There sits Noah, waiting for all the world to come into the ark.
Moses is waiting till the last Red Sea shall divide.
Jeremiah is waiting for the Jews to return.
John of the Apocalypse is waiting for the swearing of the angel that Time shall be no longer.
Glorious spirits! Ye were howled at; ye were stoned; ye were spit upon. They have been in this fight themselves, and they are all with us. Daniel knows all about lions. Paul fought with beasts at Ephesus. For Joseph, a pit; for Daniel, a wild beast den; for David, dethronement and exile; for John the Baptist, a wilderness diet and the executioner’s ax; for Peter, a prison; for Paul, shipwreck; for John, desolate Patmos; for Vashti, most insulting cruelty.
In that gallery, prophetic and apostolic, they can not keep their peace. Daniel cries out: “Thy God will deliver thee from the mouth of the lions!” David exclaims: “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” Isaiah calls out: “Fear not! I am with thee. Be not dismayed.” Paul exclaims: “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
I see the Angelic Gallery. There they are. There is the angel that swung the sword at the gate of Eden, the same whom Ezekiel saw upholding the throne of God, and from which I look away, for the splendor is insufferable. Here are the guardian angels. That one watched a patriarch; this one protected a child. That one has been pulling a soul out of temptation. All these are messengers of light. Those drove the Spanish Armada on the rocks. This turned Sennacherib’s living hosts into a heap of one hundred and eighty-five thousand corpses. Those, yonder, chanted the Christmas carol over Bethlehem, until the chant awoke the shepherds. These, at Creation, stood in the balcony of Heaven, and serenaded the new-born world wrapped in swaddling clothes of light.
And there, holier and mightier than all, is Michael, the archangel. To command an earthly host gives dignity; but this one is leader of the twenty thousand chariots of God, and of the ten thousand times ten thousand angels.
I think God gives command to the archangel, and the archangel to the seraphim, and the seraphim to the cherubim, until all the lower orders of Heaven hear the command and go forth on the high behest.