Note 12 — Chapter I · ANNUNCIATION AND BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

But however worthy of God we might grant the conduct of his messenger to have been, still many of the present day will find an angelic apparition, as such, incredible. Bauer insists that wherever angels appear, both in the New Testament and in the Old, the narrative is mythical.12 Even admitting the existence of angels, we cannot suppose them capable of manifesting themselves to human beings, since they belong to the invisible world, and spiritual existences are not cognizable by the organs of sense; so that it is always advisable to refer their pretended apparitions to the imagination.13 It is not probable, it is added, that God should make use of them according to the popular notion, for these apparitions have no apparent adequate object, they serve generally only to gratify curiosity, or to encourage man’s disposition passively to leave his affairs in higher hands.14 It is also remarkable that in the old world these celestial beings show themselves active upon the smallest occasions, whilst in modern times they remain idle even during the most important occurrences.15 But to deny their appearance and agency among men is to call in question their very being, because it is precisely this occupation which is a main object of their existence (Heb. i. 14). According to Schleiermacher16 we cannot indeed actually disprove the existence of angels, yet the conception is one which could not have originated in our time, but belongs wholly to the ancient ideas of the world. The belief in angels has a twofold root or source: the one the natural desire of the mind to presuppose a larger amount of intelligence in the universe than is realized in the human race. We who live in these days find this desire satisfied in the conviction that other worlds exist besides our own, and are peopled by intelligent beings; and thus the first source of the belief in angels is destroyed. The other source, namely, the representation of God as an earthly monarch surrounded by his court, contradicts all enlightened conceptions of Deity; and further, the phenomena in the natural world and the transitions in human life, which were formerly thought to be wrought by God himself through ministering angels, we are now able to explain by natural causes; so that the belief in angels is without a link by which it can attach itself to rightly apprehended modern ideas; and it exists only as a lifeless tradition. The result is the same if, with one of the latest writers on the doctrine of angels,17 we consider as the origin of this representation, man’s desire to separate the two sides of his moral nature, and to contemplate, as beings existing external to himself, angels and devils. For, the origin of both representations remains merely subjective, the angel being simply the ideal of created perfection: which, as it was formed from the subordinate point of view of a fanciful imagination, disappears from the higher and more comprehensive observation of the intellect.18