As long as Peter had an iron gate before him, he had an angel beside him. It was not until the iron gate had been safely negotiated that ‘forthwith the angel departed from him.’ Mary made a mistake when she fancied that she had left all the glory behind her. The angel is with us more often than we think. A devout Jew, in bidding you farewell, will always use a plural pronoun. And if you ask for whom, besides yourself, his blessing is intended, he will reply that it is for you and for the angel over your shoulder. We are too fond of fancying that the angel is only with us when the chains are miraculously falling from off our feet, and when the doors are miraculously opening before our faces. We are too slow to believe that the angel is still by our side when we emerge into the night and come to the iron gate. It is a very ancient heathen superstition. ‘There came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the Lord, because the Syrians have said, “The Lord is God of the hills, but He is not God of the valleys,” therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, [93] and ye shall know that I am the Lord.’ We are always assuming that He is the God of the mountaintops, and that He leaves us to thread the darksome valleys alone; and our assumption is a cruel and unjust one. As long as Peter had an iron gate before him, he had an angel beside him.
III
The converse, however, is equally true. As long as Peter had an angel beside him, he had an iron gate ahead of him. Angels do not walk by our sides for fun. ‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’ If there is an angel by my side, depend upon it, there is work that only an angel can do in front of me. Mary’s radiant experience that Sunday evening was directly and intimately related with the brazen yell of the alarum clock on Monday morning. It was not intended as a mere temporary elevation of the spirit, but as an assurance of a gracious presence—a presence that should never be withdrawn as long as a need existed. It is part of the infinite pathos of life that we misinterpret our visions. Jacob beheld his staircase leading from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it. And straightway, as he prepared to leave, he began to say good-bye to the angels! ‘Surely,’ he exclaimed, ‘the Lord is [94] in this place! How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven! And he called the name of that place Bethel!’ And thus he missed the whole meaning of the beatific vision. The vision was to warn him of the perils that awaited him, and to assure him that ‘behold, I am with thee in all places whither thou goest.’
‘All places!’ said the Vision.
‘This place! this place! This Place!’ said Jacob.
And so he journeyed on towards his iron gate, pitifully ignorant of the meaning of the golden dream. Life’s ecstasies are warnings, premonitions, danger-signals. Even in the experience of the Holiest, the open heavens and the voice from the excellent glory immediately preceded the grim struggle with the tempter in the wilderness. Paul had his vision; he saw the Man of Macedonia; and he followed the gleam—to bonds, stripes, and imprisonment. Bunyan knew what he was doing when he placed the Palace Beautiful, with all its sweet hospitalities and delightful ministries, immediately before that dark Valley of Humiliation in which Christian struggled with Apollyon. When we hear angels’ voices speaking, when we find our fetters falling, when we see our jail doors opening, be very sure that outside, outside, there is a dark night and an iron gate!
[95]
IV
But there is always this about it. Although the radiant vision is a premonition of the coming struggle, it is also an augury concerning that struggle. Opening doors are an earnest of opening gates. It is inconceivable that I shall be miraculously delivered from my dungeon, with its guards and its chains, and then be baulked by an iron gate out there in the blackness of the night. It is inconceivable that here, at the Communion Service, God should draw so near to the spirit of this young housemaid, and then leave her to face alone the drudgery of Monday morning. If Mary is half as wise as I take her to be, she will answer the scream of the clock with a song. She went to bed singing; why not get up singing? She crooned to herself on retiring the hymn that had followed her from the Communion Table. Let her sing in the morning quite another tune:
His love, in time past, forbids me to think
He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink,