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'TO ALL ANGELS AND SAINTS.

377

light; glorified in the second Elias of the world sent before Him to prepare His way; glorified in every of those Apostles whom it pleased Him to use as founders of His Kingdom here; glorified in the angels as in Michael; glorified in all those happy souls that are already possessed of heaven.**

We offer a poetical illustration of that limitation of the respect to be paid to saints which we have just seen enunciated by St. Augustine. It is from the pen of George Herbert; and is remarkable for its touching expression of that religious instinct of adoration of the Virgin which, we venture to say, is incidental to the Christian in his cognate character of a gentleman, and which is to be checked and regulated only by the master voice of the religious reason. Herbert's poem is addressed 'To All Angels and Saints.'

Oh! glorious spirits, who after all your bands
See the smooth face of God, without a frown,
Or strict commands;

Where every one is king, and hath his crown,
If not upon his head, yet in his hands:

Not out of envy or maliciousness
Do I forbear to crave your special aid.
I would address

My vows to thee most gladly, blessed Maid,

And Mother of my God, in my distress:

Thou art the holy mine, whence came the gold,
The great restorative for all decay

In young and old;

Thou art the cabinet where the jewel lay:
Chiefly to Thee would I my soul unfold.

But now, alas! I dare not; for our King,
Whom we do all jointly adore and praise,
Bids no such thing:

And where His pleasure no injunction lays,
('Tis your own case) ye never move a wing.

All worship is prerogative, and a flower
Of His rich crown from whom lies no appeal
At the last hour:

Therefore we dare not from His garland steal,
To make a posy for inferior power.

Although then others court you, if ye know
What's done on earth, we shall not fare the worse.
Who do not so ;

Since we are ever ready to disburse,

If any one our Master's hand can show.

* Ecclesiastical Polity: book v., ch. lxx, 8.

Up to this point we have dealt almost exclusively with the word Saints as it is applied to persons whose claims to canonization whether well or ill-founded otherwise, have received at the hands of the Church-from people, bishop, or pontiff—a formal ratification. But the significance of the word may very properly and profitably be widened. The commemoration of All Saints, as celebrated by the Reformed Churches, is a commemoration of all those who by the favour of God have passed from a condition of earthly trial into a state of heavenly assurance and beatitude. The personnel of our roll of saints, if we could have authentic knowledge of the names that illustrate it, would thus scarcely be found to coincide with the calendar of the Romish Church. It must differ from the latter either by excess or defect; indeed, by both-by excess, for obvious reasons; by defect, so long as it cannot be shown that canonization is an absolute voucher for salvation. Charitably hoping all things, we shrink from the arrogance of dictating to our Maker; and awfully and reverently leave the occurrence or the non-occurrence of names in the Book of Life' to be determined by His love and justice.

But in order adequately to commemorate the bliss of the ransomed in heaven, it is necessary to look to their antecedents of character and circumstances in this world; and of these we may form a generally correct idea from observing the character and circumstances of their successors and representatives yet living on the earth. The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant— those grand and palpable divisions of sainthood which must obtain till all warfare, even that with death, is swallowed up in victory—if taken separately, are only partly intelligible; each is to be fully understood only in the light of the other. The past of the one is the present of the other; but before both, though not yet with the same clearness, spreads out the same eternal future. Even yet, however, the subject is not satisfied. Its infinite suggestiveness leads us at large beyond the flammantia mania mundi, until at last we recognize, amazed and dazzled but not confounded, the completed company of the saints in that ' great_multitude which no man can number,' who from east and west, from north and south, from far as the infinite poles asunder, have been gathered into the immediate fold and presence of God, for which they have been prepared under the various régimes of probation, as men; of perfect service and duty, as angels; or, as may be imagined, of spiritual growth and development throughout the various nurseries and colonies of heaven which we call the universe. Need we say, then, that the subjects of the All Saints' muse are, in one senseas infallibly presenting one or another phenomenon of interest to the saintly life-well-nigh co-extensive with the subjects that engage the muse of Christianity herself; or that to place before the

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INDIFFERENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES.

379

reader the Biblical passages which refer individually, departmentally, or collectively, to the estate of sainthood, would be to incorporate a large proportion of the Holy Scriptures? In these is set forth every various phase of sanctification, which marks its course from the first tears of penitence to the splendours and comforts of the Apocalyptic vision.

The aspects under which the saints may be considered, are, as we have just indicated, almost infinitely varied. The most ordinary are those in which they are regarded as belonging to or comprising the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. The whole Church on earth may be considered as a unity; or it may be looked upon as an aggregate of particular Churches; and these again may be disintegrated into groups, territorial or otherwise, into families, and finally into individuals.

The saints on earth are of all conditions, for holiness is independent of fortune or accidents; through their common relationship to Christ, the monarch is brother unto Lazarus. Whatever the magnificence or the squalor of their outward circumstances, theirs is the common tribulation; the common sorrow; the common strife with common foes; the common weariness of a common pilgrimage. Theirs are the common joys of a common love; the common interest in a common Lord, faith, and baptism; the common hopes of a common glory. For them, for their spiritual fathers and posterity, the world was created; for them, in a special sense, it was redeemed; for their sakes, and by their prayers, it is for a time preserved; and by them, as assessors with Christ, it is finally to be judged. All are looking, though not with equal intentness, to the prize of their high calling; all are on the way, though not with equal steps, to the perfection of holiness, the perfect realization of rest and victory and the sonship of God. In their march to the land of promise, they encounter many impediments; in their warfare they sustain many reverses. They are too strong and too weak for themselves. 'The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh the good that they would, they do not; but the evil that they would not, that they do.' Happy for them that their Judge 'knoweth their frame, and remembereth that they are dust; that He, as only an omniscient Being can, sees the motive apart from the deed, the effort apart from the performance, and is gracious to consider the integrity of thought, and will, and desire, in the confusions of an unlaurelled struggle! Thus it is that the work of an hour in the Vineyard of the Lord may, as a demonstration of entire devotion, entitle the latest-summoned labourer to the identical reward of those who were hired in the early morning. In the infinite court of recompense it is the rule that the 'last shall be first, and the first last.'

It would be hard, we think, to find the inequalities and reverses

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