Part 4 — Chapter IV. The Works Of God; Or The Execution Of The Decrees. (continued 4)

2. To prayer and its answer.

What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.

Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly “that without a disturbance of natural law quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the rolling of the St. Lawrence up the falls of Niagara, no act of humiliation, individual or national, could call one shower from heaven or deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.” In reply we would remark:

A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:

(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.

According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman: “We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.” See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a “mere dumb-bell exercise.” Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.

Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that “Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also: “All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24).

(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.

According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet. 1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.” But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the [pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.” But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.

(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.

This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition: “Thy will be done” (Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson: “It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”

(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.

We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the “perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).

It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:

B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—

(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.

Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge: “Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.” Kendall Brooks: “The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be [pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”

Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”

Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.” William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research: “Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.” Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”

Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.

The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but by endlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.” Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.

Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”

Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:

(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.

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J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson: “The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.” The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied: “First consult the barometer.” Phillips Brooks: “Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”

The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried: “Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.

Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.

The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley: “The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.

Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.” Miss Heloise E. Hersey: “Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.” Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak [pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?” See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.

C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.

(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.

Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.” Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon: “If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.” Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson: “I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”

(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.

Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief. 1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said, “let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.” Romaine speaks of “a year famous for believing.” Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” “Impossible?” said Napoleon; “then it shall be done!” Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?” “Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”

Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge: “Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”

(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.

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Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.” Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller: “I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.” Christ's prayer, “let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the “thorn in the flesh” might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.

(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that “prediction is the crown of all science.” But, as Diman remarks: “geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.” Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, in Mal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com., in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.

But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22 sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”

Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit “helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself [pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of “submitting” to perfect Wisdom, or of “being resigned” to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.” See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297. Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.

3. To Christian activity.

Here the truth lies between the two extremes of quietism and naturalism.

(a) In opposition to the false abnegation of human reason and will which quietism demands, we hold that God guides us, not by continual miracle, but by his natural providence and the energizing of our faculties by his Spirit, so that we rationally and freely do our own work, and work out our own salvation.

Upham, Interior Life, 356, defines quietism as “cessation of wandering thoughts and discursive imaginations, rest from irregular desires and affections, and perfect submission of the will.” Its advocates, however, have often spoken of it as a giving up of our will and reason, and a swallowing up of these in the wisdom and will of God. This phraseology is misleading, and savors of a pantheistic merging of man in God. Dorner: “Quietism makes God a monarch without living subjects.” Certain English quietists, like the Mohammedans, will not employ physicians in sickness. They quote 2 Chron. 16:12, 13—Asa “sought not to Jehovah, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers.” They forget that the “physicians” alluded to in Chronicles were probably heathen necromancers. Cromwell to his Ironsides: “Trust God, and keep your powder dry!”

Providence does not exclude, but rather implies the operation of natural law, by which we mean God's regular way of working. It leaves no excuse for the sarcasm of Robert Browning's Mr. Sludge the Medium, 223—“Saved your precious self from what befell The thirty-three whom Providence forgot.” Schurman, Belief in God, 213—“The temples were hung with the votive offerings of those only who had escapeddrowning.” “So like Provvy!” Bentham used to say, when anything particularly unseemly occurred in the way of natural catastrophe, God reveals himself in natural law. Physicians and medicine are his methods, as well as the impartation of faith and courage to the patient. The advocates of faith-cure should provide by faith that no believing Christian should die. With the apostolic miracles should go inspiration, as Edward Irving declared. “Every man is as lazy as circumstances will admit.” We throw upon the shoulders of Providence the burdens which belong to us to bear. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13).

Prayer without the use of means is an insult to God. “If God has decreed that you should live, what is the use of your eating or drinking?” Can a drowning man refuse to swim, or even to lay hold of the rope that is thrown to him, and yet ask God to save him on account of his faith? “Tie your camel,” said Mohammed, “and commit it to God.” Frederick Douglas used to say that when in slavery he often prayed for freedom, but his prayer was never answered till he prayed with his feet—and ran away. Whitney, Integrity of Christian Science, 68—“The existence of the dynamo at the power-house does not make unnecessary the trolley line, nor the secondary motor, nor the conductor's application of the power. True quietism is a resting in the Lord after we have done our part.” Ps. 37:7—“Rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for him”; Is. 57:2—“He entereth into peace; they rest in their beds, each one that walketh in his uprightness”. Ian Maclaren, Cure of Souls, 147—“Religion has three places of abode: in the reason, which is theology; in the conscience, which is ethics; and in the heart, which is quietism.” On the self-guidance of Christ, see Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 202-232.

George Müller, writing about ascertaining the will of God, says: “I seek at the beginning to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter. Nine tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever it may be. Having done this, I do not leave the result to feeling or simple impression. If I do so, I make myself liable to a great delusion. I seek the will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone, without [pg 440]the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, he will do it according to the Scriptures, and never contrary to them. Next I take into account providential circumstances. These often plainly indicate God's will in connection with his Word and his Spirit. I ask God in prayer to reveal to me his will aright. Thus through prayer to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to a deliberate judgment according to the best of my knowledge and ability, and, if my mind is thus at peace, I proceed accordingly.”

We must not confound rational piety with false enthusiasm. See Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm. “Not quiescence, but acquiescence, is demanded of us.” As God feeds “the birds of the heaven” (Mat. 6:26), not by dropping food from heaven into their mouths, but by stimulating them to seek food for themselves, so God provides for his rational creatures by giving them a sanctified common sense and by leading them to use it. In a true sense Christianity gives us more will than ever. The Holy Spirit emancipates the will, sets it upon proper objects, and fills it with new energy. We are therefore not to surrender ourselves passively to whatever professes to be a divine suggestion: 1 John 4:1—“believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God.” The test is the revealed word of God: Is. 8:20—“To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” See remarks on false Mysticism, pages 32, 33.

(b) In opposition to naturalism, we hold that God is continually near the human spirit by his providential working, and that this providential working is so adjusted to the Christian's nature and necessities as to furnish instruction with regard to duty, discipline of religious character, and needed help and comfort in trial.

In interpreting God's providences, as in interpreting Scripture, we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is, indeed, in great part an application of Scripture truth to present circumstances. While we never allow ourselves to act blindly and irrationally, but accustom ourselves to weigh evidence with regard to duty, we are to expect, as the gift of the Spirit, an understanding of circumstances—a fine sense of God's providential purposes with regard to us, which will make our true course plain to ourselves, although we may not always be able to explain it to others.

