The question of Prayers for the Dead, and particularly of the adoption of such prayers in the public services of the Church, has for some time been pressed forward among us, and under the strain of the distressing bereavements of the present war it is likely to become urgent. An attempt has more than once been made at St. Paul’s to celebrate what would have been a formal _Requiem_ for those who have fallen; and though it has not yet been fully successful, it may very likely be renewed. In the forms issued by authority, both at the time of the Boer War and during the present war, supplications on behalf of the dead have been introduced, which provoked a gentle remonstrance from even so moderate and tolerant an Evangelical as the Bishop of Durham. Other forms will no doubt be prepared by authority for use at the national intercession on the first Sunday of next year; and in many quarters much anxiety is felt lest the introduction of such supplications should be further extended. This anxiety will not be lessened by the deliberate observations on the subject which were made by the Primate, in a sermon he preached at All Hallows, Barking, on All Souls’ Day, which is fully reported in the _Guardian_ of November 5. He said that “we are not forgetful of the long and mischievous abuse of the devotion” of praying for the dead “in the later mediæval days, until,” as Dr. Mason said “it might almost be said that the main object of religion in the fifteenth century had been to deliver souls out of the ever-heightening horrors of Purgatory, and to ensure the living against incurring them.” “We understand,” said the Archbishop, “why repression of these mischiefs, prevention of these perils, took in our formularies and our Prayer Books so stern, so drastic, a character that no explicit Prayers for the departed at all were admitted into the public language of the Church, and people were taught to rely, in those public offices, upon that alone which can be definitely proved by Holy Scripture. I have no word of censure for those men--Laud and Andrewes, remember, were among them--who thus handled the difficulties which they had to face. But,” the Archbishop significantly proceeded, “surely now there is place for a gentler recognition of the instinctive, the natural, the loyal craving of the bereaved; and the abuses of the chantry system and the extravagances of Tetzel need not now, nearly four centuries afterwards, thwart or hinder the reverent, the absolutely trustful, prayer of a wounded spirit, who feels it natural and helpful to pray for him whom we shall not greet on earth again, but who, in his Father’s loving keeping, still lives, and, as we may surely believe, still grows from strength to strength in truer purity and in deeper reverence and love. I must not dwell on that to-day, but in our thought of what our College of Clergy can do, and has already done, ‘for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work