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."