The Christian may have a continual divine guidance. Unlike the unfaithful and unbelieving, of whom it is said, in Ps. 106:13, “They waited not for his counsel,” the true believer has wisdom given him from above. Ps. 32:8—“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go”; Prov. 3:6—“In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he will direct thy paths”; Phil. 1:9—“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment” (αἰσθήσει = spiritual discernment); James 1:5—“if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth (τοῦ διδόντος Θεοῦ) to all liberally and upbraideth not”; John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends”; Col. 1:9, 10—“that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing.”

God's Spirit makes Providence as well as the Bible personal to us. From every page of nature, as well as of the Bible, the living God speaks to us. Tholuck: “The more we recognize in every daily occurrence God's secret inspiration, guiding and controlling us, the more will all which to others wears a common and every-day aspect prove to us a sign and a wondrous work.” Hutton, Essays: “Animals that are blind slaves of impulse, driven about by forces from within, have so to say fewer valves in their moral constitution for the entrance of divine guidance. But minds alive to every word of God give constant opportunity for his interference with suggestions that may alter the course of their lives. The higher the mind, the more it glides into the region of providential control. God turns the good by the slightest breath of thought.” So the Christian hymn, “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah!” likens God's leading of the believer to that of Israel by the pillar of fire and cloud; and Paul in his dungeon calls himself “the prisoner of Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:1). Affliction is the discipline of God's providence. Greek proverb: “He who does not get thrashed, does not get educated.” On God's Leadings, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 560-562.

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Abraham “went out, not knowing whither he went” (Heb. 11:8). Not till he reached Canaan did he know the place of his destination. Like a child he placed his hand in the hand of his unseen Father, to be led whither he himself knew not. We often have guidance without discernment of that guidance. Is. 42:16—“I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; in paths that they know not will I lead them.” So we act more wisely than we ourselves understand, and afterwards look back with astonishment to see what we have been able to accomplish. Emerson: “Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew.” Disappointments? Ah, you make a mistake in the spelling; the D should be an H: His appointments. Melanchthon: “Quem poetæ fortunam, nos Deum appellamus.”Chinese proverb: “The good God never smites with both hands.” “Tact is a sort of psychical automatism” (Ladd). There is a Christian tact which is rarely at fault, because its possessor is “led by the Spirit of God” (Rom. 8:14). Yet we must always make allowance, as Oliver Cromwell used to say, “for the possibility of being mistaken.”

When Luther's friends wrote despairingly of the negotiations at the Diet of Worms, he replied from Coburg that he had been looking up at the night sky, spangled and studded with stars, and had found no pillars to hold them up. And yet they did not fall. God needs no props for his stars and planets. He hangs them on nothing. So, in the working of God's providence, the unseen is prop enough for the seen. Henry Drummond, Life, 127—“To find out God's will: 1. Pray. 2. Think. 3. Talk to wise people, but do not regard their decision as final. 4. Beware of the bias of your own will, but do not be too much afraid of it (God never unnecessarily thwarts a man's nature and likings, and it is a mistake to think that his will is always in the line of the disagreeable). 5. Meantime, do the next thing (for doing God's will in small things is the best preparation for knowing it in great things). 6. When decision and action are necessary, go ahead. 7. Never reconsider the decision when it is finally acted on; and 8. You will probably not find out until afterwards, perhaps long afterwards, that you have been led at all.”

Amiel lamented that everything was left to his own responsibility and declared: “It is this thought that disgusts me with the government of my own life. To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned and sustained by a supreme Power, to feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have him be,—in harmony with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm. I have not got it. All that is seems to me arbitrary and fortuitous.” How much better is Wordsworth's faith, Excursion, book 4:581—“One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists, one only: an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power, Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good.” Mrs. Browning, De Profundis, stanza xxiii—“I praise thee while my days go on; I love thee while my days go on! Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank thee while my days go on!”

4. To the evil acts of free agents.

(a) Here we must distinguish between the natural agency and the moral agency of God, or between acts of permissive providence and acts of efficient causation. We are ever to remember that God neither works evil, nor causes his creatures to work evil. All sin is chargeable to the self-will and perversity of the creature; to declare God the author of it is the greatest of blasphemies.

Bp. Wordsworth: “God foresees evil deeds, but never forces them.” “God does not cause sin, any more than the rider of a limping horse causes the limping.” Nor can it be said that Satan is the author of man's sin. Man's powers are his own. Not Satan, but the man himself, gives the wrong application to these powers. Not the cause, but the occasion, of sin is in the tempter; the cause is in the evil will which yields to his persuasions.

(b) But while man makes up his evil decision independently of God, God does, by his natural agency, order the method in which this inward evil shall express itself, by limiting it in time, place, and measure, or by guiding it to the end which his wisdom and love, and not man's intent, has [pg 442] set. In all this, however, God only allows sin to develop itself after its own nature, so that it may be known, abhorred, and if possible overcome and forsaken.

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:272-284—“Judas's treachery works the reconciliation of the world, and Israel's apostasy the salvation of the Gentiles.... God smooths the path of the sinner, and gives him chance for the outbreak of the evil, like a wise physician who draws to the surface of the body the disease that has been raging within, in order that it may be cured, if possible, by mild means, or, if not, may be removed by the knife.”

Christianity rises in spite of, nay, in consequence of opposition, like a kite against the wind. When Christ has used the sword with which he has girded himself, as he used Cyrus and the Assyrian, he breaks it and throws it away. He turns the world upside down that he may get it right side up. He makes use of every member of society, as the locomotive uses every cog. The sufferings of the martyrs add to the number of the church; the worship of relics stimulates the Crusades; the worship of the saints leads to miracle plays and to the modern drama; the worship of images helps modern art; monasticism, scholasticism, the Papacy, even sceptical and destructive criticism stir up defenders of the faith. Shakespeare, Richard III, 5:1—“Thus doth he force the swords of wicked men To turn their own points on their masters' bosoms”; Hamlet, 1:2—“Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes”; Macbeth, 1:7—“Even handed justice Commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice To our own lips.”

The Emperor of Germany went to Paris incognito and returned, thinking that no one had known of his absence. But at every step, going and coming, he was surrounded by detectives who saw that no harm came to him. The swallow drove again and again at the little struggling moth, but there was a plate glass window between them which neither one of them knew. Charles Darwin put his cheek against the plate glass of the cobra's cage, but could not keep himself from starting when the cobra struck. Tacitus, Annales, 14:5—“Noctem sideribus illustrem, quasi convinsendum ad scelus, dii præbuere”—“a night brilliant with stars, as if for the purpose of proving the crime, was granted by the gods.” See F. A. Noble, Our Redemption, 59-76, on the self-registry and self-disclosure of sin, with quotation from Daniel Webster's speech in the case of Knapp at Salem: “It must be confessed. It will be confessed. There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.”

