that the blessed souls are not to be conceived of in the separate state as like to the dead, who lie together in the churchyard in the unconsciousness of a dreamless, unwaking sleep. This is our consolation rather, that they are enjoying an inter-communion of beatific love, else it had been no gain, but loss rather, to the saints to die,-the loss of all that is pleasant and good and beautiful here in the interweaving of hearts.

There must be also there an unbroken continuity of interest and of remembrance, for the holy Dead retain in some mysterious manner their sympathies with their former earth-life. They may still experience some relation to the lapse and flow of time, which seems to pass slowly and wearily in the delay of the Doom and of the Advent of the Judge. For the vision of the martyred souls under the altar, who cry continually,-'How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost not Thou judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?'-must be 'a figure of the true,' though strictly a figure. We will not even deny that the souls of just men made perfect' are capable of an intellectual and even of a spiritual advancement by near and immediate communion with their Lord; that, with the quickened senses and capacities of eternity, and with its great pulses of love and desire in place of the weak and sluggish currents of longing, that ran so slowly in the veins of their highest spiritual life in time, they turn towards the everlasting vision of Christ, as the flowers do to the light, drinking in everlastingly the perpetual sunshine of His smile, and springing up towards the bright gladness of His embrace. But any moral or spiritual purification cannot be imagined without supposing both a remaining spiritual imperfection, and, in consequence, a morally-infected air in Paradise, utterly inconsistent with the presence of Christ, or an immediate communion with Him. That Face must be

shadowed with pain, those Eyes filled with tears and sadnesses, yes, even with the burning light of displeasure,-if sin and corruption are in the souls of the blessed Dead who are at His feet in Paradise. Oh, dreadful change! to transform that desirable and dear Vision, for which we pant and long, into a thought of dread, a fountain not of sweet tears, but shame. Can the abode of 'the spirits of the just ' be thus deposed to a lower atmosphere and degree of sanctity than even the Paradise of man's first natural perfection and innocence once possessed?

We must, surely, then disallow all such views as the following, which would convert Paradise, by any logical consistency, into a Purgatory, for they plainly convey an idea of discipline :

'We know little of the process of their present unseen, disembodied life. But we are sure that growth and progress imply the annihilation of old evil, and the development of new good ;'*-for this 'annihilation' is, by the terms of the expression, too evidently a process of gradual annihilation. Nor can we tolerate such comments as these upon the very mysterious and wholly symbolical vision in the Apocalypse: 'Whatever may be the exact meaning of the "white robe," it clearly indicates the covering over of natural imperfection, and the inward peace and comfort which would thence ensue ;'† so that the martyred Dead have, by this interpretation of the vision, actually taken into the presence of Christ, and into Paradise, their impatient tempers and 'natural imperfections'! The words of the Venerable Bede are to be infinitely preferred as excluding all idea of an imperfectness, which would be, in fact, little else than a mood of vengeful *Swaine, p. 69.

+ Quoted by Bishop Wordsworth (in loc.), who also remarks upon the true reading in verse II-the singular, a white robe was given to them' (A CNB rel.; cf. digest of readings in Alford), not the plural, as Elz. with 39 only and the Vulgate, 'white robes'-that 'thus the one and same white robe of Christ's righteousness is indicated.'

impatience in the hearts of the Blessed Dead. Alas! Paradise must then be only a little removed from the inconveniences of this imperfect life! The souls (says Bede) which offered themselves a living sacrifice to God pray eternally for His coming to judgment, not from any vindictive feeling against their enemies, but in a spirit of zeal and love for God's glory and justice, and for the coming of that day when sin shall be destroyed and their bodies raised. And so in that prayer, wherein Christ teaches us to forgive our enemies, we are also taught to say, "Thy kingdom come.” **

Indeed, the whole vision is purely ideal and symbolic. Even Tertullian allows, although he denied this entrance to all other saints departed, that the souls of all the blessed martyrs are in Paradise.† Without adopting the fanciful views of Hengstenberg, that this vision is an unreal idealising of the natural life of the martyred Dead, to which a kind of personal being is therefore attributed, it is safest to conclude with Dean Alford :-'The representation here, in which the souls are seen under the altar, is simply symbolical, carrying out the likening of the martyrs to victims slain on an altar. . . . It need hardly be said that no inference can be drawn from this vision respecting the intermediate state.'†

Most surely, as 'under the throne of glory' was no unusual phrase among the pious Jews to designate the intermediate state of the Blessed Dead in the peace of God, and as it appears to present a strict parallel to this in the Apocalypse, we cannot suppose a mood of impatience or of discontentment with the mysterious delays of God's punitive justice to consist with so immediate an abode of the martyrs and confessors in this, the very presence of God, for they have seemingly a nearer station to the Divine Vision than is * Cf. Words., 'Greek Test.,' iv. 618 (on Rev. vi. 9).

