'A great company of dear ones': Keble's sermons for All Saints' Day and Old High piety

In his Sermons for the Saints' Days and Other Festivals (1879), there are three sermons by John Keble for All Saints' Day. It is difficult to identify anything in the sermons which would not have been heard from an Old High pulpit on the festival. The sermons exemplify a quietly joyful High Church piety for the festival.

In the first sermon, Keble points to how All Saints' Day is not separate in the Anglican mind and Prayer Book provision from All Souls' Day, for we rejoice that our "own friends and kindred", "a great company of dear ones", are "all saints now":

The promise is for you, for me, for us all. Why should there be one among you not found partaker of its benefit? "In My Father's house," says our Lord, "are many mansions:" there is room enough and glory enough, for all who are bidden, if only they will come in. Why should any one here be absent? In the Lamb's treasure-house, there is a crown and a robe prepared for you to claim, if you be not found unworthy or rather, the robe is already given given in Baptism: if you have kept it clean, as a wedding-garment ought to be kept, the crown will in due time be yours also. And remember, whom you will meet there, whom you will see face to face, not only all the holy men of old, who are in the hearts of all good Christians, but your own friends and kindred too, as many as have fallen asleep in the Lord; all saints now, and all perfect, though some are called up higher than others. A great company of dear ones is waiting for you.

We might describe Keble as here echoing what Martin Thornton has described as a particular characteristic of Anglican and Prayer Book piety, its "domesticity". Such domesticity finds expression on this feast day in the conviction that the saints in glory include - and are not a different category from - those we "have loved long since and lost a while". This not only suggests the warmth which should be found in Anglican celebration of All Saints, it also is a significant reminder that any separate commemoration of the faithful departed following All Saints' Day should share in and reflect - and not in any way undermine - this warmth and hope.

Also notable in these sermons is the absence of any idea of invoking the departed saints: there is no suggestion whatsoever of a practice which would become widespread in Anglo-catholic settings. Keble, in his second sermon, does accept that the departed saints pray for us, a view quite unexceptional in Old High terms. But there is no mention whatsoever of invocation:

All such, being more in number than could in any wise be commemorated separately, the Church has gathered into one feast, wherein, while we devoutly praise God for them on earth, we may piously hope that they remember us and pray for us in paradise.

In addition to praying for us, the glorified saints, with the holy angels, join our praises of the Triune God. In his third sermon, Keble particularly sees this expressed in the Benedicite and Te Deum:

And they do in a manner praise Him, (doubt it not,) with our solemn assemblies ... Therefore the Church, in that ancient and most beautiful hymn, which sometimes comes in the place of the Te Deum, and which begins, "O all ye works of the Lord;" the Church, I say, in that hymn, does not scruple, amongst other works of God, to call on the faithful departed to join her in thanking and praising Him. "O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever." Indeed, why should she scruple? since the Bible expressly tells us, that when we sing daily to the Most High, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth," we are doing that, which the Angels in heaven cease not from doing day and night.

Note how Keble sees no need to go beyond the Prayer Book, that it is sufficient to rely on its praises and prayers to give expression to the truth that we share in the praises of the company of heaven. In other words, the Prayer Book does not require to be supplemented - never mind replaced - by other sources in order for us to rejoice on this feast day in the communion and fellowship of "thy blessed Saints".

While Keble does, of course, recognise - in the opening words of the first sermon - that "we must all be saints", in the second sermon he points to the particular example of "those who in an especial manner have laid hold of that glorious privilege, clung to it, brought it home to themselves, lived and died in the constant endeavour to get the perfect victory over sin". It is these, he says, who are in a particular manner the "blessed Saints" whom we are, in the words of the collect, "to follow ... in all virtuous and godly living":

those who were rare and glorious in their holiness, those whom the Church in all times has marked as God's dearest children by adding the word Saint before their names in speaking of them.

These are "those whom we are to follow, and with whom we would choose our portion". Not invoke, nor rely upon for their merits or special patronage: instead, Keble, following the Prayer Book collect, sets them before us as exemplars of the Christian life, in his path we are called to walk.

In the third sermon, Keble delivers a beautiful meditation on the collect for All Saints' Day, with its celebration of "the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord":

The free and unbounded mercy and grace of Almighty God in this respect is shewn forth by this circumstance in the services of His Holy Catholic Church; that her doors are thrown open to all ... Here, standing before the same altar, and joining in the same psalms and hymns of thanksgiving, are both the new penitent and the confirmed servant of Christ; he whose heart God has just touched with bitter thoughts of privileges abused, vows forgotten, warnings slighted, grace received in vain; and he who having, by the help of God's Spirit, kept in some good measure his baptismal vows, comes rejoicing in the sunshine of God's mercy, with the overflowing of a thankful heart; the experienced saint and the young beginner; the solitary student and the just and fair man of business; Lazarus and Zacchæus; Mary and Martha; the aged who feels, how near the church is to the grave, and the child who can but just have a thought of something aweful in this place, making it unlike other places; behold, here they meet altogether, with one voice praising one God, through one Mediator, by one Spirit; exhibiting to the very outward eye the true figure and emblem of that communion and fellowship, in which they are inwardly and spiritually knit, as true members of the mystical body of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Keble is rejoicing in the Communion of Saints as it is expressed in the congregation gathered in the parish church, "the true figure and emblem of that communion and fellowship". The Communion of Saints, in other words, is not a reality apart from us. It is not - to use words from C.S. Lewis - "Heaven as an earthly court where applicants will be wise to pull the right wires, discover the best 'channels,' and attach themselves to the most influential pressure groups": it is us, we - living and departed - who are "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people". 

All of this emphasises the warm domesticity of Keble's vision of the Communion of Saints, celebrated on All Saints' Day: "a great company of dear ones", our faithful departed; the prayers of the glorified saints for us, as we share in their praises and they remember us; the faithful gathered in the parish church as the sign of the Communion of Saints, of "the free and unbounded mercy and grace of Almighty God". It is genuinely difficult to identify anything here that is distinctly Tractarian, never mind Anglo-catholic. We might describe it as what would later be termed Prayer Book Catholic, with no hint whatsoever of Tridentine practices and teaching. And there is little, if anything, in the three sermons which contrasts with Old High piety. What we do have is Keble the High Church parson, faithfully instructing his flock in the warm joys and household privileges of the Communion of Saints, as celebrated in the Book of Common Prayer. 

(The first picture is of a stained glass window of St. Philip and Nicodemus in All Saints' church, Hursley, Hampshire, where John Keble was vicar from 1836 to 1866. The second picture is of the church.)