(c) In cases of persistent iniquity, God's providence still compels the sinner to accomplish the design with which he and all things have been created, namely, the manifestation of God's holiness. Even though he struggle against God's plan, yet he must by his very resistance serve it. His sin is made its own detector, judge, and tormentor. His character and doom are made a warning to others. Refusing to glorify God in his salvation, he is made to glorify God in his destruction.

Is. 10:5, 7—“Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation!... Howbeit, he meaneth not so.” Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago: “He [Treluddra] is one of those base natures, whom fact only lashes into greater fury,—a Pharaoh, whose heart the Lord himself can only harden”—here we would add the qualification: “consistently with the limits which he has set to the operations of his grace.” Pharaoh's ordering the destruction of the Israelitish children (Ex. 1:16) was made the means of putting Moses under royal protection, of training him for his future work, and finally of rescuing the whole nation whose sons Pharaoh sought to destroy. So God brings good out of evil; see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 28-35. Emerson: “My will fulfilled shall be, For in daylight as in dark My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark.” See also Edwards, Works, 4:300-312.

Col. 2:15—“having stripped off from himself the principalities and the powers”—the hosts of evil spirits that swarmed upon him in their final onset—“he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it,” i. e., in the cross, thus turning their evil into a means of good. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 443,—“Love, seeking for absolute evil, is like an electric light engaged in searching for a shadow,—when Love gets there, the shadow has disappeared.”But this means, not that all things are good, but that “all things work together [pg 443]for good” (Rom. 8:28)—God overruling for good that which in itself is only evil. John Wesley: “God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.” Sermon on “The Devil's Mistakes”: Satan thought he could overcome Christ in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross. He triumphed when he cast Paul into prison. But the cross was to Christ a lifting up, that should draw all men to him (John 12:32), and Paul's imprisonment furnished his epistles to the New Testament.

“It is one of the wonders of divine love that even our blemishes and sins God will take when we truly repent of them and give them into his hands, and will in some way make them to be blessings. A friend once showed Ruskin a costly handkerchief on which a blot of ink had been made. ‘Nothing can be done with that,’ the friend said, thinking the handkerchief worthless and ruined now. Ruskin carried it away with him, and after a time sent it back to his friend. In a most skilful and artistic way, he had made a fine design in India ink, using the blot as its basis. Instead of being ruined, the handkerchief was made far more beautiful and valuable. So God takes the blots and stains upon our lives, the disfiguring blemishes, when we commit them to him, and by his marvellous grace changes them into marks of beauty. David's grievous sin was not only forgiven, but was made a transforming power in his life. Peter's pitiful fall became a step upward through his Lord's forgiveness and gentle dealing.” So “men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things”(Tennyson, In Memoriam, I).

Section IV.—Good And Evil Angels.

As ministers of divine providence there is a class of finite beings, greater in intelligence and power than man in his present state, some of whom positively serve God's purpose by holiness and voluntary execution of his will, some negatively, by giving examples to the universe of defeated and punished rebellion, and by illustrating God's distinguishing grace in man's salvation.

The scholastic subtleties which encumbered this doctrine in the Middle Ages, and the exaggerated representations of the power of evil spirits which then prevailed, have led, by a natural reaction, to an undue depreciation of it in more recent times.

For scholastic discussions, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa (ed. Migne), 1:833-993. The scholastics debated the questions, how many angels could stand at once on the point of a needle (relation of angels to space); whether an angel could be in two places at the same time; how great was the interval between the creation of angels and their fall; whether the sin of the first angel caused the sin of the rest; whether as many retained their integrity as fell; whether our atmosphere is the place of punishment for fallen angels; whether guardian-angels have charge of children from baptism, from birth, or while the infant is yet in the womb of the mother; even the excrements of angels were subjects of discussion, for if there was “angels' food” (Ps. 78:25), and if angels ate (Gen. 18:8), it was argued that we must take the logical consequences.

Dante makes the creation of angels simultaneous with that of the universe at large. “The fall of the rebel angels he considers to have taken place within twenty seconds of their creation, and to have originated in the pride which made Lucifer unwilling to await the time prefixed by his Maker for enlightening him with perfect knowledge”—see Rossetti, Shadow of Dante, 14, 15. Milton, unlike Dante, puts the creation of angels ages before the creation of man. He tells us that Satan's first name in heaven is now lost. The sublime associations with which Milton surrounds the adversary diminish our abhorrence of the evil one. Satan has been called the hero of the Paradise Lost. Dante's representation is much more true to Scripture. But we must not go to the extreme of giving ludicrous designations to the devil. This indicates and causes scepticism as to his existence.

In mediæval times men's minds were weighed down by the terror of the spirit of evil. It was thought possible to sell one's soul to Satan, and such compacts were [pg 444]written with blood. Goethe represents Mephistopheles as saying to Faust: “I to thy service here agree to bind me, To run and never rest at call of thee; When over yonderthou shalt find me, Then thou shalt do as much for me.” The cathedrals cultivated and perpetuated this superstition, by the figures of malignant demons which grinned from the gargoyles of their roofs and the capitals of their columns, and popular preaching exalted Satan to the rank of a rival god—a god more feared than was the true and living God. Satan was pictured as having horns and hoofs—an image of the sensual and bestial—which led Cuvier to remark that the adversary could not devour, because horns and hoofs indicated not a carnivorous but a ruminant quadruped.

But there is certainly a possibility that the ascending scale of created intelligences does not reach its topmost point in man. As the distance between man and the lowest forms of life is filled in with numberless gradations of being, so it is possible that between man and God there exist creatures of higher than human intelligence. This possibility is turned to certainty by the express declarations of Scripture. The doctrine is interwoven with the later as well as with the earlier books of revelation.

Quenstedt (Theol., 1:629) regards the existence of angels as antecedently probable, because there are no gaps in creation; nature does not proceed per saltum. As we have (1) beings purely corporeal, as stones; (2) beings partly corporeal and partly spiritual, as men: so we should expect in creation (3) beings wholly spiritual, as angels. Godet, in his Biblical Studies of the O. T., 1-29, suggests another series of gradations. As we have (1) vegetables—species without individuality; (2) animals—individuality in bondage to species; and (3) men—species overpowered by individuality: so we may expect (4) angels—individuality without species.

If souls live after death, there is certainly a class of disembodied spirits. It is not impossible that God may have created spirits without bodies. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 110—“The existence of lesser deities in all heathen mythologies, and the disposition of man everywhere to believe in beings superior to himself and inferior to the supreme God, is a presumptive argument in favor of their existence.” Locke: “That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to me from hence, that in all the visible and corporeal world we see no chasms and gaps.” Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 193—“A man may certainly believe in the existence of angels upon the testimony of one who claims to have come from the heavenly world, if he can believe in the Ornithorhyncus upon the testimony of travelers.” Tennyson, Two Voices: “This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. Think you this world of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?”

