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The Spirits In Prison Life After Death By E. H. Plumptee D.D. Dean Of Wells

…Things lie behind the veil, and we see but as in a glass darkly ; but that thought of the developed energies and ripened growth of the saints of God is at least truer to the laws of our spiritual life, than the belief in a dreamless sleep till the morn of the resurrection, or in long ages passed in self-centred contemplation, or even in the ceaseless utterance of the great Hallelujah of the spirits before the Throne.

One witness, at least, to the truth of wider, happier thoughts as to the state of the dead than have recently prevailed among us, was borne, with no faltering voice, in no indistinct accents, by the Church of the first ages. In every form, from the solemn liturgies which embodied the belief of her profoundest thinkers and truest worshippers, to the simple words of hope and love which were traced over the graves of the poor, her voice went up, without a doubt or misgiving, in prayers for the souls of the departed. Those prayers were indeed part of the inheritance which she had received from an older system.

………….they at least bore their witness to the continuance of sympathy, communion, interdependence, between the living and the dead, to the belief that the state of the latter was one of discipline and progress. The prayers of the faithful might hasten their progress upward, or make them more capable of the Divine compassion, or help them to a higher or earlier place in the first resurrection, or mitigate, in some mysterious way, the keenness of their pain.