conflict, of spiritual darkness and sorrow, all of which are infinitely inconsistent with the peace and Vision of Paradise, and with His love, who planted and prepared for them that dear garden of rest. Give thanks for them we may in our prayers, as it was the devout custom of the Primitive Church to do; but only such a commemoration can justify itself to any faith, that professes a perfect trust in the constancy and tenderness, infinitely surpassing and exceeding our highest ideals, of Him in whom they now live, and who, for the love of them, died in His most bitter Passion and rose again. To carry with them the burden of inherent sin, only partially removed, would be but a perpetuation of their wretchedness, and that infinitely intensified by the sanctities of Paradise. Rather let us hear St. Bernard, who says of the blessed souls: 'They want somewhat of the (final) glory, not having yet received the body (in the resurrection), yet can they have no possibility of unhappiness.'* Indeed, they have all beatitude in that time of waiting and rest, of perfection and life. The struggle, the warfare, the sorrow, the weariness of their pilgrim-life, the perpetual conflict, and the unhappy failures,—these are for them over for ever. And though at first, as in constant procession our best-loved pass onwards through the dim defile of death, and we must sadly stand aside to let them go, the omission of their names from the prayers which, morning and night, we offered once for them may give, from the renewed sense of loss, an ache to our hearts, yet this is our consolation, that they need no longer these our supplications, our suffrages, our petitions. What were all these but the implied confession of their imperfect condition, with all its spiritual needs and all its unhappy temptations? We need not erase their dear and sacred names from our thanksgivings, and we have full leave * i. 607. 'De Gratiâ et Libero Arbitrio,' cap. iv. Cf. also his beautiful sermon, 'De Festo Omnium Sanctorum,' iii. 1030. continually to commemorate Christ's mercy to them. No silence need fall upon this eucharistic remembrance. Our silence of prayer is only, in truth, an expression of our gladness in their perfected blessedness and their final victory, and how then should it be at all a sadness or a pain? Is it not rather triumph and peace? For the words of the ancient Book of Wisdom, though apocryphal, are very glorious, and infinitely true: 'The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, where no torment can touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded; for God proved them, and found them worthy for Himself.'* They have entered into the rest and life of God. In the infinitely expressive words, so often inscribed on the graveslabs in the Catacombs, 'They live in God.' The light† of the Blessed shines ever upon them, and the eyes of Jesus perpetually illuminate their transfigured life. They are united eternally and immediately to the Heart and love of God, until the 'great festival of the resurrection,' and the *Wisd. iii. 1-5. † In a magnificent and musical poem by Balde upon Death, these are the closing lines : Surge, veni: quid, sponsa, moraris ? Veni, digna cœlestibus aris : Nuber abiit, moestaque crux : The words may be most truly assigned to the Church, the bride of Christ, though written of the Empress Leopoldina. The whole poem is splendidly vivid in its colouring and rhythm. Cf. also the exquisitely touching piece by Henry Vaughan, 'Bereavement,' i., p. 64. Methodius, Bishop of Olympus, in Lycia, martyred 312 at Chalcis ('On the Resurrection,' vii.). high noon of the beatific Vision shall finally and for ever complete and crown the peace of all the blessed who now rest so well and sweetly in God. It is, then, a strange and, we fear, a not all-unwilling slander and libel upon the reformed doctrine to say that— 'If by reason of death, immediately supervening, there is no time allowed after the forgiveness of sins, it follows either that absolute holiness is not a sine quâ non for admission to heaven, which is contrary to Scripture, or else that justification is not only remission of sins, but sanctification also, which is the doctrine of the Roman Church, and in effect of Calvinists also.'t The confusion of the justification of the soul, which is by us confessed as only through the merits of Christ, with sanctification is rather an exclusively Roman error, in which particular the Papal Church has unhappily followed the defective teaching of St. Augustine far more faithfully than she has been content to follow him in the great doctrines of grace. It is an error infinitely-impossible to fasten upon the reformed faith as embodied in the articles of the Church of England, and the confessions of the Reformed Churches. Even where these Divine acts of grace, the one being instantaneous and wholly external, the other internal and progressive, might seem almost coincident, as in the case of the penitent thief, or of those who shall in the Last Advent be changed in a moment (for many must, it would appear, be then not only justified and absolved, but also instantly transformed and renewed both physically and spiritually), the two are yet to be perfectly distinguished. Justification * So Irenæus says that the souls of the blessed 'go away into the unseen world, and there await the resurrection, when they shall receive again their bodies and rise complete, i.e., clothed with the body, as the Lord arose, and so they shall come to the vision of God' (v. 31). This shows that the only imperfectness anciently attributed to the separated state was the lack of bodily and physical form and powers. + Luckock, p. 41. is absolutely perfect in the one Divine act upon the soul. Sanctification admits of many alternations and degrees within the soul. How often those, who are called by what seems a premature death, ripen into maturity of spiritual life in but a short time, while others are slowly moulded by the long discipline and trial of many years.* * Sometimes the greater intensity of the cleansing fires of sorrow and affliction, although kindled but for an hour under the crucible, where the poor heart sobs like the molten gold, purifies almost momentarily. In other souls a longer measure of Divine grace perfects the same work with less urgency and haste. Only the Sovereign Spirit, who is preparing each soul for the beatific Presence, and endowing it with such a measure of sanctity as shall make it meet for Paradise, knows when and how the ordeal is to be done and finished. Even then in the most perfected sanctification we are compelled to allow an immensely hallowing influence to the grace, inseparably annexed, as a perfect alterative, by the Divine Will to death. But in no possible manner do we confound the sanctification wrought by God, the Holy Ghost, within us, which may be our meetness for, but cannot, even when at last perfected, be in any wise our title of right to the blessed Life, with the only meritorious title to a happy entrance there; for this, we maintain, is only and wholly in the Divinelyjustifying merits of Christ, given to and put upon us in justification. Let us recall the golden words in the 'Epistle to Diognetus,' which, though anonymous, is generally confessed one of the most precious relics of the immediately postApostolic times: 'God gave His own Son as a ransom for us; the Holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the Righteous One for the unrighteous, the Incorruptible One for the corruptible, the Immortal One for * This thought is falsely allowed of the souls 'in the fire of Purgatory' by Peter Lombard (iv. Dist., 21), 'some of whom are more slowly, some more quickly purged.' them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified (dikaOvai), than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors! Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the Saviour who is able to save even those things which it was formerly impossible to save, by both these facts He desired to lead us to trust in His kindness, to esteem Him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Healer, our Wisdom, Light, Honour, Glory, Power, and Life.'* Bishop Lightfoot ('Ignatius and Polycarp,' i. 533) admits the claim of this Epistle to be genuinely sub-Apostolic, though ('Clement,' i. 5), as the writer makes no mention of any actual connection between the Apostles and himself, he would disallow the name of 'Apostolic,' unless given in a general sense. Nor may it be without use to subjoin,—in the present craze for the revival, as primitive, of beliefs and usages, which are really either mediæval, or, at best, late-primitive and postNicene, the very wholesome and evangelical words of Clement (of Rome) in his extant Epistle (chap. xxxii.): 'All these, therefore, were highly honoured, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of God's will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.' * Patr. Apost.,' Op., p. 84 (Lipsia). |