I. This pious practice, so full of comfort to affectionate souls, is _reasonable in itself_. Scripture, which is mercifully reticent respecting a subject so liable to provoke unhealthy curiosity and excitement, nevertheless does tell us plainly some facts respecting the unseen world. (2) Those whom we call the dead are still alive. God is still the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob: and He is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. xxii. 32). Those who believe that death is annihilation, and that there can be no resurrection, "do greatly err" (Mark xii. 27). And (2) the living souls of the departed are still conscious: their bodies are asleep in this world, but their spirits are awake in the other. For this truth we are not dependent upon the disputable meaning of the parable of Dives and Lazarus; although we can hardly suppose that that parable would ever have been spoken, unless the continued consciousness of the dead and their interest in the living were a fact. Christ's parables are never mere fables, in which nature is distorted in order to point a moral: His lessons are ever drawn from God's universe as it is. But besides the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31), there is His declaration that Abraham not only "exulted" in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, but "he saw" that coming "and was glad" thereat (John viii. 56). And there is His promise to the penitent thief: "Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Luke xxiii. 43). Can we believe that this promise, given at so awful a moment with such solemn assurance ("Verily I say unto thee"), would have been made, if the robber's soul, when in Paradise, would be unconscious of Christ's companionship? Could Christ then have "preached unto the spirits in prison" (1 Pet iii. 19), if the spirits of those who had died in the Flood were deprived of consciousness? And what can be the meaning of "the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God" crying "How long, O Master the holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood?" (Rev. vi. 10), if the souls of the slain slumber in the unseen world? It is not necessary to quote Scripture to prove that the departed are not yet perfect. Their final consummation will not be reached until the coming of Christ at the last great day (Heb. xi. 40).