The Press., 1884-10-23
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.

Sermon Preached in Grace Church, Stafford
 Springs, by REV. BEVERLEY E WARNER, on the
 occasion of Placing an Altar to the Memory of
 ELLA M. BAKER, Oct IF, 1884.
 HEBREWS xii:l Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great cloud of witnesses.
 | If one word more than another can be selected to characterize and identify thia present age of ouIs, it is the word ''prac- tical." We are busy people. We de- light in a material expression for every thing. We are ever seeking and finding laws by which to govern and explain our operations. We are never satisfied with accepting truth or a succession of truths, without finding theory for their exist ence or evolution. If no law appears we invent one, for we are apt to shudder at phenomena which are not practically un- derstood and practically acted upon. We have established, or tried to establish, canons of criticism for everything. Every thing is under law, either natural or arbi- trary. Even the most christian and spir- itual are so far committed to alleged scien- tific method, as to be trifie ashamed of making much of the supernatural as en- tering into and affecting our daily life, be- cause the supernatural is beyond human laws and deep spiritual truths are called impractical, being beyond the grasp of hu- man theories.
 We believe in God, and declare our be- lief. We acknowledge Christ, the church, even the sacraments most of us without any sense of a loss of our clear practicali- ty. But there is one article of the Apos- ties Creed, Q most important one-one, too, which really underlies all human sounds in our material ears like almost sentimentalism. When we dwell for the first time seriously on the words, 'sI be- lieve in the communion of saints, we have a sort of mental panic at their sound. It seems as though into our practical lives was introduced an element of vagueness out of place. For the words mean not less and probably more than this That there is close and vital connection between the holy who die in the Lord, and those strug- ling after holiness who are still in the flesh. In other words, your parents who have passed on to the delectable land, your chil- dren, your husband or wife, your beloved l by whatever name--are not dead, ought not to be thought dead, even to you, but but in some way are still in co1pmalnion with you who remain behind. There is connection, living connection, between the earthly living and the, earthly dead.
 | But how real is this truth to us? With all our christian hope in death, our pray CTS for the dead, our consolation for the afflicted, with all this there is Q sort of half admitted Sadduoean infidelity amongst us. That the dead drop out of our lives actually-is it not too sad truth? And we are apt, are we not after the service | at the grave is over, to go back to the empty rooms, with their lonely look, feel-a l ing that those we loved and have laid away no longer walk in the land of the liv-r ing? We suffer the practical mAterialism of modern thought to drop like thick cloud upon our sorrow, and fail to grasp the spiritual health and beauty to Which the church has ever borne faithful witness in her creed-ssI believe in the communion l of saints. y
 | Yet with all there is certain curiosity about the future in every heart there is restless speculation about the dead in every mind. More than this, there is groping after the mysteries of that future and the fortunes of those dead. It is one of the most curious features of the age that men refuse to accept the refined and spiritual supernaturalism of the church who will run after the grOssest forms of it outside of the church. You well know that there is no other thing about which otherwise sensible people are so easily deceived and so readily credulous as the claims of wan dering lecturers with strange theories of the dead, and fantastic tricks of coming into communication with them. The gross CT forms of Spiritualism which in it's highest form have a most profound re- spect-illustrate this. If we tell men that the dead are dwelling in higher state of existence than this, that there is real communion of all holy ones, they start back in alarm. But if we call upon the dead to appear before them out of a dark cabinet, and amidst the jingling of bells and musical instruments, then they seem ready to believe.
 I am perfectly frank in declaring my belief that the honest Spirltualist who be- lieves ill some sort of communication be- tween the living and the dead, not the scheming, depraving mountebanks who are Spiritualists for the money in 1t, but honest believers that if is not all of death to die,-these are nearer the truth than those who are content to let the earth cover up their dead to suffer the veil of turf to blot out and destroy the life of those who are still truly in the land of the living though not to the eye, not to the touch. Ay, who are even more really living than we ourselves, because they have left be- hind the great barrier of iving,-this body of the flesh. The truth is that we, know ing no other state of existence, are prone to arrogate to these bodies of ours every thing, believing not that to be clothed up- on with Christ IS far better. Yet, in spite of itself, in spite of it's shame at the con- lesion, $ humanity yearns for some knowl- edge of the dead, ah and goes farther than this, longs for some sense of com munion with the dead. We feel that there is fallacy somewhere if in the moment of breathing his earthly last the man ceases to be something real to us. },z tte,i.
 The church of the living God, however, has never lost sight of this glorious and helpful truth. From the beginning, al- most, of her work amidst the human race, as far back at any rate as we can trace, her crew has held up the knowledge and borne witness to the fact that there is com munion of saints. And this, in its highest sense, we mean that Gods kingdom is partly invisible, aud that while we cannot see beyond the limits of the world horizon, there is beyond. The angels who are the ministers of God, the guardians of lit tie children, perhaps of children of larger growth the holy ones who have gone from the earth, away from our fire-sides, out of our lives these are the invisible lportion, which united with the pure in heart on earth participate in tile blessed communion of saints. ojiet 8Ss% fli tit2- .t E-f h .F 4a4t =