The doctrine of angels affords a barrier against the false conception of this world as including the whole spiritual universe. Earth is only part of a larger organism. As Christianity has united Jew and Gentile, so hereafter will it blend our own and other orders of creation: Col. 2:10—“who is the head of all principality and power”—Christ is the head of angels as well as of men; Eph. 1:10—“to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.” On Christ and Angels, see Robertson Smith in The Expositor, second series, vols. 1, 2, 3. On the general subject of angels, see also Whately, Good and Evil Angels; Twesten, transl. in Bib. Sac., 1:768, and 2:108; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:282-337, and 3:251-354; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 78 sq.; Scott, Existence of Evil Spirits; Herzog, Encyclopädie, arts.: Engel, Teufel; Jewett, Diabolology,—the Person and Kingdom of Satan; Alexander, Demonic Possession.

I. Scripture Statements and Imitations.

1. As to the nature and attributes of angels.

(a) They are created beings.

Ps. 148:2-5—“Praise ye him, all his angels.... For he commanded, and they were created”; Col. 1:16—“for in him were all things created ... whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers”; cf. 1 Pet. 3:32—“angels and authorities and powers.” God alone is uncreated and eternal. This is implied in 1 Tim. 6:16—“who only hath immortality.”

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(b) They are incorporeal beings.

In Heb. 1:14, where a single word is used to designate angels, they are described as “spirits”—“are they not all ministering spirits?” Men, with their twofold nature, material as well as immaterial, could not well be designated as “spirits.” That their being characteristically “spirits” forbids us to regard angels as having a bodily organism, seems implied in Eph. 6:12—“for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against ... the spiritual hosts [or “things”] of wickedness in the heavenly places”; cf. Eph. 1:3; 2:6. In Gen. 6:2, “sons of God” =, not angels, but descendants of Seth and worshipers of the true God (see Murphy, Com., in loco). In Ps. 78:25 (A. V.), “angels' food” = manna coming from heaven where angels dwell; better, however, read with Rev. Vers.: “bread of the mighty”—probably meaning angels, though the word “mighty” is nowhere else applied to them; possibly = “bread of princes or nobles,” i. e., the finest, most delicate bread. Mat 22:30—“neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven”—and Luke 20:36—“neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels”—imply only that angels are without distinctions of sex. Saints are to be like angels, not as being incorporeal, but as not having the same sexual relations which they have here.

There are no “souls of angels,” as there are “souls of men” (Rev. 18:13), and we may infer that angels have no bodies for souls to inhabit; see under Essential Elements of Human Nature. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 258, attributes to evil spirits an instinct or longing for a body to possess, even though it be the body of an inferior animal: “So in Scripture we have spirits represented as wandering about to seek rest in bodies, and asking permission to enter into swine” (Mat. 12:43; 8:31). Angels therefore, since they have no bodies, know nothing of growth, age, or death. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 133—“It is precisely because the angels are only spirits, but not souls, that they cannot possess the same rich existence as man, whose soul is the point of union in which spirit and nature meet.”

(c) They are personal—that is, intelligent and voluntary—agents.

2 Sam. 14:20—“wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God”; Luke 4:34—“I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God”; 2 Tim. 2:26—“snare of the devil ... taken captive by him unto his will”; Rev. 22:9—“See thou do it not” = exercise of will; Rev. 12:12—“The devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath” = set purpose of evil.

(d) They are possessed of superhuman intelligence and power, yet an intelligence and power that has its fixed limits.

Mat. 24:36—“of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven” = their knowledge, though superhuman, is yet finite. 1 Pet. 1:12—“which things angels desire to look into”; Ps. 103:20—“angels ... mighty in strength”; 2 Thess. 1:7—“the angels of his power”; 2 Pet. 2:11—“angels, though greater [than men] in might and power”; Rev. 20:2, 10—“laid hold on the dragon ... and bound him ... cast into the lake of fire.” Compare Ps. 72:18—“God ... Who only doeth wondrous things” = only God can perform miracles. Angels are imperfect compared with God (Job 4:18; 15:15; 25:5).

Power, rather than beauty or intelligence, is their striking characteristic. They are “principalities and powers” (Col. 1:16). They terrify those who behold them (Mat. 28:4). The rolling away of the stone from the sepulchre took strength. A wheel of granite, eight feet in diameter and one foot thick, rolling in a groove, would weigh more than four tons. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 86—“The spiritual might and burning indignation in the face of Stephen reminded the guilty Sanhedrin of an angelic vision.” Even in their tenderest ministrations they strengthen (Luke 22:43; cf. Dan. 10:19). In 1 Tim. 6:15—“King of kings and Lord of lords”—the words “kings” and “lords” (βασιλευόντων and κυριευόντων) may refer to angels. In the case of evil spirits especially, power seems the chief thing in mind, e. g., “the prince of this world,” “the strong man armed,” “the power of darkness,” “rulers of the darkness of this world,” “the great dragon,” “all the power of the enemy,” “all these things will I give thee,” “deliver us from the evil one.”

(e) They are an order of intelligences distinct from man and older than man.

Angels are distinct from man. 1 Cor. 6:3—“we shall judge angels”; Heb. 1:14—“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?” They are not glorified human spirits; see Heb. 2:16—“for verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to [pg 446]the seed of Abraham”; also 12:22, 23, where “the innumerable hosts of angels” are distinguished from “the church of the firstborn” and “the spirits of just men made perfect.” In Rev. 22:9—“I am a fellow-servant with thee”—“fellow-servant” intimates likeness to men, not in nature, but in service and subordination to God, the proper object of worship. Sunday School Times, Mch. 15, 1902:146—“Angels are spoken of as greater in power and might than man, but that could be said of many a lower animal, or even of whirlwind and fire. Angels are never spoken of as a superior order of spiritual beings. We are to ‘judge angels’ (1 Cor. 6:3), and inferiors are not to judge superiors.”

Angels are an order of intelligences older than man. The Fathers made the creation of angels simultaneous with the original calling into being of the elements, perhaps basing their opinion on the apocryphal Ecclesiasticus, 18:1—“he that liveth eternally created all things together.” In Job 38:7, the Hebrews parallelism makes “morning stars”—“sons of God,” so that angels are spoken of as present at certain stages of God's creative work. The mention of “the serpent” in Gen. 3:1 implies the fall of Satan before the fall of man. We may infer that the creation of angels took place before the creation of man—the lower before the higher. In Gen. 2:1, “all the host of them,” which God had created, may be intended to include angels. Man was the crowning work of creation, created after angels were created. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 81—“Angels were perhaps created before the material heavens and earth—a spiritual substratum in which the material things were planted, a preparatory creation to receive what was to follow. In the vision of Jacob they ascend first and descend after; their natural place is in the world below.”

