“The Bible does not say a great deal on this point,” she said, “but it does not contradict me. In fact, it helps me; and, moreover, it would uphold me in black and white if it weren’t for one little obstacle.”
“And that?”
“That frowning ‘original Greek,’ which Gail Hamilton denounces with her righteous indignation. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is exactly what I want, than up hops a commentator, and says, this isn’t according to text, and means something entirely different; and Barnes says this, and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demonstrated the other, and very ignorant it is in you, too, not to know it! Here the other day I ferreted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to prove beyond question that angels and redeemed men were the same; where the angel says to John, you know, ‘Am I not of thy brethren the prophets?’ I thought that I had discovered a delightful thing which all the Fathers of the church had overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle Calvin, to be told that something was the matter,—a noun left out, or some other unanswerable and unreasonable horror, I don’t know what; and that it didn’t mean that he was of thy brethren the prophets at all!
“You see, if it could be proved that the Christian dead become angels, we could have all that we need, direct from God, about—to use the beautiful old phrase—the communion of saints. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with angels who are at work on earth. They hold sweet converse with Abraham in his tent. They are intrusted to save the soul of Lot. An angel hears the wail of Hagar. The beautiful feet of an angel bring the good tidings to maiden Mary. An angel’s noiseless step guides Peter through the barred and bolted gate. Angels rolled the stone from the buried Christ, and angels sat there in the solemn morning,—O Mary! if we could have seen them!
“Then there is that one question, direct, comprehensive,—we should not need anything else,—‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation?’
“But you see it never seems to have entered those commentators’ heads that all these beautiful things refer to any but a superior race of beings, like those from whose ranks Lucifer fell.”
“How stupid in them!”
“I take comfort in thinking so; but, to be serious, even admitting that these passages refer to a superior race, must there not be some similarity in the laws which govern existence in the heavenly world? Since these gracious deeds are performed by what we are accustomed to call ‘spiritual beings,’ why may they not as well be done by people from this world as from anywhere else? Besides, there is another point, and a reasonable one, to be made. The word angel in the original[A] means, strictly, a messenger. It applies to any servant of God, animate or inanimate. An east wind is as much an angel as Michael. Again, the generic terms, ‘spirits,’ ‘gods,’ ‘sons of God,’ are used interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you see, I fancy that I find a way for you and Roy and me and all of us, straight into the shining ministry. Mary, Mary, wouldn’t you like to go this very afternoon?”
[A] ἄγγελος.
She lay back in the grass, with her face up-turned to the sky, and drew a long breath, wearily. I do not think she meant me to hear it. I did not answer her, for it came over me with such a hopeless thrill, how good it would be to be taken to Roy, there by his beautiful grave, with the ivy and the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover-leaves round about; and that it could not be, and how long it was to wait,—it came over me so that I could not speak.