For the Festival of All the Dead.

Supreme Power! in whom we most truly live and move and have our being, who hast risen from thy primaeval weakness and ignorance to thy present strength and knowledge through the services of the countless generations of thy children—thy known and unknown dead—we who are here met on this closing festival of the year to commemorate all those generations, and gratefully to acknowledge that it is by their labour and suffering that we have been enabled to witness thy final advent—we pray that this our act of homage to the dead, as it awakes in us a lively sense of the greatness of the past sacrifices, may kindle our love to thee and strengthen our devotedness, that so in our turn we may be ready to continue the work of self-sacrifice in humility and confidence—confidence, as we see what great things have been done for us—humility, as we look on the imperfection of those whom we now honour, and know ourselves to be like them;—in all things striving to be a worthy link between thy Past and thy Future, thus strengthening that government of the dead, only in dutiful submission to which can the troubled society of mankind arrive at the peace of thy kingdom. May that peace come speedily. Amen.