The constant representation of angels as personal beings in Scripture cannot be explained as a personification of abstract good and evil, in accommodation to Jewish superstitions, without wresting many narrative passages from their obvious sense; implying on the part of Christ either dissimulation or ignorance as to an important point of doctrine; and surrendering belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament from which these Jewish views of angelic beings were derived.

Jesus accommodated himself to the popular belief in respect at least to “Abraham's bosom”(Luke 16:22), and he confessed ignorance with regard to the time of the end (Mark 13:32); see Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 245-248. But in the former case his hearers probably understood him to speak figuratively and rhetorically, while in the latter case there was no teaching of the false but only limitation of knowledge with regard to the true. Our Lord did not hesitate to contradict Pharisaic belief in the efficacy of ceremonies, and Sadducean denial of resurrection and future life. The doctrine of angels had even stronger hold upon the popular mind than had these errors of the Pharisees and Sadducees. That Jesus did not correct or deny the general belief, but rather himself expressed and confirmed it, implies that the belief was rational and Scriptural. For one of the best statements of the argument for the existence of evil spirits, see Broadus, Com. on Mat. 8:28.

Eph. 3:10—“to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”—excludes the hypothesis that angels are simply abstract conceptions of good or evil. We speak of “moon-struck” people (lunatics), only when we know that nobody supposes us to believe in the power of the moon to cause madness. But Christ's contemporaries did suppose him to believe in angelic spirits, good and evil. If this belief was an error, it was by no means a harmless one, and the benevolence as well as the veracity of Christ would have led him to correct it. So too, if Paul had known that there were no such beings as angels, he could not honestly have contented himself with forbidding the Colossians to worship them (Col 2:18) but would have denied their existence, as he denied the existence of heathen gods (1 Cor. 8:4).

Theodore Parker said it was very evident that Jesus Christ believed in a personal devil. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 35—“There can be no doubt that Jesus shared with his contemporaries the representation of two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil.” Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:164—Jesus “makes it appear as if Satan was the immediate tempter. I am far from thinking that he does so in a merely figurative way. Beyond all doubt Jesus accepted the contemporary ideas as to the real existence of Satan, and accordingly, in the particular cases of disease referred to, he supposes a real Satanic temptation.” Maurice, Theological Essays, [pg 447]32, 34—“The acknowledgment of an evil spirit is characteristic of Christianity.” H. B. Smith, System, 261—“It would appear that the power of Satan in the world reached its culminating point at the time of Christ, and has been less ever since.”

The same remark applies to the view which regards Satan as but a collective term for all evil beings, human or superhuman. The Scripture representations of the progressive rage of the great adversary, from his first assault on human virtue in Genesis to his final overthrow in Revelation, join with the testimony of Christ just mentioned, to forbid any other conclusion than this, that there is a personal being of great power, who carries on organized opposition to the divine government.

Crane, The Religion of To-morrow, 299 sq.—“We well say ‘personal devil,’ for there is no devil but personality.” We cannot deny the personality of Satan except upon principles which would compel us to deny the existence of good angels, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the personality of God the Father,—we may add, even the personality of the human soul. Says Nigel Penruddock in Lord Beaconsfield's “Endymion”: “Give me a single argument against his [Satan's] personality, which is not applicable to the personality of the Deity.” One of the most ingenious devices of Satan is that of persuading men that he has no existence. Next to this is the device of substituting for belief in a personal devil the belief in a merely impersonal spirit of evil. Such a substitution we find in Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, 1:311—“The idea of the devil was a welcome expedient for the need of advanced religious reflection, to put God out of relation to the evil and badness of the world.” Pfleiderer tells us that the early optimism of the Hebrews, like that of the Greeks, gave place in later times to pessimism and despair. But the Hebrews still had hope of deliverance by the Messiah and an apocalyptic reign of good.

For the view that Satan is merely a collective term for all evil beings, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 131-137. Bushnell, holding moral evil to be a necessary “condition privative” of all finite beings as such, believes that “good angels have all been passed through and helped up out of a fall, as the redeemed of mankind will be.” “Elect angels” (1 Tim. 5:21) then would mean those saved after falling, not those saved fromfalling; and “Satan” would be, not the name of a particular person, but the all or total of all bad minds and powers. Per contra, see Smith's Bible Dictionary, arts.: Angels, Demons, Demoniacs, Satan; Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 16-26. For a comparison of Satan in the Book of Job, with Milton's Satan in “Paradise Lost,” and Goethe's Mephistopheles in “Faust,” see Masson, The Three Devils. We may add to this list Dante's Satan (or Dis) in the “Divine Comedy,” Byron's Lucifer in “Cain,” and Mrs. Browning's Lucifer in her “Drama of Exile”; see Gregory, Christian Ethics, 219.

2. As to their number and organization.

(a) They are of great multitude.

Deut. 33:2—“Jehovah ... came from the ten thousands of holy ones”; Ps. 68:17—“The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands upon thousands”; Dan. 7:10—“thousands of thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him”; Rev. 5:11—“I heard a voice of many angels ... and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.” Anselm thought that the number of lost angels was filled up by the number of elect men. Savage, Life after Death, 61—The Pharisees held very exaggerated notions of the number of angelic spirits. They “said that a man, if he threw a stone over his shoulder or cast away a broken piece of pottery, asked pardon of any spirit that he might possibly have hit in so doing.” So in W. H. H. Murray's time it was said to be dangerous in the Adirondack to fire a gun,—you might hit a man.

(b) They constitute a company, as distinguished from a race.

Mat. 22:30—“they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven”; Luke 20:36—“neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God.” We are called “sons of men,” but angels are never called “sons of angels,” but only “sons of God.” They are not developed from one original stock, and no such common nature binds them together as binds together the race of man. They have no common character and history. Each was created separately, and each apostate angel fell by himself. Humanity fell all at [pg 448]once in its first father. Cut down a tree, and you cut down its branches. But angels were so many separate trees. Some lapsed into sin, but some remained holy. See Godet, Bib. Studies O. T., 1-29. This may be one reason why salvation was provided for fallen man, but not for fallen angels. Christ could join himself to humanity by taking the common nature of all. There was no common nature of angels which he could take. See Heb. 2:16—“not to angels doth he give help.” The angels are “sons of God,” as having no earthly parentage and no parentage at all except the divine. Eph. 3:14, 15—“the Father, of whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named,”—not “every family,” as in R. V., for there are no families among the angels. The marginal rendering “fatherhood” is better than “family,”—all the πατριαί are named from the πατήρ. Dodge, Christian Theology, 172—“The bond between angels is simply a mental and moral one. They can gain nothing by inheritance, nothing through domestic and family life, nothing through a society held together by a bond of blood.... Belonging to two worlds and not simply to one, the human soul has in it the springs of a deeper and wider experience than angels can have.... God comes nearer to man than to his angels.” Newman Smyth, Through Science to Faith, 191—“In the resurrection life of man, the species has died; man the individual lives on. Sex shall be no more needed for the sake of life; they shall no more marry, but men and women, the children of marriage, shall be as the angels. Through the death of the human species shall be gained, as the consummation of all, the immortality of the individuals.”

