The Festival of All Saints.
The Festival of All Saints is related in conception to, yet distinct from, the Festival of All Angels. For while the latter speaks of angelic victory, the former speaks only of human victory over evil. It was considered to be the feast of the glorification of human nature by Christ. Now what is it which glorifies human nature? It is expressed in the name of this festival: it is saintliness.
I. There are many associations into which to enter is fame: companies of warriors, societies of science, bands of poets, circles of statesmen, orders of honour; but the most ancient, the most memorable, and the most continuous, continuous even for ever and ever, is the order of all the saints. For it is not only an earthly society; it does not belong to one nation alone; it does not seek its members only out of one age of history. It began with the beginning of the race. It has drawn its members out of every nation, and kindred, and tongue. It is existent in the world beyond the grave. The constant, ceaseless work of the society is the overthrow of evil.
II. The war against evil which the Head of the Church and all the army of the saints are waging now will end, not when the victims of evil are damned or destroyed, but when the evil itself in them is consumed. In every soul of man, by the giving of joy or the giving of suffering, by a thousand means, each fitted to a thousand characters, God will do His conquering work. Those who have already won the crown of saintliness are fellow-labourers with Him in the work of redemptive warfare. The power and the life of Christ are not only powerful and living upon earth: He is redeeming all in the other world. He continues to redeem.
III. Note some of the principles of the life of this great society, and apply them to the minor society of the English nation. (1) In the Church of Christ, each true member is an enthusiast in his work. His heart glows; his tongue cannot be basely silent, though often wisely silent. He feels inspired by the Spirit of God within him. He would rather die than be false to Christ. Ought not that to be the feeling of the citizen towards the nation, enthusiasm, not untaught and rude, but cultured by thought on great questions and tempered by the experience of the past? He who feels the enthusiasm of the Church of Christ ought above all men to be freed himself, and to free others, from political apathy. (2) Both the Church of Christ and the English nation have a glorious past. The Christian and the Englishman are both the children of heroes. The freedom of both in their several spheres has been that of slow and dignified growth, and is of that firm, rooted character which creates the reverence which makes love lasting. (3) In the vast society of which I speak, each man lives for his brother, not for himself; men are united by common love to Christ. We should recognise as Englishmen the same principle. (4) There is one last lesson which the Christian Church teaches us: it condemns, not only local, but also national, selfishness. The time has come in this age to carry out the same principle in the wide politics of the world; the time has come to regulate our relation with other nations by the words, "Do unto other nations as ye would that they should do unto you."
S. A. Brooke, Sermons,p. 290. Revelation vii., vers. 9, 10
The Blessed Saints.
I. The phrase "communion of saints," which is so often on our lips, reminds us that not only is there in heaven a society of just ones made perfect, but also on earth a band of servants of the Lord, who are pressing forward to the high mark of saintliness, who are living a saintly life by reason of their very endeavours to submit to the guidance of a loving Lord. We cannot have sympathy for the saints in heaven unless we have sympathy for the saints on earth, for all the good and noble souls who are working for the Lord in the Church on earth. If the phrase "communion of saints" is to be to us other than a fine-sounding one, emptied of all real meaning, if it is to be to us the centre of a realm of thought which we can never weary of exploring, we must first be assured that the transformation which the Lord has perfected in the saints has been commenced within ourselves. As He perfected that transformation in the saints in glory, so He is still carrying it on in the saints who walk yet on earth in the path of humiliation and duty, and so will He commence and carry it on if we will but trust in Him.
II. Holy men and women there have been in all branches of the Christian Church. Not all their names are inscribed on an earthly roll-call. The true calendar, from which not the name of the humblest saint is absent, is in the Lord's keeping. As we get to know more and more of those who have lived lives of holiness and usefulness, we feel that the limits of any one branch of the Church catholic are too narrow for the flow of our awakened sympathy; and we are fain to acknowledge that God's inspiring love acts upon the hearts not only of His children in our own Church, but also of His children in other Churches and in other lands, and that all Churches in which the life of Christ is manifested in the lives of His members form but one grand Holy Catholic Church.
H. N. Grimley, Tremadoc Sermons,p. 63.
The Communion of Saints.
