The theologians who have furnished their ideal messengers with wings show, in the first place, that they have the idea of an air upon which the sails can strike—of muscular structures to move the pinions, and of the necessity for food to enable the motive power to be kept up. The idea of a winged angel, therefore, necessarily implies a belief in the presence of a solid material body moving through an aeriform fluid, resembling the atmosphere just above the earth's surface. That there really was this belief associated with celestial messengers we find in the Jewish scriptures, wherein it is stated, as if it were a common occurrence, that angels came to talk familiarly with men; as, for example, Gen. xviii, xix., xxxii.; and Judges i., where we are told that an angel came from Gilgal to Bochim, to deliver a statement, to the Hebrews, such as a silly girl at Lourdes asserted the Virgin Mary had come from Heaven to make to her; see also Judges xiii., and the book of Tobit.
That angels were, moreover, supposed to possess thews and sinews, we find from Gen. xxxii. 24-30, wherein we are told that some celestial being wrestled with Jacob, but could not prevail against him. In a previous chapter, although it is only in a dream, Jacob saw them mount and descend a ladder as if their wings—if they then had them—were useless.
We shall not now be far from the truth, if we affirm that winged messengers, envoys, or angels, can only be supposed to exist by individuals whose god is nothing more than a man without universal power and knowledge. To any one who believes God to be omnipresent, the idea of His having ambassadors, or vicars upon earth, is blasphemous.
The comparative coarseness of those minds which fabricated the notion of winged men, as celestial messengers, will be the more certainly recognised, if we examine into the pictorial conception which they have permitted, and still allow, to pass, for the embodiment of their idea. Let me, for example, invite the reader to cast his mental eye over the winged men-like bulls, &c., of Assyria and Babylonia; the winged genii of the ancient Egyptians; the winged soul and angel of Death of the Etruscans; the angels of ancient and modern Christian painters; and the pinioned heads which came from the walls to listen to the music of Saint Cecilia—according to Papal legends—and then to try to discover the locality of the muscular organs which are necessary to give movement to the wings. Everybody who has ever carved, at his dinner-table, a grouse, partridge, pheasant, duck, or other fowl, must be aware of the enormous mass of flesh which is associated with the wings. If we bare the breast and remove the pinion bones from any bird which flies—(it is necessary to make this proviso, for such as the dodo, the aptéryx, the ostrich, emu, and others, have wings which are only rudimentary, and not used for flight)—we find but a very meagre body remaining behind. Hence we see the necessity of furnishing an imaginary angel which has wings with muscles that will enable the pinions to be used; but in no pictorial representation of an angelic messenger do we ever find the ordinary figure of a man departed from, or any provision made for muscles to move the feathered organs. And we must notice, in passing, that it is monstrous to suppose that a man must become, in part, a bird ere he can be useful to a god!
Again, we recognize in the conventional form of angels a total absence of knowledge of natural history, of gravity, of force, &c. Let us, for example, imagine for a moment that the metaphorical wings are real ones used in flight. We see directly that they will only raise the individual perpendicularly into the air. The angelic human creature, even if his wings were—as they ought to do—to replace his arms, would still lack a tail, to use as a rudder to direct his flight. It is clear, then, that no one has seen an angel, and that those who have pretended to have done so, were deeply ignorant men. To make our observations upon this point somewhat more comprehensible, we may just refer to the fact that many individuals, misled apparently by the mass of ideal celestial men—or angels—which are to be seen in almost every cathedral or parish church in Europe, have conceived the idea that they could fly, if only they could contrive the necessary apparatus to append to their arms, legs, or both; in other words, many men have fancied that they could do better for themselves than nature has done for them. But a few minutes' calm thought would teach any one familiar with the composition of forces, that an attempt at the imitation of a bird's flight must be a failure in man. Let me show this by a simple observation: A bird extends its wings, and by a strong stroke towards its own body, rises into the air, though neither solid nor rigid, both wings and air have apparently been so. In imitation of this bird, we will now suppose that a man places himself, with arms outspread, like the letter T between two uprights, forming something like the letter U.