(c) They are of various ranks and endowments.

Col. 1:16—“thrones or dominions or principalities or powers”; 1 Thess. 4:16—“the voice of the archangel”; Jude 9—“Michael the archangel.” Michael (= who is like God?) is the only one expressly called an archangel in Scripture, although Gabriel (= God's hero) has been called an archangel by Milton. In Scripture, Michael seems the messenger of law and judgment; Gabriel, the messenger of mercy and promise. The fact that Scripture has but one archangel is proof that its doctrine of angels was not, as has sometimes been charged, derived from Babylonian and Persian sources; for there we find seven archangels instead of one. There, moreover, we find the evil spirit enthroned as a god, while in Scripture he is represented as a trembling slave.

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:51—“The devout and trustful consciousness of the immediate nearness of God, which is expressed in so many beautiful utterances of the Psalmist, appears to be supplanted in later Judaism by a belief in angels, which is closely analogous to the superstitious belief in the saints on the part of the Romish church. It is very significant that the Jews in the time of Jesus could no longer conceive of the promulgation of the law on Sinai, which was to them the foundation of their whole religion, as an immediate revelation of Jehovah to Moses, except as instituted through the mediation of angels (Acts 7:38, 53; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2; Josephus, Ant. 15:5, 3).”

(d) They have an organization.

1 Sam. 1:11—“Jehovah of hosts”; 1 K. 22:19—“Jehovah sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left”; Mat. 26:53—“twelve legions of angels”—suggests the organization of the Roman army; 25:41—“the devil and his angels”; Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers in the air”; Rev. 2:13—“Satan's throne” (not “seat”); 16:10—“throne of the beast”—“a hellish parody of the heavenly kingdom” (Trench). The phrase “host of heaven,” in Deut. 4:19; 17:3; Acts 7:42, probably = the stars; but in Gen. 32:2, “God's host” = angels, for when Jacob saw the angels he said “this is God's host.” In general the phrases “God of hosts”, “Lord of hosts” seem to mean “God of angels”, “Lord of angels”: compare 2 Chron. 18:18; Luke 2:13; Rev. 19:14—“the armies which are in heaven.” Yet in Neh. 9:6 and Ps. 33:6 the word “host” seems to include both angels and stars.

Satan is “the ape of God.” He has a throne. He is “the prince of the world” (John 14:30; 16:11), “the prince of the powers of the air” (Eph. 2:2). There is a cosmos and order of evil, as well as a cosmos and order of good, though Christ is stronger than the strong man armed (Luke 11:21) and rules even over Satan. On Satan in the Old Testament, see art. by T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34. The first mention of Satan is in the account of the Fall in Gen. 3:1-15; the second in Lev. 16:8, where one of the two goats on the day of atonement is said to be “for Azazel,” or Satan; the third where Satan moved David to number Israel (1 Chron. 21:1); the fourth in the book of Job 1:6-12; the fifth in Zech. 3:1-3, where Satan stands as the adversary of Joshua the high priest, but Jehovah addresses Satan and rebukes him. Cheyne, Com. on Isaiah, vol. 1, p. 11, thinks [pg 449]that the stars were first called the hosts of God, with the notion that they were animated creatures. In later times the belief in angels threw into the background the belief in the stars as animated beings; the angels however were connected very closely with the stars. Marlowe, in his Tamburlaine, says: “The moon, the planets, and the meteors light, These angels in their crystal armor fight A doubtful battle.”

With regard to the “cherubim” of Genesis, Exodus, and Ezekiel,—with which the “seraphim” of Isaiah and the “living creatures” of the book of Revelation are to be identified,—the most probable interpretation is that which regards them, not as actual beings of higher rank than man, but as symbolic appearances, intended to represent redeemed humanity, endowed with all the creature perfections lost by the Fall, and made to be the dwelling-place of God.

Some have held that the cherubim are symbols of the divine attributes, or of God's government over nature; see Smith's Bib. Dict., art.: Cherub; Alford, Com. on Rev. 4:6-8, and Hulsean Lectures, 1841: vol. 1, Lect. 2; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:278. But whatever of truth belongs to this view may be included in the doctrine stated above. The cherubim are indeed symbols of nature pervaded by the divine energy and subordinated to the divine purposes, but they are symbols of nature only because they are symbols of man in his twofold capacity of image of God and priest of nature. Man, as having a body, is a part of nature; as having a soul, he emerges from nature and gives to nature a voice. Through man, nature, otherwise blind and dead, is able to appreciate and to express the Creator's glory.

The doctrine of the cherubim embraces the following points: 1. The cherubim are not personal beings, but are artificial, temporary, symbolic figures. 2. While they are not themselves personal existences, they are symbols of personal existence—symbols not of divine or angelic perfections but of human nature (Ex. 1:5—“they had the likeness of a man”; Rev. 5:9—A. V.—“thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood”—so read א, B, and Tregelles; the Eng. and Am. Rev. Vers., however, follow A and Tischendorf, and omit the word “us”). 3. They are emblems of human nature, not in its present stage of development, but possessed of all its original perfections; for this reason the most perfect animal forms—the kinglike courage of the lion, the patient service of the ox, the soaring insight of the eagle—are combined with that of man (Ez. 1 and 10; Rev. 4:6-8). 4. These cherubic forms represent, not merely material or earthly perfections, but human nature spiritualized and sanctified. They are “living creatures” and their life is a holy life of obedience to the divine will (Ez. 1:12—“whither the spirit was to go, they went”). 5. They symbolize a human nature exalted to be the dwelling-place of God. Hence the inner curtains of the tabernacle were inwoven with cherubic figures, and God's glory was manifested on the mercy-seat between the cherubim (Ex. 37:6-9). While the flaming sword at the gates of Eden was the symbol of justice, the cherubim were symbols of mercy—keeping the “way of the tree of life” for man, until by sacrifice and renewal Paradise should be regained (Gen. 3:24).

