Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  If we look back to Cotton Mather’s Magnalia, we shall find that the belief in the ministration of angels and the conflict of invisible spirits, good and evil, in the affairs of men, was practical and influential in the times of our fathers.

  If we look at the first New England Systematic Theology, that of Dr. Dwight, we shall find the subject of Angels and Devils and their ministry among men fully considered.

  In the present theological course at Andover that subject is wholly omitted. What may be the custom in other theological seminaries of the present day we will not say.

  We will now show what the teaching and the feeling of the primitive church was on the subject of the departed dead and the ministrations of angels. In Coleman’s Christian Antiquities, under the head of Death and Burial of the Early Christians, we find evidence of the great and wide difference which existed between the Christian community and all the other world, whether Jews or heathen, in regard to the vividness of their conceptions of immortality. The Christian who died was not counted as lost from their number — the fellowship with him was still unbroken. The theory and the practice of the Christians was to look on the departed as no otherwise severed from them than the man who has gone to New York is divided from his family in Boston. He is not within the scope of the senses, he can not be addressed, but he is the same person, with the same heart, still living and loving, and partners with them of all joys and sorrows.

  But while they considered personal identity and consciousness unchanged and the friend as belonging to them, as much after death as before, they regarded his death as an advancement, an honor, a glory. It was customary, we are told, to celebrate the day of his death as his birth-day — the day when he was born to new immortal life. Tertullian, who died in the year 220 in his treatise called the Soldier’s Chaplet, says: “We make anniversary oblations for the dead — for their birth-days,” meaning the day of their death. In another place he says, “It was the practice of a widow to pray for the soul of her deceased husband, desiring on his behalf present refreshment or rest, and a part in the first resurrection,” and offering annually for him oblation on the day of his falling asleep. By this gentle term the rest of the body in the grave was always spoken of among Christians. It is stated that on these anniversary days of commemorating the dead they were used to make a feast, inviting both clergy and people, but especially the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, that it might not only be a memorial of rest to the dead, but a memorial of a sweet savor in the sight of God.

  A Christian funeral was in every respect a standing contrast to the lugubrious and depressing gloom of modern times. Palms and olive branches were carried in the funeral procession, and the cypress was rejected as symbolizing gloom. Psalms and hymns of a joyful and triumphant tone were sung around the corpse while it was kept in the house and on the way to the grave. St. Chrysostom, speaking of funeral services, quotes passages from the psalms and hymns that were in common use, thus:

  “What mean our psalms and hymns? Do we not glorify God and give him thanks that he hath crowned him that has departed, that he hath delivered him from trouble, that he hath set him free from all fear? Consider what thou singest at the time. ‘Turn again to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath rewarded thee;’ and again: ‘I will fear no evil because thou art with me;’ and again: ‘Thou art my refuge from the affliction that compasseth me about.’ Consider what these psalms mean. If thou believest the things which thou sayest to be true, why dost thou weep and lament and make a pageantry and a mock of thy singing? If thou believest them not to be true, why dost thou play the hypocrite so much as to sing?”

  Coleman says, also:

  “The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered at funerals and often at the grave itself. By this rite it was professed that the communion of saints was still perpetuated between the living and the dead. It was a favorite idea that both still continued members of the same mystical body, the same on earth and in heaven.” — Antiq., .

  Coleman says, also, that the early Christian utterly discarded all the Jewish badges and customs of mourning, such as sackcloth and ashes and rent garments, and severely censured the Roman custom of wearing black.

  St. Augustine says: “Why should we disfigure ourselves with black, unless we would imitate unbelieving nations, not only in their wailing for the dead, but also in their mourning apparel? Be assured, these are foreign and unlawful usages.”

  He says, also: “Our brethren are not to be mourned for being liberated from this world when we know that they are not omitted but premitted, receding from us only that they may precede us, so that journeying and voyaging before us they are to be desired but not lamented. Neither should we put on black raiment for them when they have already taken their white garments; and occasion should not be given to the Gentiles that they should rightly and justly reprove us, that we grieve over those as extinct and lost who we say are now alive with God, and the faith that we profess by voice and speech we deny by the testimony of our heart and bosom.”

  Are not many of the usages and familiar forms of speech of modern Christendom a return to old heathenism? Are they not what St. Augustine calls a repudiation of the Christian faith? The black garments, the funeral dreariness, the mode of speech which calls a departed friend lost — have they not become the almost invariable rule in Christian life?

  So really and truly did the first Christians believe that their friends were still one with themselves, that they considered them even in their advanced and glorified state a subject of prayers.