+ 'De Animâ,' cap. 55.

Cf. Bishop H. Browne, 'On the Articles,' p. 80, who adds, 'The Jews conceived the altar to be the throne of the Divine Majesty.'

the privilege of the unmartyred dead. Well and beautifully has St. Bernard* interpreted the altar of 'the overshadowing of the souls of the Blessed Dead by the human Nature of the Lord,' who was for them both Priest, Victim, and Altar in the great Passion, and in whom they rest well in Paradise until they shall enjoy the full beatific Vision of the Godhead. This is that one and only High Altar, which (says Irenæus, 'Adv. Hær.', ii. 18) 'is in heaven, for thither are our prayers and oblations continually directed.'

Were we, then, unadvised when we said that at death such a supernatural change and transfigurement must pass over the souls, called to rest in God, as to entirely fit them for their entrance into the palace-gardens of the King of love? We know that this total renovation must take place in those who 'are alive and remain' to the very moment of the Advent, for to them there can be no intermediate state. They, at least, must, by some partly physical and partly spiritual transfigurement, be rendered at once capable of the full and final glories of heaven. Surely, then, we may believe that that which must be done then momentarily, and yet in the highest degree, may be done now by the occult ministry of the grace of the

* In his sermon (iv.) ' In Solemnitate Omnium Sanctorum' (iii. 1036), saying: "Interim ergo sub Christi humanitate feliciter sancti quiescunt.' We may protest against the mischievous term used in so much of the religious poetry of the day, the Altar of the Cross.' 'The Eternal Deity of Christ is 'the altar of the propitiation, and the ark of the Sacrifice,' says St. Prosper, whose other words are theologically true and beautiful: 'Thither must we hasten to the inner sanctuary of God, where there is the spiritual sacrifice of perpetual praise, where there is the Eternal Priest and the everlasting Altar' (Prosp. Op., i. 435, ‘On Ps. cxviii.,' Vulg.). It can never be too often insisted that the Altar 'which sanctified the gift' was the Godhead of the Victim, who offered Himself in the infinitely meritorious sacrifice of Calvary, whereas the cross was, like the faggots on which the sacrifices were raised, the exposure to the curse. The adoration of the cross in the sentimental poetry of the day is really heresy.

Holy Ghost in every religious death. How, otherwise, could the holy Dead endure the sanctities of Paradise? For these they must, by a marvellous interior change, be made ready, even as it is a grove and sanctuary of pure and holy delight, a retreat of inviolable sanctity, prepared and made ready by the King for their quiet and holy resting. With their poor mortal vesture we are assured the blessed souls (pura anima,' Prudentius would call them) have put off all the stained raiment of this sinful and imperfect condition. Theirs is the benediction of the Blessed Spirit, who said so long ago to John,-standing, a confessor and in exile for Christ, in his great ecstasy by the sad surges of the sea breaking in one everlasting monotone upon the shores of his lonely island-home, and with the voices of human sorrow and the great anthem of death mingling in his soul with that sympathetic sound of waters ;-' Blessed are those that die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ;'-words which declare, so again says our old English commentator, the Venerable Bede, the immediate blessedness of the saints, not only from the 'henceforth' of the Apostolic vision, but rather from the 'henceforth' or the moment of each individual death ; words of a Divine peace, which tell how the blessing of the Holy Ghost descends upon all, who die in Christ, in the gift of a perpetual rest and refreshment. They have reached in that one instant the land of peace, where they are already clothed in the soft white garments of the perfect Life.

Into that happy community, where the holy souls are so united in a perfect charity that 'none loves any other less than he loves himself,'* and where all love is ever in God, there can be no soil nor imperfectness taken. When in our sorrows we would lay our heads upon the gentlest hearts here, there is always an unrest that cannot be entirely put to * St. Anselm, in his last (the 21st) Meditation.