In corroboration of this general view, note that angels and cherubim never go together; and that in the closing visions of the book of Revelation these symbolic forms are seen no longer. When redeemed humanity has entered heaven, the figures which typified that humanity, having served their purpose, finally disappear. For fuller elaboration, see A. H. Strong, The Nature and Purpose of the Cherubim, in Philosophy and Religion, 391-399; Fairbairn, Typology, 1:185-208; Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:87; Bib. Sac., 1876:32-51; Bib. Com., 1:49-52—“The winged lions, eagles, and bulls, that guard the entrances of the palace of Nineveh, are worshipers rather than divinities.”It has lately been shown that the winged bull of Assyria was called “Kerub” almost as far back as the time of Moses. The word appears in its Hebrew form 500 years before the Jews had any contact with the Persian dominion. The Jews did not derive it from any Aryan race. It belonged to their own language.

The variable form of the cherubim seems to prove that they are symbolic appearances rather than real beings. A parallel may be found in classical literature. In Horace, Carmina, 3:11, 15, Cerberus has three heads; in 2:13, 34, he has a hundred. Bréal, Semantics suggests that the three heads may be dog-heads, while the hundred heads may be snake-heads. But Cerberus is also represented in Greece as having only one head. Cerberus must therefore be a symbol rather than an actually existing creature. H. W. Congdon of Wyoming, N. Y., held, however, that the cherubim are symbols of [pg 450]God's life in the universe as a whole. Ez. 28:14-19—“the anointed cherub that covereth”—the power of the King of Tyre was so all-pervading throughout his dominion, his sovereignty so absolute, and his decrees so instantly obeyed, that his rule resembled the divine government over the world. Mr. Congdon regarded the cherubim as a proof of monism. See Margoliouth, The Lord's Prayer, 159-180. On animal characteristics in man, see Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105.

3. As to their moral character.

(a) They were all created holy.

Gen. 1:31—“God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”; Jude 6—“angels that kept not their own beginning”—ἀρχήν seems here to mean their beginning in holy character, rather than their original lordship and dominion.

(b) They had a probation.

This we infer from 1 Tim. 5:21—“the elect angels”; cf. 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... unto obedience.” If certain angels, like certain men, are “elect ... unto obedience,” it would seem to follow that there was a period of probation, during which their obedience or disobedience determined their future destiny; see Ellicott on 1 Tim. 5:21. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 106-108—“Gen. 3:14—‘Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou’—in the sentence on the serpent, seems to imply that Satan's day of grace was ended when he seduced man. Thenceforth he was driven to live on dust, to triumph only in sin, to pick up a living out of man, to possess man's body or soul, to tempt from the good.”

(c) Some preserved their integrity.

Ps. 89:7—“the council of the holy ones”—a designation of angels; Mark 8:38—“the holy angels.”Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4:3—“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.”

(d) Some fell from their state of innocence.

John 8:44—“He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him”; 2 Pet. 2:4—“angels when they sinned”; Jude 6—“angels who kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation.” Shakespeare, Henry VIII, 3:2—“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition; By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?... How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!... When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.”

(e) The good are confirmed in good.

Mat. 6:10—“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”; 18:10—“in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”; 2 Cor. 11:14—“an angel of light.”

(f) The evil are confirmed in evil.

Mat. 13:19—“the evil one”; 1 John 5:18, 19—“the evil one toucheth him not ... the whole world lieth in the evil one”; cf. John 8:44—“Ye are of your father the devil ... When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof”; Mat. 6:13—“deliver us from the evil one.”

From these Scriptural statements we infer that all free creatures pass through a period of probation; that probation does not necessarily involve a fall; that there is possible a sinless development of moral beings. Other Scriptures seem to intimate that the revelation of God in Christ is an object of interest and wonder to other orders of intelligence than our own; that they are drawn in Christ more closely to God and to us; in short, that they are confirmed in their integrity by the cross. See 1 Pet. 1:12—“which things angels desire to look into”; Eph. 3:10—“that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”; Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself ... whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens”; Eph. 1:10—“to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth”—“the unification of the whole universe in Christ as the divine centre.... The great system is a harp all whose strings are in tune but one, and that one jarring string makes discord throughout the whole. The whole universe shall feel the influence, and shall be reduced to harmony, when that one string, the world in which we live, shall be put in tune by the hand of love and mercy”—freely quoted from Leitch, God's Glory in the Heavens, 327-330.

It is not impossible that God is using this earth as a breeding-ground from which to populate the universe. Mark Hopkins, Life, 317—“While there shall be gathered at [pg 451]last and preserved, as Paul says, a holy church, and every man shall be perfect and the church shall be spotless.... there will be other forms of perfection in other departments of the universe. And when the great day of restitution shall come and God shall vindicate his government, there may be seen to be coming in from other departments of the universe a long procession of angelic forms, great white legions from Sirius, from Arcturus and the chambers of the South, gathering around the throne of God and that centre around which the universe revolves.”

4. As to their employments.

A. The employments of good angels.

(a) They stand in the presence of God and worship him.

Ps. 29:1, 2—“Ascribe unto Jehovah, O ye sons of the mighty, Ascribe unto Jehovah glory and strength. Ascribe unto Jehovah the glory due unto his name. Worship Jehovah in holy array”—Perowne: “Heaven being thought of as one great temple, and all the worshipers therein as clothed in priestly vestments.” Ps. 89:7—“a God very terrible in the council of the holy ones,” i. e., angels—Perowne: “Angels are called an assembly or congregation, as the church above, which like the church below worships and praises God.” Mat. 18:10—“in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.” In apparent allusion to this text, Dante represents the saints as dwelling in the presence of God yet at the same time rendering humble service to their fellow men here upon the earth. Just in proportion to their nearness to God and the light they receive from him, is the influence they are able to exert over others.

(b) They rejoice in God's works.

Job 38:7—“all the sons of God shouted for joy”; Luke 15:10—“there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth”; cf. 2 Tim. 2:25—“if peradventure God may give them repentance.” Dante represents the angels that are nearest to God, the infinite source of life, as ever advancing toward the spring-time of youth, so that the oldest angels are the youngest.

(c) They execute God's will,—by working in nature;

Ps. 103:20—“Ye his angels ... that fulfil his word, Hearkening unto the voice of his word”; 104:4 marg.—“Who maketh his angels winds; His ministers a flaming fire,” i. e., lightnings. See Alford on Heb. 1:7—“The order of the Hebrew words here [in Ps. 104:4] is not the same as in the former verses (see especially v. 3), where we have: ‘Who maketh the clouds his chariot.’ For this transposition, those who insist that the passage means ‘he maketh winds his messengers’can give no reason.”

