Volume 16, Number 4 · March 11, 1971
Pure in Heart
By Noel Annan
Dear Miss Weaver
by Jane Lidderdale, by Mary Nicholson
Viking, 509 pp., $15.00
The other day a faint breeze ruffled the unfathomable waters of the Church of England. How—if at all—should prayers be offered up for the dead? If hell is abolished, if no one has any conception of the form the Resurrection will take, if the whole Christian cosmos of nineteen centuries, immortalized in painting, poetry, and music, of death, damnation, grace, corporeal resurrection has vanished into an agnosticism so Stygian that it would have been acceptable to the generation of Victorian rationalists who foretold that it would come, what are we to do about the dear departed? Whereas in the last century and before the devout would have prayed for the souls of the dead, imploring God to show them mercy and compassion instead of dealing with them according to their deserts, today Anglican clergymen suggest that it would be more seemly to 'commend' them to God and give thanks for 'their life and witness.' Auguste Comte's Positivist liturgy could hardly surpass this modest acknowledgement.
Review, 1734 words
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