apostles, martyrs, divines, who must be always looked on as among the
very heroes and heroines of humanity, we find more than one fanatic
persecutor; more than two or three clearly insane personages; and too
many who all but justify the terrible sneer--that the Romish Calendar is
the "Pantheon of Hysteria."

And Protestants, too--How have they narrowed the number of the spirits of
just men made perfect; and confined the Paean which should go up from the
human race on All Saints' Day, till a "saint" has too often meant with
them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences,
and assented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according
to the opinion of some of the soundest divines, both of the Romish,
Greek, and Anglican communions, are to be found in the letter of
Scripture as necessary to salvation; and who have, moreover, finished
their course--doubtless often a holy, beneficent, and beautiful course--by
a rapturous death-bed scene, which is more rare in the actual experience
of clergymen, and, indeed, in the conscience and experience of human
beings in general, than in the imaginations of the writers of religious
romances.

But we of the Church of England, as by law established--and I recognize
and obey, and shall hereafter recognize and obey, no other--have no need
so to narrow our All Saints' Day; our joy in all that is noble and good
which man has said or done in any age or clime. We have no need to
define where formularies have not defined; to shut where they have
opened; to curse where they either bless, or are humbly, charitably, and
therefore divinely, silent. With a magnificent faith in the justice of
the Father, and in the grace of Christ, and in the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, our Church bids us--Judge not the dead, lest ye be judged.
Condemn not the dead, lest ye be condemned. For she bids us commit to
the earth the corpses of all who die not "unbaptized," "excommunicate,"
or wilful suicides, and who are willing to lie in our consecrated ground;
giving thanks to God that our dear brother has been delivered from the
miseries of this sinful world, and in sure and certain hope of the
resurrection to eternal life.

At least: we of the Abbey of Westminster have a right to hold this; for
we, thank God, act on it, and have acted on it for many a year. We have
a right to our wide, free, charitable, and truly catholic conception of
All Saints' Day. Ay, if we did not use ou