all." {100a} S. Stephen, before his death, prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit." Our Lord, therefore, must have been there in Paradise to
receive it. S. Paul, long after our Lord's Ascension, knew that to die
was better than to live, because it was to be absent from the body and
present with the Lord. {100b} But if Christ is there, He must be the
object of the worship of those who are also there. So then if Christ be
there, and the Church is there, and worship is offered there, then it
follows that the whole energy of Church life is there. The souls in
Paradise are not so many isolated and individual units. The Church
unites them. They are organised in the exercise of worship, sustained,
as it surely is, in unfailing and perpetual intensity. As the incense of
our worship rises here, it blends with the incense that ascends to Christ
there. The Church is militant on earth, it is expectant in Paradise, it
will be hereafter triumphant in Heaven. Yet these are not three
Churches, but one Church. And this helps us to see more clearly what is
meant by the Communion of Saints. The Church on earth and the Church in
Paradise are one, and one thrill of spiritual communion vibrates through
its members there and here.

But is prayer to be one sided? Communion is not one sided. And
communion implies that what they do for us, we should also do for them.
This brings us to one more question. May we, then, pray for those who
have passed on before us? Let us plainly say that there is every reason
for and none against the practice. We have in favour of it the sanction
of Bible witness, of primitive Church custom, of Christian and human
instinct.

In the Jewish synagogues in our Lord's time, prayers for the dead formed
part of the service. {102} Our Lord therefore, Who regularly frequented
the synagogue worship, must have been present at times when prayers for
the dead were used. If He had disapproved of such prayers, He must have
condemned the use of them. But did He? He did not. We have then His
tacit sanction of them. S. Paul again, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, must
have warned the Gentiles against the practice, unless he approved of it.
But so far from that, there is every reason to suppose that he himself
prayed for Onesiphorus. According to the best commentators, Onesiphorus
was dead when S. Paul wrote the words quoted in the text, "The Lord grant
unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day," _viz._