by common faith and mutual sympathy.
They are all one with the same Head, and they have all one hope of their
calling.

Our Lord brought life and immortality to light, and taught men that
between the Church militant and the Church triumphant there is
indissoluble fellowship. Those who followed holiness in this life are
saints still in the life to which they have passed. In the Epistle to
the Hebrews, believers are told that they "are come to the general
assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven ...
and to the spirits of just men made perfect."[195]

While the clause was probably inserted at first to vindicate the
doctrine of communion of saints in this life, it has long been regarded
as extending to a communion subsisting between the spirits of just men
made perfect and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who are still on
earth. The passage last quoted justifies the inference that death does
not suspend the fellowship which believers in Jesus Christ have with
Him, their common Lord. Death separates the soul from the body, but it
does not cut off the dead from communion with the Father or the Son. He
who is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is the God not of the
dead, but of the living. Of the whole family of the saints, some are in
heaven and some on earth, and, between those who are there and those who
are here, there is communion. Since the heavenly Church received Abel as
its first member, there has been unceasing fellowship between militant
and glorified saints. Those who are here are shut out by the tabernacle
of the body from personal intercourse with the souls of the departed,
but are yet in a fellowship with them that is very real and precious.
The holy dead act upon the living, and, it may be, are reacted upon in
ways we do not understand. Of Abel we are told that "being dead, he yet
speaketh."[196] Those whom death has taken do not cease to exert an
influence on the lives of friends left behind. Their example, their good
deeds, their writings, the undying consequences of what they did while
on earth affect us. The veil which death interposes between us and them
hinders us from witnessing their spirit life, and we know not whether,
or in what measure, or how, they contemplate us. We do not go to them to
ask them to intercede for us with the Father, for we believe there is
but one Mediator between God and man. We do not invest them with
attributes which belong to God alone; all