The individual would then be represented thus [J]—unlike the bird, his point d' appui would be solid, and his arms would be far more unyielding than feathers. Yet not one athlete in a million could spring upwards, so as to stand upon the summit of the U. Man's "pectoral muscles"—as physiologists call the mass of flesh below the collar bone and above the nipple—are intended to move the arm; the bird's pectoral muscles are intended to move the body. Cut off a man's arms and pectorals—the counterpart of the bird's wings and fleshy breast—and he has barely lost a tenth part of his weight; on the other hand, cut off the corresponding parts of a bird, i.e.t the pinions and the muscles which move them, and not a tenth part of the original weight is left behind. Speaking coarsely, we may then affirm that man's body is relatively about a hundred times heavier—air being the standard—than that of a bird, and his pectoral muscles, relatively to his body, a hundred times less in bulk. Consequently, even if a human being could, by muscular action, develop the bulk of his "pectorals," so that they should be relatively to the rest of his frame, equal to those of a bird, still his bulk would be so much more solid than that of the bird's bones, flesh, and feathers, that his power of flight would be a hundred times less. A man, with the exception of his lungs, is in health, solid or fluid, in every part of him; a bird's bones, on the contrary, are everywhere permeated by air cavities, which make them as light as pith or cotton wool. A pound of lead and a pound of feathers are certainly equal in weight, yet, if both are allowed to drop from a balloon, the first will reach the ground a long time before the second. In like manner, by contrivance, I could with my breath sustain an ounce of eiderdown in the air, although I am quite powerless to sustain, by like means, the same quantity of solid meat. I say nothing of the relative position of the shoulder-joint in man and birds—although the point is physiologically important.
Again, we may assert that the originators of the angelic mythology were absolutely ignorant of that which is called comparative anatomy. We have already expressed our belief that no one has a right to expect that people will believe in the reality of a man's knowledge respecting the unseen world, so long as he is palpably at fault in his notions respecting the visible creation. Consequently we assert that one who is careless as regards actual phenomena and ignorant of common truths, cannot be trusted in metaphorical, mythological, or divine lore.
A comparatively small amount of observation proves to us that amongst the highest classes of animal life, the wing is the counterpart of the arm or of the fore-leg. In the creature called the "flying squirrel," there is no pinion as there is in the "condor,"—there is simply an unusual development of skin which unites the fore and hind limbs much in the same way as the web unites together the toes of the goose or duck. In the bat, which, though a mammal, is allied, as regards its power of flight, to the birds, we find that the fore-leg is developed so as to make a bony frame on which a thin skin may be stretched, which is still farther strengthened by being attached to the hind leg. In the ordinary bird, the skin which we see in the bat and flying squirrel is replaced by feathers, which are longer, broader, and lighter than a fold of skin. The ordinary method, therefore, in which angelic beings are depicted does not associate them with the highest classes of animal life. Our modern artists are much more skilful in depicting Satan than in pourtraying Raphael, Gabriel, or Michael.
Our last remarks would be comparatively unimportant, were it not that the close observation which the moderns have given, to every thing connected with natural history, has shown us that there is a harmony throughout creation. No animals have noses on their backs, nor eyes in their hind legs. No insect—so far as I can remember—has a thick neck; nor has any mammal or bird a thin one, like the wasp, bee, or fly. As we imagine that it is proper to extend our knowledge rather by the lights which we have already attained, than by silly or hap-hazard guessing, so we think that it is better to investigate the subject of angelic forms by comparative anatomy, than by the dreams of divines, who probably have never studied any other subject than the best means of gaining influence over their fellow-mortals. We assert that there is not in all the creation, known to man, any creature with arms and legs—or their equivalents, legs and wings, or fore-legs and hind legs—which has, in addition, wings upon arms, legs, head, or back. In such a combination there is something monstrous. I confess that I could, if satisfactory evidence were given, credit the occurrence of a devil with a tail—of a centaur with a horse's body and a human head—but I could not possibly believe that Satan went about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he could devour in the dress of a bull with bat-like wings, as well as horns and hoofs; or that an angel of God approaches us in a form nearer to the scarabseus of Egypt than to the human form divine. Yet when we say that a pictorial angel approaches nearer to a beetle that revels in filth, than to an etherial essence which ought to be very close upon perfection, we are still far from precision. Ladybirds, cockchafers, and others of the class allied to the scarabseus that was almost deified in Egypt, have six legs, two wings, and two wing cases—ten means of locomotion in all. Butterflies, moths, and the like, have six legs and two wings. Consequently, if there be any design in creation, and angels have been created, they can only be regarded as the connecting link between the highest and the lowest classes of animal life.
If then, there be such a thing as harmony of design in Creation—if the Creator be not the author of confusion (1 Cor. xiv. 33)—if matter be material, and imponderable forces cannot be weighed or made otherwise recognisable by the senses, except by their effects—if the Almighty be omnipresent and omniscient, it is absolutely impossible for a thoughtful mind to believe in the existence of angels in any shape—whether material, immaterial, or essential. But this consideration forces us still further, and we feel compelled to ask ourselves, whether, with our minds constituted as they are, we can believe in, or understand any thing wholly immaterial? Whether we can imagine the existence, for, example, of "force" without matter?—a shape which is formless?—a form visible to the eye, yet wholly immaterial?