Of Angels and Archangels.
Of Angels and Archangels.
I. The Angels.
There is something so very attractive and poetical, as well as soothing to our helpless finite nature, in all the superstitions connected with the popular notion of Angels, that we cannot wonder at their prevalence in the early ages of the world. Those nations who acknowledged one Almighty Creator, and repudiated with horror the idea of a plurality of Gods, were the most willing to accept, the most enthusiastic in accepting, these objects of an intermediate homage; and gladly placed between their humanity and the awful supremacy of an unseen God, the ministering spirits who were the agents of his will, the witnesses of his glory, the partakers of his bliss, and who in their preternatural attributes of love and knowledge filled up that vast space in the created universe which intervened between mortal man and the infinite, omnipotent Lord of All.
The belief in these superior beings, dating from immemorial antiquity, interwoven as it should seem with our very nature, and authorised by a variety of passages in Scripture, has descended to our time. Although the bodily forms assigned to them are allowed to be impossible, and merely allegorical, although their supposed functions as rulers of the stars and elements have long been set aside by a knowledge of the natural laws, still the coexistence of many orders of beings superior in nature to ourselves, benignly interested in our welfare, and contending for us against the powers of evil, remains an article of faith. Perhaps the belief itself, and the feeling it excites in the tender and contemplative mind, were never more beautifully expressed than by our own Spenser:—
And is there care in heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is!—else much more wretched were the case