CHAPTER IX.
Angels. The ideas associated therewith. Why winged. Wishing-
caps. Jehovah and His Angels made to walk by the historian.
The belief in Angels incompatible with that of an
omnipresent and omniscient God. Pictorial representations.
Absurd conceptions of angelic wings. Angela want birds'
tails. Men have tried to fly. Difference between birds and
men. Arms and wings. A writer at fault about this world is
not to be trusted in his accounts of another. Bats and
similar mammals. The Devil better winged than Michael—Yet
Satan, a roaring lion, goes about as a bull with bat's
wings. Angels and beetles. Harmony in creation. Strange idea
of spirits. Spiritualism. Varieties of angelic forms. Not
the products of lunacy. Angels and demigods. Egyptian ideas.
Assyrian notions. Christian fancies. Birds and Men united in
human celestialism. Persian Angels. Mithra winged. Angels in
Persia twelve in number. Job, the work of a Persian Jew.
Angels referred to therein. Darius had a consecrated table.
Babylonian belief. Daniel. Greece and Rome. Gods, Demigods,
Angels, and Saints. Christian demigods. Angels' duties.
Book-keeping, clerks of wind and weather;—police-agents.
The inventor of Heaven admired centralization. Babylonian
tutelary Angels. Christian ones. Christian saintly imagery.
The bleeding heart of Mary. A funny Chaldean goddess to
match. Popish saints have an aureole, but no wings. Francis
of Assisi could make stigmata but could not change his arms
into pinions. Babylonian and Papal emblems identical
Development of Angels amongst the Jews in Babylon. Angelic
mythology founded upon Astronomy and Astrology. Planets are
Archangels. Angels and Devils mentioned on bowls found in
Mesopotamia by Layard. The probable meaning of their names.
Hebrews adopted Chaldee beliefs: evidence. Juvenal. Jews and
Chaldeans. Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees and our
Reformers compared. A legal anecdote. Angels in Ancient
Italy. Our angelic forms are of Etruscan origin. Some such
beings had three pairs of wings. Etruscans had guardian
angels for infants and children. Angels carry various
matters. Angels of marriage. Angels for heirs of salvation.
Etruscan angel of marriage. Jewish match-maker. Raphael.
Description of an Etruscan painting in tomb of Tarquin. The
angel of death. The Greek theology. The Greeks taught the
Jews. The Jews never taught other nations. Greeks had a
supreme god and a host of inferior deities. War in heaven.
Titans—giants. Children of the sons of God and daughters of
men. Greek origin of Christian and Miltonian angelic
mythology. The begotten Son of God (Hercules born to Jupiter
by Alcmena). Restores the kingdom to his father. Greek ideas
of demons. Hebrew and Christian ideas of good and bad
spirits. The recording angel. Demigods and archangels. Greek
deities not winged except Mercury. Some minor gods have
pinions.—Pegasus has wings. Hymen, the angel of the
covenant of marriage. Genius loci and cherubim. Alcmena and
Mary. Jupiter and "the power of the Highest" Roman
mythology. Romans adopted the Etruscan form of angels.
Christians adopted it from Romans. The Christian crozier is
the Etruscan and Roman lituus, or "divining staff." Rome
and London both avid of religious novelty. Instability in
religion a proof of infidelity in the old. Hence a desire
for infallibility, to crush doubt. Angelic mythology of the
Bible. Christians use words in parrot fashion. Words ought
not to stand for ideas. Prayer-cylinder in Thibet.
Contradictions. Figures and metaphors are theologian cities
of refuge. Prophet who says that he converses with an angel-
-is he to be credited? A spirit without flesh and bones,
cannot move his tongue to utter words. Drunkards see "blue
devils"—they are unreal If the appearance of a man in a
dream is an illusion, his words are so too. Absurd ideas
about phantoms. Notice of the deeds of a few Hebrew angels.
A resume of their history. Inspiration did not reveal
angels. Human fancy did. Conspiracy in Heaven! The Genesis
of Hell. What sort of a place it is supposed to be. God made
the Devil, so man must multiply his imps! Lucifer taught
Elohim! Old Testament less knowing than the New. The Devil
not a fallen angel. The book of Enoch. Deductions drawn.
There is scarcely a single article in our current belief which does not prove, on examination, to have descended to us from Pagan sources, or to be identical with heathen beliefs older than the Hebrew. The idea of a personal God dwelling in some locality, vaguely described as "Heaven," in which He reigns, and rules, like a modern emperor, has been found to exist in almost every nation whose language we know, and whose history has descended to us. Human weakness makes it so. Such a ruler has been called Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, Mahadeva, Bel or Baal, Melech or Moloch, Ormazd, Elohim, Jah, Jehovah, Jupiter, Yahu, God, and a variety of other names; but He has always been hailed as king, and lord of all creation, having a throne beside which attend a number of servitors, standing before and around him, all ready to do his bidding and to go wherever they are sent. As a potentate rules on earth over provinces far distant from the central government, so the heavenly monarch was, and is yet, supposed to have "viceroys," "lieutenants," or "vicars," who have authority delegated to them, and exercise it under his superintendence.
