We ask eternal memory of God and not of men, and it means dwelling in the eternal mind of God. “To grant eternal memory” means to make a man conformable to his eternal idea — to God s eternal thought about him, and to raise him to the sphere of the absolute and the changeless. By comparison with the anxieties of the world, it is eternal rest. Death as such is not rest, and the dead among natural humanity may be more appropriately described as restless (the French revenant, the German Poltergeister] than as those at rest. The rest we ask for our departed depends upon God's eternal memory of them. Affirmed in their absolute idea, they find in it a secure and indefeasible token that the perfect good will be finally realised in the world, and therefore they cannot be troubled. The distinction between the present and the future still exists for them, but no element of doubt or anxiety attaches to that future. It is separated from them only by an inevitable delay, and they may already contemplate it sub specie aeternitatis. But for those who die in the natural humanity, the future, though it becomes their main interest, still remains an awe-inspiring riddle and mystery.
            We shall rise from the hills, from the waters, O Thorsten,
            And whisper of the days to be.
Eternal rest is not inactivity. The departed remain active, but the character of the activity is essentially changed. It no longer springs from an anxious striving towards a distant and uncertain end. It proceeds on the basis and in virtue of the already attained and the ever-abiding connection with the absolute good. Therefore in this case activity is compatible with serene and happy rest. And just as the beneficial influence of the departed expresses their moral connection with their neighbours in nature, their living posterity, so in their blessed rest they are inseparable from their neighbours in God and in eternity. It is rest with the saints.