I. This passage suggests (1) the universal character of the communion of God's people, and (2) the bond which cemented and still continues to cement it. All persons who are tempted to think that they and those who agree with them alone are in the right, all persons disposed to be exclusive in judging of the characters of others, may learn a lesson of wisdom and charity from the vision of St. John. If they could but look to the end, if they could see the battle of life with the eyes of God and of those whom His Spirit most inspires, they would see that as there are many mansions in our Father's house, so there are many roads that lead to them. Does not All Saints' Day witness for us, first, that all Christ's people are substantially one at heart; secondly, that many are Christ's people who are not thought so by others, and who hardly dare to think themselves so? If we can once believe that Christ, through His Spirit, is the sole Author of all good, we must believe this also. The belief in the communion of saints follows necessarily on the belief in the Holy Ghost.
II. Those whom St. John saw in this vision had all one distinguishing characteristic: suffering followed by purification purification, not by their own unaided constancy, but by the blood of the Son of God. These are the marks which stamp Christ's servants, the passports which conduct through the gates of the holy city to the steps of the eternal throne. It is to the struggle, the terrible struggle, with temptation, the constant fall, the timid rising again; to the confession of weakness forced upon us by the consciousness of degradation; to the belief that Christ, in our utmost need, has come to us with a free and wholly undeserved pardon; it is to the wounds and scars which the battle has left on us, and which even the Physician of souls can never wholly efface on earth; it is to suffering, to what St. John truly calls "great tribulation," that we ascribe our admission into the kingdom of God. For the youngest, as for the oldest, life must be a process of purification; and that purification can only come from the Lord Jesus Christ.
H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,p. 188.
The Great Multitude.
I. The multitude. The sight of a multitude is, in its way, as attractive as a magnet; we run to see the object which has gathered it together, and this may very properly be done in the present instance. (1) The vastness of the multitude is most remarkable; (2) the variety of the multitude is no less remarkable than the vastness of it: "of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues."
II. Their position. Attaching to their position there is evidently (1) a transcendent honour; (2) a superlative happiness.
III. Their adornment. We notice (1) the spotless purity of their adornment: "white robes"; (2) its triumphal character: "palms in their hands."
IV. Their worship. (1) The song of their worship is replete with interest, the subject of it is salvation, the object God Himself. (2) The service of their worship is full of interest; it is full of both fervour and harmony.
E. A. Thomson, Memorials of a Ministry,p. 319.
All Saints' Day.
I. Let us ask, What is the use of festivals at all? Why should we keep our saints' days and our Christmas Day, our Good Friday and our Ascension Day? One day is not better than another, and all the bishops in the world cannot make it better, nor make it a different day from what it is. But is it not meet and right that we should celebrate our birthdays, as men and women born into the world, and celebrate our benefactors' days, as scholars of this or that foundation, or celebrate our victories or escapes, as sharers in the nation's weal and the nation's glory? and is it not at least as meet and right that as Christians, bound together by a common faith in Christ our Lord, we should celebrate our festival days too, and, lest men should pass over too lightly this or that scene in the Saviour's life, this or that act of devotion, and zeal, and heroic self-sacrifice on the part of His followers in bygone ages, that we should be called upon periodically to refresh our memories on this point or on that? The world at large is so careful and troubled about many things that we may well excuse it if here and there a Mary seems to sit with too rapt a gaze at Jesus's feet while her more active kinsfolk are toiling at life's daily labours.
II. Why should there be a festival for the saints unnamed and unknown? This festival was founded for the very purpose to preserve us from forgetting that men are very poor judges of who God's saints are. It is to remind us that, however much the world may require of us intellect, or knowledge, or strength, or position before it will give us any honour or allow us to take rank among its great ones, yet there is a company before the throne of the Lamb into whose rank the meek and lowly are welcomed, a company whose example on earth we should do well to imitate, and whose song in heaven we should strive to echo, "Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb."
A. Jessopp, Norwich School Sermons,p. 129.
References: Revelation 7:9; Revelation 7:10. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 270. Revelation 7:9-11. S. A. Brooke, Church of England Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 55; H. P. Liddon, Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 31.