A scheme such as we have described does not seem to have existed from the first amongst the Jews; for, when men of reasoning powers conceived the idea of a Creator, He was regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. It became gradually interwoven with theology; for when men of limited capacity thought of such a vast empire as the universe, they, under the influence of a grovelling anthropomorphism, recognized, as they imagined, the necessity of furnishing it with a system of acquiring intelligence, and promulgating decrees which should be far superior to any postal plan devised by human kings. Amongst the Kaffirs, men with missives race against time, and by means of relays, messages are sent to vast distances in a comparatively short period. By means of horses, skilfully engaged beforehand, an ancient Persian tyrant could make his commands known all over his vast empire in the course of a few days, and moderns, by means of railways and the electric wire, can forward information at a still more rapid rate.
Yet, to old theologians, and even to observant men of the present day, all these means of communication between God and his subjects seemed to be slow. We may, for example, notice a fly buzzing round the head of the running Kaffir, or the ears of the fleetest of Persian steeds, and a swallow on the wing outstrips a railway express. The velocity of the carrier-pigeon has long been known. All these were, therefore, regarded as swift-winged creatures, and fit for message bearers. As then, it was observed, that of all beings who could move, the bird is the swiftest in its movement from place to place, it was very natural that dogmatists should represent the messengers of the great king with powerful pinions, like those of the eagle or the albatross. In this manner the addition of wings to any mythological character sufficed to show that he who bore them was a celestial being; one who stood before the supreme ruler, and received from him delegated power—either as vicar, viceroy, or messenger. Thus the Greeks depicted Mercury with wings on his legs and elsewhere, and the Hebrews gave large pinions to their seraphim—sometimes as many as six being used by each (Isa. vi. 2.) The Etruscans pictured their angels with two wings only, and we have followed, implicitly, their lead. But the Hindoos did not in early times adopt ideas such as this. They noticed the speed of the sunbeam, the velocity of the hurricane, and the rapidity of thought; and since they saw many birds borne away by the wind, they imagined that celestial messengers must travel in a corresponding fashion. For one who rode upon the clouds of the typhoon, pinions were useless. I have in my possession a plate,* in which the celestial attendants on the god are all wingless, but have sex. The name given to the attendants referred to is "Apsaras," who are described as having been produced in myriads when the ocean was churned. They are said to reside between the waters above the firmament and those below it, and are represented as being of consummate beauty and elegance of form, their business being to attend upon the gods and give them pleasure, by singing, music, dancing, and in every possible way. They are sometimes represented as being of both sexes, all having the power to change their gender. Generally, they are described as females, and take the business of Venus in the Greek heaven, and of the Houris in that provided by Mahomet and his followers. The Hindoos have in their theology an abode of bliss, in which the pleasures are wholly sensual. In this they do not differ from the Christians, except that the latter only expect to indulge in music and a sanctified vengeance.
* Plate x., vol. 1, "Recherches sur l'origine, &c., des Arts
de la Grèce," D'Harcanville, London, 1785. The author states
that the plate is copied from Le Voyage de Niebuhr, T. 1,
Tab. vi.
With great ingenuity the Hebrews conceived that the will of God must be equivalent to His wish—that His wish must be the same as a command, and, consequently, that He could send His messenger from one spot to another in an instant; or, if He chose, He could go Himself and communicate personally, as He did with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and Joshua. For such a Being even light would be too slow (see Psalm xviii. 10; civ. 3, 4).
From a similar thought arose the stories which have found their way into our fairy mythology of "wishing caps" which would enable the bearer to pass in an instant of time, and wholly invisibly, from one part of the world to another. In oriental countries, a carpet or a coat was the carrying agent, whilst amongst the more clumsy story-tellers of Europe, a pair of boots was furnished, whose wearer could cover twenty miles at a stride.
In the plenitude of our prejudice we may smile at the caprice which invented the "wishing cap;" but if we reflect calmly upon the matter, we discover more depth of thought in this than has been shown in the formation of tales in which winged angels are introduced. The contrast will readily be recognized if we take a scene from "Fortunatus," and another from the Old Testament The former, by putting on a cap, could transport himself in a moment from Formosa to Great Britain. Whereas we learn, from Genesis xviii, that three angelic men took "a walk" from somewhere to Sodom, that they might see what sort of a place it really was. The hero in the fairy tale was not fatigued; the angels of the Hebrew mythology were glad to wash their feet, and to eat and drink, so as to recruit their energies (v. 8; Ps. lxxviii. 25.) A mythical tale like this demonstrates incontestably the mean condition of the story-teller, who does not furnish Jehovah even with a mule or ass, but makes Him go afoot.
We must, therefore, regard the theological contrivance which furnished angels with wings, as being a clumsy one; indicating superficiality, rather than profound thought, and emanating from human infirmity rather than divine inspiration or direct revelation. We shall see this more distinctly if we inquire into the ideas necessarily associated with wings.