In other words, instead of thinking of any as dead, we think of all as alive, although many of them are in the unseen sphere.  Love and sympathy have never been dependent on the body except for expression, and there is no evidence that they ever will be.  Sympathy and affection, thought and will, are matters of spirit; and why may not spirit feel for spirit and minister to spirit, when the body is laid aside?  Your hands, your feet, your lips did not pray for your child; your spirit prayed for his spirit, and now that his body is laid aside, like a worn-out garment, you may keep on doing just what you did before.  This is what is meant by prayers for the dead.

I am well aware that it may seem to some that these statements rest largely on assumptions, but they are not baseless assumptions.  One other assumption must be made before we can proceed in our study, and that one is the truthfulness of the Christian teaching that death is not cessation of being, but only the decay of the bodily organism.

How may prayers for the dead be justified?  Are they taught as a duty in the Scriptures?  The privilege rests not so much on particular exhortations as upon the whole Christian teaching concerning immortality.  God is the God of the living.  Bishop Pearson in his exposition of the Apostles’ Creed has an impressive passage, which I quote:  “The communion of saints in the Church of Christ with those who are departed is demonstrated by their communion with the saints alive.  For if I have a communion with a saint of God, as such, while he liveth here, I must still have communion with him when he is departed hence; because the foundation of that communion cannot be removed by death.  The mystical union between Christ and His Church ... is the true foundation of that communion....  But death, which is nothing else but the separation of the soul from the body, maketh no separation in the mystical union, no breach of the spiritual conjunction, and consequently there must be the same communion, because there remaineth the same foundation."[9]

[Footnote 9:  Quoted in Welldon’s “Hope of Immortality,” page 332.]

Jesus taught that death is but a change of the form of existence.  On the Mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elijah appeared alive, and as interested in human affairs.  If death is not cessation of being, but only a change in the form of its manifestation, why should we think that human sympathy ends when breathing ceases, and why should we conclude that mutual service may be rendered impossible by “a snake’s bite or a falling tile.”  Tennyson in “In Memoriam” gives the Christian doctrine exquisite expression,

    “Eternal form shall still divide
    The eternal soul from all beside;
    And I shall know him when we meet.”

Jesus teaches the reality of immortality He represents those gone from us as not dead but as still living and still interested in human affairs.  If His teaching is true, is it not as reasonable to try to serve those of our loved ones who are out of the body as those who are in the body?  So far as we can see, the only way in which we can serve them is by prayer, although they may, possibly, minister to us in other ways.