Farrar on Heb. 1:7—“He maketh his angels winds”; “The Rabbis often refer to the fact that God makes his angels assume any form he pleases, whether man (Gen. 18:2) or woman (Zech 5:9—‘two women, and the wind was in their wings’), or wind or flame (Ex. 3:2—‘angel ... in a flame of fire’; 2 K. 6:17). But that untenable and fleeting form of existence which is the glory of the angels would be an inferiority in the Son. He could not be clothed, as they are at God's will, in the fleeting robes of material phenomena.” John Henry Newman, in his Apologia, sees an angel in every flower. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 82—“Origen thought not a blade of grass nor a fly was without its angel. Rev. 14:18—an angel ‘that hath power over fire’; John 5:4—intermittent spring under charge of an angel; Mat. 28:2—descent of an angel caused earthquake on the morning of Christ's resurrection; Luke 13:11—control of diseases is ascribed to angels.”

(d) by guiding the affairs of nations;

Dan. 10:12, 13, 21—“I come for thy words' sake. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me ... Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me ... Michael your prince”; 11:1—“And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him”; 12:1—“at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people.” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 87, suggests the question whether “the spirit of the age” or “the national character” in any particular case may not be due to the unseen “principalities” under which men live. Paul certainly recognizes, in Eph. 2:2, “the prince of the powers of the air, ... the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” May not good angels be entrusted with influence over nations' affairs to counteract the evil and help the good?

[pg 452]

(e) by watching over the interests of particular churches;

1 Cor. 11:10—“for this cause ought the women to have a sign of authority [i. e., a veil] on her head, because of the angels”—who watch over the church and have care for its order. Matheson, Spiritual Development of St. Paul, 242—“Man's covering is woman's power. Ministration isher power and it allies her with a greater than man—the angel. Christianity is a feminine strength. Judaism had made woman only a means to an end—the multiplication of the race. So it had degraded her. Paul will restore woman to her original and equal dignity.” Col. 2:18—“Let no man rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility and worshiping of the angels”—a false worship which would be very natural if angels were present to guard the meetings of the saints. 1 Tim. 5:21—“I charge thee in the sight of God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things”—the public duties of the Christian minister.

Alford regards “the angels of the seven churches” (Rev. 1:20) as superhuman beings appointed to represent and guard the churches, and that upon the grounds: (1) that the word is used elsewhere in the book of Revelation only in this sense; and (2) that nothing in the book is addressed to a teacher individually, but all to some one who reflects the complexion and fortunes of the church as no human person could. We prefer, however, to regard “the angels of the seven churches” as meaning simply the pastors of the seven churches. The word “angel” means simply “messenger,” and may be used of human as well as of superhuman beings—see Hag. 1:13—“Haggai, Jehovah's messenger”—literally, “the angel of Jehovah.” The use of the word in this figurative sense would not be incongruous with the mystical character of the book of Revelation (see Bib. Sac. 12:339). John Lightfoot, Heb. and Talmud. Exerc., 2:90, says that “angel” was a term designating officer or elder of a synagogue. See also Bp. Lightfoot, Com. on Philippians, 187, 188; Jacobs, Eccl. Polity, 100 and note. In the Irvingite church, accordingly, “angels” constitute an official class.

(f) by assisting and protecting individual believers;

1 K. 19:5—“an angel touched him [Elijah], and said unto him, Arise and eat”; Ps. 91:11—“he will give his angels charge over thee, To keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone”; Dan. 6:22—“My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me”; Mat. 4:11—“angels came and ministered unto him”—Jesus was the type of all believers; 18:10—“despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father”; compare verse 6—“one of these little ones that believe on me”; see Meyer, Com. in loco, who regards these passages as proving the doctrine of guardian angels. Luke 16:22—“the beggar died, and ... was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom”; Heb. 1:14—“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?” Compare Acts 12:15—“And they said, It is his angel”—of Peter standing knocking; see Hackett, Com. in loco: the utterance “expresses a popular belief prevalent among the Jews, which is neither affirmed nor denied.” Shakespeare, Henry IV, 2nd part, 2:2—“For the boy—there is a good angel about him.” Per contra, see Broadus, Com. on Mat. 18:10—“It is simply said of believers as a class that there are angels which are ‘their angels’; but there is nothing here or elsewhere to show that one angel has special charge of one believer.”

(g) by punishing God's enemies.

2 K. 19:35—“it came to pass that night, that the angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand”; Acts 12:23—“And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.”

A general survey of this Scripture testimony as to the employments of good angels leads us to the following conclusions:

First,—that good angels are not to be considered as the mediating agents of God's regular and common providence, but as the ministers of his special providence in the affairs of his church. He “maketh his angels winds” and “a flaming fire,” not in his ordinary procedure, but in connection with special displays of his power for moral ends (Deut. 33:2; Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2). Their intervention is apparently occasional and exceptional—not at their own option, but only as it is permitted or commanded by God. Hence we are not to conceive of angels as coming [pg 453] between us and God, nor are we, without special revelation of the fact, to attribute to them in any particular case the effects which the Scriptures generally ascribe to divine providence. Like miracles, therefore, angelic appearances generally mark God's entrance upon new epochs in the unfolding of his plans. Hence we read of angels at the completion of creation (Job 38:7); at the giving of the law (Gal 3:19); at the birth of Christ (Luke 2:13); at the two temptations in the wilderness and in Gethsemane (Mat. 4:11, Luke 22:43); at the resurrection (Mat. 28:2); at the ascension (Acts 1:10); at the final judgment (Mat. 25:31).

The substance of these remarks may be found in Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:637-645. Milton tells us that “Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” Whether this be true or not, it is a question of interest why such angelic beings as have to do with human affairs are not at present seen by men. Paul's admonition against the “worshiping of the angels” (Col. 2:18) seems to suggest the reason. If men have not abstained from worshiping their fellow-men, when these latter have been priests or media of divine communications, the danger of idolatry would be much greater if we came into close and constant contact with angels; see Rev. 22:8, 9—“I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not.”

The fact that we do not in our day see angels should not make us sceptical as to their existence any more than the fact that we do not in our day see miracles should make us doubt the reality of the New Testament miracles. As evil spirits were permitted to work most actively when Christianity began its appeal to men, so good angels were then most frequently recognized as executing the divine purposes. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 278, thinks that evil spirits are still at work where Christianity comes in conflict with heathenism, and that they retire into the background as Christianity triumphs. This may be true also of good angels. Otherwise we might be in danger of overestimating their greatness and authority. Father Taylor was right when he said: “Folks are better than angels.” It is vain to sing: “I want to be an angel.” We never shall be angels. Victor Hugo is wrong when he says: “I am the tadpole of an archangel.”John Smith is not an angel, and he never will be. But he may be far greater than an angel, because Christ took, not the nature of angels, but the nature of man (Heb. 2:16).