On All Saints' Day, "neither too much nor too little"

From a sermon in Newman's Anglican period, 'The Communion of Saints' (PPS 4.11). Here he captures the balance of quiet piety and cautious reserve in Anglican teaching and practice regarding the Saints, what he wonderfully terms "neither too much nor too little": not so much that we are overwhelmed by the Saints, not so little that we are forgetful of their witness.

While we thus think of the invisible Church, we are restrained by many reasons from such invocations of her separate members as are unhappily so common in other Christian countries. First, because the practice was not primitive, but an addition when the world had poured into the Church; next, because we are told to pray to God only, and invocation may easily be corrupted into prayer, and then becomes idolatrous. And further, it must be considered that though the Church is represented in Scripture as a channel of God's gifts to us, yet it is only as a body and sacramentally, not as an agent, nor in her members one by one. St. Paul does not say that we are brought near to this saint or that saint, but to all together, "to the spirits of just men made perfect;" one by one they have to undergo the Day of Judgment, but as a body they are the City of God, the immaculate Spouse of the Lamb.

Let us then stand in that lot in which God has placed us, and thank Him for what He has so mercifully, so providentially done for us. He has done all things well,—neither too much nor too little. He has neither told us to neglect the faithful servants of Christ departed, nor to pay them undue honour; but to think of them, yet not speak to them; to make much of them, but to trust solely in him. Let us follow His rule, neither exceeding nor wanting in our duty; but according to St. Paul's injunction, "using" His gifts "without abusing" them; not ceasing to use, lest we should abuse, but abstaining from the abuse, while we adhere thankfully to the use.

(The photograph is of a stained glass window in the University Church of Saint Mary, Oxford.)

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