and some- -times actually mistaken, and to mould half our life by the elaborate ecclesiastical systems reared upon these very cloudy and sinsubetantial foundations? This High-Church purgatorial prin- ciple, for instance, in its germ not only reasonable, but absolutely seating on the central idea of revelation, is built up into an edifice assuming all sorts of strange and questionable facts about the Devil having been the custodian of spirits in purgatory till the death of our ord, and other things equally dreamy and hypo- thetical. And yet to this our spiritual attitudes and prayers of every day are to be fitted, as if they were as true and certain as the existence of God and Christ. It seems to us that tracts truly adapted "for the times" would take a very different line. They would admit the vast difficulty attending the minder ramifications of ecclesiastical doctrine. They would recognize the great discrepancies in Scripture itself even in the accounts of the same facts. They would heartily assent to the impossibility of building up a vast and minute body of infallible doctrine and discipline on the basis of writers so different, and often so little in agreement on small points, as the various witnesses of our Lord's life and crucifixion. On the other hand, they would call attention to the wonderful central light ) shining through all these widely different media,— media different not only in their individual colour, but in their degree of trans- parency and refraction. They would show us the great central light of the incarnation shining through all these media alike, and re- vealing to us the nature of a God whom we can afford to trust im- plicitly through life and through death for ourselves and for others, —whose anger indeed is very terrible, and never fails to be kindled at sin, but whose purpose of love is in all things to teach us to trust Him, and to receive power to become sons of God in His Son. The more we examine Scripture, the lees ground, as it seems to us, do we find for the subtle distinctions of mortal and venial sin, the subtle doctrines of priestly power and absolution, of the nature of the "intermediate state," of the exact change to be expected from the Day of Judgment, and of the other infinitely numerous assumptions on which a sacerdotal organization necessarily takes its stand. Directly we leave the divine personalities, love, and righteousness revealed, we begin to grope in the shadows. And so it was meant that we should, in order that we may trust everything to God, and not seek to bind Him by the letter of the guarantees which we fancy that He has given us. If modern criticism has shown us anything, we may say that it is the uncertainty of the minder shades of Church doctrine, and the human fallibility, not to say error, embodied in most of the institutions adopted as the instruments of Church discipline. We believe profoundly that this growing uncertainty about the detail is consistent with growing certainty about the central truth. But modern science is perversely apt to think otherwise, and nothing, we take it, plays more plainly into its hand than these High-Church asser- tions that such doctrines as these about the Devil keeping the keys of Hades until the death of our Lord, are of the same authority and evidence, as that One who was in the form of God thought it not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, that through Him we might have life. Purgatory is a very reasonable belief,—for this life is purgatory, no less than the next,—but to put these minute ecclesiastical refinements about purgatory on a level with the Christian revelation, is only to make everything dance uncertainly before the eyes, by blending indis- solubly together vague dreams founded on verbal puzzles, and the great common reality revealed to every disciple and apostle of our Lord.