If, therefore, in the Revision of the Prayer Book now pending, or in official forms of intercession now under consideration, it is contemplated to add anything to the language of the Prayer Book, what we have to ask is that such additions may be kept within these scriptural and primitive limits, and may not introduce petitions which imply suppositions respecting the condition of the soul in the intermediate state, of which Scripture tells us nothing. Even the Archbishop’s language might give some encouragement to such suppositions, when he speaks of praying “for him ... who still lives and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength, in truer purity and in deepened reverence and love.” Whoever believes that does so without warrant of Scripture, and prayer based on such a belief has no authority in revelation. The hope of the Christian is not that his soul will be gradually purified after death, but that, in the words of the commendatory prayer in the Service of the Visitation of the Sick, it may, in death itself, be washed in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, and presented, when it leaves the body, “pure and without spot” unto God. Prayers, in short, which have any tinge of a purgatorial view are unauthorized by Scripture, and inconsistent with a most blessed element of Evangelical hope and faith. Short of this, I could wish, for my own part, that we might imitate the purer forms of prayer in the early Church by more specific mention of the departed, as in what seems to me the beautiful expressions of the earlier Burial Service. “We commend into Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the soul of this our brother departed, and his body we commit to the earth, beseeching Thine infinite goodness to give us grace to live in Thy fear and love, and to die in Thy favour; that when the judgment shall come, which Thou hast committed to Thy wellbeloved Son, both this our brother and we may be found acceptable in Thy sight.” After all, in presence of the mysteries of death, and of the condition of those we have lost, what prayer can be more comforting than one which simply commends to our Father’s gracious hands, through our Saviour’s merits and grace, the beloved soul after which we yearn? That is a Prayer for the Dead which may be offered without scruple and without cessation, and in which we may find, day by day, and in every moment of sorrow and distress, our refuge and our consolation. CHRIST AND THE SOLDIER. ADDRESS AT THE CHURCH PARADE, IN THE NAVE OF THE CATHEDRAL, SEPT. 27, 1914. “_Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me._”--St. John xiv. 1.