Note 3 — Chapter I · ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

The first offence against our modern notions in this narrative is the appearance of the angel: the event contemplated in itself, as well as the peculiar circumstances of the apparition. With respect to the latter, the angel announces himself to be Gabriel that stands in the presence of God. Now it is inconceivable that the constitution of the celestial hierarchy should actually correspond with the notions entertained by the Jews subsequent to the exile; and that the names given to the angels should be in the language of this people.3 Here the supranaturalist finds himself in a dilemma, even upon his own ground. Had the belief in celestial beings, occupying a particular station in the court of heaven, and distinguished by particular names, originated from the revealed religion of the Hebrews,—had such a belief been established by Moses, or some later prophet,—then, according to the views of the supranaturalist, they might, nay they must, be admitted to be correct. But it is in the Maccabæan Daniel4 and in the apocryphal Tobit,5 that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves, that they brought the names of the angels with them from Babylon.6 Hence arises a series of questions extremely perplexing to the supranaturalist. Was the doctrine false so long as it continued to be the exclusive possession of the heathens, but true as soon as it became adopted by the Jews? or was it at all times equally true, and was an important truth discovered by an idolatrous nation sooner than by the people of God? If nations shut out from a particular and divine revelation, arrived at truth by the light of reason alone, sooner than the Jews who were guided by that revelation, then either the revelation was superfluous, or its influence was merely negative: that is, it operated as a check to the premature acquisition of knowledge. If, in order to escape this consequence, it be contended that truths were revealed by the divine influence to other people besides the Israelites, the supranaturalistic point of view is annihilated; and, since all things contained in religions which contradict each other cannot have been revealed, we are compelled to exercise a critical discrimination. Thus, we find it to be by no means in harmony with an elevated conception of God to represent him as an earthly monarch, surrounded by his court: and when an appeal is made, in behalf of the reality of angels standing round the throne, to the reasonable belief in a graduated scale of created intelligences,7 the Jewish representation is not thereby justified, but merely a modern conception substituted for it. We should, thus, be driven to the expedient of supposing an accommodation on the part of God: that he sent a celestial spirit with the command to simulate a rank and title which did not belong to him, in order that, by this conformity to Jewish notions, he might insure the belief of the father of the Baptist. Since however it appears that Zacharias did not believe the angel, but was first convinced by the result, the accommodation proved fruitless, and consequently could not have been a divine arrangement. With regard to the name of the angel, and the improbability that a celestial being should bear a Hebrew name, it has been remarked that the word Gabriel, taken appellatively in the sense of Man of God, very appropriately designates the nature of the heavenly visitant; and since it may be rendered with this signification into every different language, the name cannot be said to be restricted to the Hebrew.8 This explanation however leaves the difficulty quite unsolved, since it converts into a simple appellative a name evidently employed as a proper name. In this case likewise an accommodation must be supposed, namely, that the angel, in order to indicate his real nature, appropriated a name which he did not actually bear: an accommodation already judged in the foregoing remarks.