  Prayer for each other was to the first Christians a reality. The intimacy of their sympathy, the entire oneness of their life, made prayer for each other a necessity, and they prayed for each other instinctively as they prayed for themselves. So, St. Paul says “Always in every prayer of mine making request for you always with joy.” Christians are commanded without ceasing to pray for each other. As their faith forbade them to consider the departed as lost or ceasing to exist, or in any way being out of their fellowship and communion, it did not seem to them strange or improper to yield to that impulse of the loving heart which naturally breathes to the Heavenly Father the name of its beloved. On the contrary, it was a custom in the earliest Christian times, in the solemn service of the Eucharist, to commend to God in a memorial prayer the souls of their friends departed, but not dead. In Coleman’s Antiquities, and other works of the same kind, many instances of this are given. We select some:

  Arnobius, in his treatise against the heathen writers, probably in 305, speaking of the prayers offered after the consecration of the elements in the Lord’s Supper, says “that Christians prayed for pardon and peace in behalf of the living and dead.” Cyril, of Jerusalem, reports the prayer made after consecrating the elements in Holy Communion in these words:

  “We offer this sacrifice in memory of those who have fallen asleep before us, first patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that God by their prayers and supplications may receive our supplications and those we pray for, our holy fathers and bishops, and all that have fallen asleep before us, believing it is of great advantage to their souls to be prayed for while the holy and tremendous sacrifice lies upon the altar.”

  A memorial of this custom has come into the Protestant Church in the Episcopal Eucharistic service where occur these words: “And we also bless thy Holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear, beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that we with them may be partakers of thy Heavenly Kingdom.” It will be seen here the progress of an idea, its corruption and its reform.

  The original idea with the primitive Christian was this: “My friend is neither dead nor changed. He is only gone before me, and is promoted to higher joy; but he is still mine and I am his. Still can I pray for him, still can he pray for me; and as when he was here on earth we can be mutually helped by each other’s prayers.”

  Out of this root — so simple and so sweet — grew idolatrous exaggerations
of saint worship and a monstrous system of bargain and sale of prayers for the dead. The Reformation swept all this away — and, as usual with reformations, swept away a portion of the primitive truth — but it retained still the Eucharistic memorial of departed friends as a fragment of primitive simplicity.

  The Church, furthermore, appointed three festivals of commemoration of these spiritual members of the great Church Invisible with whom they held fellowship — the festivals of All Souls, of All Angels, of All Saints.

  Two of these are still retained in the Episcopal Church the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and the feast of All Saints. These days are derived from those yearly anniversaries which were common in the primitive ages.

  [Here we have a formal deprecation of the tendency of modern orthodoxy to withdraw from what was once regarded as a proper religious belief and sentiment, and which modern Spiritualists warmly accept, and make one of the chief grounds for their doctrine of intercommunication between the departed dead and the living. We expect to give our readers other papers by Mrs. Stowe in continuation of her discussion on the subject.

  In the following letter, or extract from a letter, from Mr. Andrew Jackson Davis, one of the leading lights and exponents of Spiritualism at the present day, we have a voice from the inside, furnishing some information with regard to the state of spiritualistic affairs in America, and some of the expected results of the movement.]

  “Spiritualism, for the most part, is a shower from the realm of intelligences and uncultured affections. It is rapidly irrigating and fertilizing everything that has root and the seed-power to grow. It is starting up the half-dead trees of Sectarianism, causing the most miserable weeds to grow rapid and rank, and of course, attracting very general attention to religious feelings and super-terrene existences.

  “As an effect of this spiritualistic rain, you may look for an immense harvest of both wheat and tares — the grandest growths in great principles and ideas on the one hand, and a fearful crop of crudities and disorganizing superstitions on the other. There will be seen floating on the flood many of our most sacred institutions. Old wagon-ruts, long-forgotten cow-tracks, every little hole and corner in the old highways, will be filled to the brim with the rain. You will hardly know the difference between the true springs and the flowing mud-pools visible on every side. Many noble minds will stumble as they undertake to ford the new streams which will come up to their very door-sills, if not into their sacred and established habitations. Perhaps lives may be lost; perhaps homes may be broken up; perhaps fortunes may be sacrificed; for who ever heard of a great flood, a storm of much power, or an earthquake, that did not do one, or two, or all of these deplorable things? Spiritualism is, indeed, all and everything which its worst enemies or best friends ever said of it; — a great rain from heaven, a storm of violence, a power unto salvation, a destroyer and a builder too — each, and all, and everything good, bad, and indifferent; for which every one, nevertheless, should be thankful, as eventually all will be when the evil subsides, when the severe rain is over, and the clouds dispersed — when even the blind will see with new eyes, the lame walk, and the mourners of the world be made to rejoice with joy unspeakable.

  “Of course, my kind brother, you know that I look upon ‘wisdom’ organized into our daily lives, and ‘love’ inspiring every heart, as the only true heaven appointed saviour of mankind. And all spiritual growth and intellectual advancement in the goodnesses and graces of this redeemer I call an application of the Harmonial Philosophy. But I find, as most likely you do, that it is as hard to get the Spiritualists to become Harmonial Philosophers as to induce ardent Bible-believers to daily practice the grand essentials which dwell in the warm heart of Christianity.”

