The Future State

to two questions, viz.? (1) Have the faithful departed the will and the power to intercede for us ? (2) Are they able to know our needs, or to hear our supplications for their prayers ? On the first of these questions there can hardly be any doubt for most of us. If the departed are ' with Christ, ' we may be sure that with the quickening of spiritual consciousness which that nearness brings, their prayers for us, their brethren in the world, have neither ceased nor become less powerful with God.1 The souls of the martyrs in Rev. vi. 9-11 are engaged in such a prayer for the Church militant. To the second question, if we do not venture to assert that even the highest saints have yet attained to the full vision of God, the answer cannot be given so confidently. There are passages in the New Testament which seem to suggest that the departed may possess means of knowing what is passing upon earth. Such may be the case with Rev. vi. 9-11 ; but there the general character of the petition ('How long . . . dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?') does not tell us more than that the martyrs know that the kingdom of God is not yet come on earth with power. Another passage (Heb. xii. 1, 'seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses') is said to suggest the thought of spectators in the amphitheatre watching the contest 1 Kvcn the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas, who doubted whether the departed still undergoing purificatio...