"Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word."—Ps. ciii. 20.
Of the amazing strength of angels, we can form no adequate conception. "God is a Spirit," and by His Spirit hath created all things. We have seen that His angels are spirits, and that these spirits are ethereal in their nature, so far as finite mind can comprehend. And yet their strength is wonderful to contemplate. St. John represents them as holding the four winds of heaven, and controlling the elements with a supernatural power. Commissioned by Jehovah for the purpose, an angel destroyed seventy thousand people of the tribes of Judah and Israel in three days. And again, an angel destroyed, in one night, one hundred and eighty-five thousand of a mighty army. It would seem that by permission, or at command, they are capable of exercising a power almost omnipotent. In the last days, great power shall be given them. They shall pour out the vials of Jehovah's wrath, smite earth and seas, cause the stars to fall, and even chain the great dragon and cast him into the bottomless pit.
RAPIDITY OF MOVEMENT OF THE ANGELS.
We will now consider another feature of the capacity of the angels, one that is fraught with deepest interest to the human mind, as it will give us some light of probabilities attending our future, when our spirits shall be released from our mortal bodies. This is the celerity, velocity, or rapidity of their movements.
These celestial creatures seem to possess the power of transporting themselves with a celerity incomprehensible to finite mind. That it is equal, even if not more rapid than electricity, we cannot doubt. We incline to the opinion, however, that the velocity of their movement is, at pleasure, the same as that of the flight of electricity; and so also with our spirits, after leaving the body. No one can fully comprehend the nature of electricity. We know that it exists, and to some extent we can control and use it as an agency for useful purposes; yet it is an existing element in nature, even as fire is. We may concentrate and use it, and we may profess to understand the combination of agencies which produce it. Yet all resolves itself back again into the simple fact that it is an element existing in nature, and its source is that of all else—the Great First Cause of all things.
Electricity is of more rapid flight than any other element or agency we can—even partially—comprehend in nature. If we had a wire laid around this Earth, it is estimated that a current of electricity would belt the globe in about the tenth part of a second of time, or travel at nearly the speed of three hundred thousand miles a second, and would reach the Sun—ninety-five millions of miles distant—in a fraction over five minutes of time. The discovery and application of electricity is the most wonderful phenomenon that has ever been grasped by the human intellect, and we contend it is one of Jehovah's invisible agencies in nature, which He has permitted man to comprehend in part, and thus to prepare the mind to comprehend more fully the infinity of His power, and the nature of our relation to Him. Hitherto, even the mind of faith has stood bewildered in regard to the transit of the soul, after death, to the place of its future habitation. Astronomers, by the aid of that wonderful gift of God to man—the telescope—have penetrated the borders of the far-distant sidereal regions; have caught rays of light which, it is now rendered probable, left their native nebulæ, or suns, more than five hundred thousand years ago, and have travelled at the rate of 192,000 miles a second ever since, and are now successively beaming upon the assisted eye. Now, it would require more than three hundred thousand years for a current of electricity to travel thence, even at the rate of 300,000 miles each second of time. And yet, although far distant regions have been penetrated and partially surveyed, still, nowhere within the trackless and boundless domain of illimitable space have Astronomers descried an object which they could denominate "Heaven." We say, considering all these circumstances, and that it would require three hundred thousand years, travelling with the rapidity of three hundred thousand miles a second, to reach the extent of space surveyed by the eye through the telescope, and yet the supposition that heaven was still far out beyond; the mind of faith has ever been bewildered as to the locality of the place, and of the time, or period of eternity required to reach it. And yet it was right and proper that Christians should hold firm to faith in God; that He had provided a place of happiness for his people, and also provided the necessary agencies for transporting them thither. But now, when we consider that every blessing vouchsafed to man is derived from heaven, or the Sun—which is God's agency—when we have contemplated the nature of God's manifestations in the bestowment of his blessings, and visitations of his judgments; when we see how soon, at His bidding, His messengers can descend from heaven to earth to execute His commands, and the daily intimate relations in ancient times between His angels residing in heaven, and His prophets and people on earth; how instantaneously they were present when emergency demanded—for when "Daniel bowed, and his prayer went up to heaven, the angel Gabriel came with the answer from God while he was still on his knees, and yet speaking,"—and accepting the hypothesis we have laid, that our heaven is the vast globe descried by Astronomers within that encircling photosphere of ethereal fire, which is denominated the "Sun," our veiled faith of the past takes a sudden bound and lights upon—an almost fully revealed reality; we can now partially comprehend the mode, and short space of time required for the transit of our immortal spirits to that heavenly world. It is reasonable to suppose that spirit can pass with the velocity of electricity, and travelling thus, we have seen that to reach that world within the Sun, will require but about five minutes. Well hath the apostle said, "to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord."
There are fixed laws, and a certain reality, in all things pertaining unto Jehovah and His vast creations throughout His own Universe, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he has designed that we should comprehend His laws relating to us, and thereby understand His own plain revelations. We therefore believe that reason, founded upon revelations, sustains our hypothesis, as to the location of heaven—as also of hell—and that the Spirit of God is—in some of its offices—as fire. And we cannot doubt but that, henceforth, these views will be sustained by the intelligence of the world; and that still more of seeming mystery will be comprehended, and new light opened to the mind upon the subject, while all will tend to the glory of God, and the salvation of the human family.