  It is not long since the writer was in conversation with a very celebrated and popular minister of the modern Church, who has for years fulfilled a fruitful ministry in New England. He was speaking of modern Spiritualism as one of the most dangerous forms of error — as an unaccountable infatuation. The idea was expressed by a person present that it was after all true that the spirits of the departed friends were in reality watching over our course and interested in our affairs in this world.

  The clergyman, who has a fair right, by reason of his standing and influence to represent the New England pulpit, met that idea by a prompt denial. “A pleasing sentimental dream,” he said, “very apt to mislead, and for which there is no scriptural and rational foundation.” We have shown in our last article what the very earliest Christians were in the habit of thinking with regard to the unbroken sympathy between the living and those called dead, and how the Church by very significant and solemn acts pronounced them to be not only alive, but alive in a fuller, higher, and more joyful sense than those on earth.

  We may remember that among the primitive Christians the celebration of the Lord’s Supper was not as in our modern times a rare and unfrequent occurrence, coming at intervals of two, three, and even six months, but that it occurred every Sunday, and on many of the solemn events of life, as funerals and marriages, and that one part of the celebration always consisted in recognizing by a solemn prayer the unbroken unity of the saints below and the saints in heaven. We may remember, too, that it was a belief among them that angels were invisibly present, witnessing and uniting with the eucharistic memorial — a belief of which we still have the expression in that solemn portion of the Episcopal communion service which says, “Wherefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy Holy Name.”

  This part of the eucharistic service was held by the first Christians to be the sacred and mysterious point of confluence when the souls of saints on earth and the blessed in heaven united. So says Saint Chrysostom:

  “The seraphim above sing the holy Trisagion hymn; the holy congregation of men on earth send up the same; the general assembly of celestial and earthly creatures join together; there is one thanksgiving, one exultation; one choir of men and angels rejoicing together.”

  And in another place he says:

  “The martyrs are now rejoicing in concert, partaking of the mystical songs of the heavenly choir. For if while they were in the body whenever they communicated in the sacred mysteries they made part of the choir, singing with the cherubim, ‘holy, holy, holy,’ as ye all that are initiated in the holy mysteries know; much more now, being joined with those whose partners they were in the earthly choir, they do with greater freedom partake of those solemn glorifications of God above.”

  The continued identity, interest and unbroken oneness of the departed with the remaining was a topic frequently insisted on among early Christian ministers — it was one reason of the rapid spread of Christianity. Converts flocked in clouds to the ranks of a people who professed to have vanquished death — in whose inclosure love was forever safe, and who by so many sacred and solemn acts of recognition consoled the bereaved heart with this thought, that their beloved, though unseen, was still living and loving — still watching, waiting, and caring for them.

  Modern rationalistic religion says: “We do not know anything about them — God has taken them: of them and their estate we know nothing: whether they remember us, whether they know what we are doing, whether they care for us, whether we shall ever see them again to know them, are all questions vailed in inscrutable mystery. We must give our friends up wholly and take refuge in God.”

  But St. Augustine, speaking on the same subject, says:

  “Therefore, if we wish to hold communion with the saints in eternal life we must think much of imitating them. They ought to recognize in us something of their virtues, that they may better offer their supplications to God for us. These [virtues] are the foot-prints which the blessed returning to their country have left, that we shall follow their path to joy. Why should we not hasten and run after them that we too may see our fatherland? There a great crowd of dear ones are awaiting us, of parents, brethren, children, a multitudinous host are longing for us — now secure of their own safety
, and anxious only for our salvation.”

  Now let us take the case of some poor, widowed mother, from whose heart has been torn an only son — pious, brave, and beautiful — her friend, her pride, her earthly hope — struck down suddenly as by a lightning stroke. The physical shock is terrible — the cessation of communion, if the habits of intercourse and care, if the habit, so sweet to the Christian, of praying for that son, must all cease. We can see now what the primitive Church would have said to such a mother: “Thy son is not dead. To the Christian there is no death — follow his footsteps, imitate his prayerfulness and watchfulness, and that he may the better pray for thee, keep close in the great communion of saints.” Every Sabbath would bring to her the eucharistic feast, when the Church on earth and the Church in heaven held their reunion, where “with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven,” they join their praises! and she might feel herself drawing near to her blessed one in glory. How consoling — how comforting such Church fellowship!

  A mother under such circumstances would feel no temptation to resort to doubtful, perplexing sources, to glean here and there fragments of that consolation which the Church was ordained to give. In every act of life the primitive Church recognized that the doors of heaven were open through her ordinances and the communion of love with the departed blest unbroken.

  It has been our lot to know the secret history of many who are not outwardly or professedly Spiritualists — persons of sober and serious habits of thought, of great self-culture and self-restraint, to whom it happened after the death of a friend to meet accidentally and without any seeking or expecting on their part with spiritualistic phenomena of a very marked type. These are histories that never will be unvailed to the judgment of a scoffing and unsympathetic world; that in the very nature of the case must forever remain secret; yet they have brought to hearts bereaved and mourning that very consolation which the Christian Church ought to have afforded them, and which the primitive Church so amply provided.