chosen and ordained. No wonder we meet with inscrutable mysteries connected with the nature and order, laws and ministry of those incorporeal attendants that surround and applaud the Throne. Our inquisitive minds are apt to wonder that a door or casement is not opened for our clearer prospects into the celestial world, toward which we are called to travel. We admire, when these natives of heaven appeared, so often, in the primitive world, and came sometimes, (one would think) upon lower offices and services; that when so many inspired messengers came from God; yea, that when the Lord Himself came from heaven, to teach us how to get there, they would none of them tell us more of the world from whence they came, or to which they would invite us; and that they no more particularly describe the state, the inhabitants, employments, and felicities that are there. But they came not, it seems, to gratify our curiosity; but to direct us safely thither. An early thirst of undue knowledge soon ruined our race in the head of it, and it is not now to be indulged. Our greatest business and felicity are not to return to angels, (though they will be exceeding good company,) but to Him that made (and can make blessed) both them and us; and therefore the most the Lord of heaven tells us of them, (though he knew their essence, their regimen and offices so well) is, that they are glad when any one of us is reduced to repentance, and reconciled to God; and therefore set in a fair way to their world, their enjoyments, and society. There we shall know them as much as we shall desire. In the mean time we are to walk by faith and hope in that light that has been afforded us. And it will be our wisdom, as well as our duty, not barely to be content with, but to be thankful for that measure of supernatural revelation, that Divine wisdom has thought fit to vouchsafe to us; which will suffice to guide us

to life and immortality, without any one's coming from the dead or descending from the world of native life and immortality." These important reflections, though well adapted to suppress the pruriency of that curiosity of the human mind, consequent on our degenerate condition, respecting those abstruse points of inquiry enshrined in the silence of Divine wisdom, yet, sufficient is revealed to excite our wondering admiration, as well as promote our edification, and also afford supporting comfort as we prosecute our toilsome pilgrimage through the wilderness of this vain world, till we have attained to the blissful associations and society of angels, and reached the bright and eternal residences of those illustrious and celestial immortals, for as Dr. Owen justly remarks: "It is the height of ingratitude not to search after what may be known of this great privilege and mercy whereof we are made partakers in the ministry of angels. God hath neither appointed or revealed it for nothing. He expects a revenue of praise and glory for it; and how can we bless him for it when we know nothing about it? This ministry then of angels, is that which with sobriety we are, in a way of duty, to inquire into. Let us on this account glorify God and be thankful. Great is the privilege, manifold are the blessings and benefits that we are made partakers of by this ministry of angels. What shall we render for them and to them? Shall we go and bow ourselves down to the angels themselves and pay our homage of obedience to them? They all cry out with one accord: See you do it not, we are your fellow-servants." What shall we then do? Why, say they, worship God! praise him, who is God of all angels; who sends them unto whom they minister in all they do for us. Let us bless God, I say, for the ministry of angels."

66

Glorify and

In an exceedingly able and very orthodox article contrib

2*

uted by Professor Moses Stuart to the Bibliotheca Sacra, he starts with this exegetical interrogatory. "Of what importance can the doctrine respecting good and evil angels be to us? We owe them, it is said, no duty of homage or worship, and as they are invisible beings, if they exist at all, we can never decide with any certainty whether or when they interpose in our behalf or interfere for the sake of injuring us? We have therefore no interest in this matter.

"I cannot accede to such a view of the subject; the Scriptures have taught us, that the original holy and happy condition of our race was essentially changed by the interference and crafty malignity of Satan. The necessity of the redemption of the Son of God stands inseparably connected with this. The atonement, the nucleus and centre of Christianity proper, is, in some important respects, a consequence of Satan's interference; or in other words it was rendered necessary by the tempter when he assailed our first parents. Nor is this all which may be truly and properly said in regard to this subject. If there are good angels, the voluntary ministers of God's will; or evil ones who are the executioners of his justice, or examples in their sufferings of the proper desert of sin; then, these facts are important to us, inasmuch as they cast light upon God's providential government of the world—a subject of deep interest to all moral and accountable beings.

66 There is another point of view in which we may contemplate this subject. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are filled with passages that have respect to angels good or evil. Some of these passages are involved in not a little obscurity as presented to us, because we are not sufficiently familiar with the Hebrew modes of expression and thought to appreciate at once the full meaning of the sacred writers. If now it be true that a proper attention

to the angelology of the Scriptures will help us to explain these, and especially in case it will render most of the obscure passages in question altogether intelligible, then attention to this subject cannot be fairly deemed unimportant."

Sufficient, it is presumed, has now been advanced, with the support of suitable authorities, fairly to ward off the unmeaning cavils of a determined or disguised scepticism, as well as abash the daring buffoonery* of a profane derision, to whose impiety the subject may be exposed, reinforced by the scoffing irreligion of those who ridicule, as superlatively absurd, the idea, and reject, alike, the internal and historic evidences of the veritable existence of immaterial beings, those real, though invisible instruments, who unceasingly carry forward the merciful protection, benevolent designs, mysterious operations and punitive judgments of the Supreme Governor of the moral, and the Almighty Creator and Upholder of the material universe; inasmuch as the belief of their actuality is classed by them amongst those intangible objects of sense, whose nature and essence, mode or vehicle of communication with the inhabitants of this lower world are beyond the limited comprehension of the finite and degenerate faculties of the human mind† :—

* A medical satirist, indulging "in jestings not convenient," pertly inquired of me, “If I had ever caught an angel and dissected him"! Such an extraordinary and perplexing case of profound sagacity, brimstone wit and abstruse morality, unquestionably comes clear of all exceptions and demurrers, within the tenebrious jurisdiction of the Areopagus of Pandemonium. G. C.

† Metaphysicians incline to universal skepticism, finding in the vast regions of philosophy we can, to adopt an homely phrase, scarcely see beyond our noses; have dwelt with something like exultation on the incapacity of man's intellect to overcome the difficulties which surround the most indubitable truths.-ST. JOHN, Prelim. Disc. to Browne's Religio.

despising the assistance and illumination of that faith* of celestial birth, by which alone they obtain a willing and beneficial reception into the intellect and heart; as she stands erect and unmoved, in the modest attitude of persuasive virtue,† upon the broad base of Inspiration, pointing, with

* Reason is a rebel unto Faith, and considers her propositions as absurd. There are a set of heads, that can credit the relations of mariners, yet question the testimonies of St. Paul; and peremptorily maintain the traditions of Ælian or Pliny, yet in histories of Scripture raise queries and objections; believing no more than they can parallel in human authors.-SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Religico Medicii.

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy; many things are true in divinity which are neither inducible by reason, nor confirmable by sense; and many things in philosophy confirmable by sense, yet not inducible by reason.-ID, Christian Morals.

The skeptic denies the realities of faith, as the blind might deny the beauty of color, or the deaf the harmony of sound.-SLACK, Ministry of the Beautiful.

The wisest of us, which is the holiest, see somewhat by the eye of faith-faith being the end of wisdom, the great lesson of the universe.—ID. Faith only can raise us above this little daily life, and worldly business; that only can give the soul such a direction to higher things, and to objects and ideas which alone have value and importance,—and amidst the circling causes of appearances and events, is an immovable pole.-M. VON HUMBOLDT, Thoughts, &c., of a Statesman.

Never yet did there exist a full faith on the divine word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.-COLERIDGE'S Aids to Reflection.

Faith subsists in the synthesis of the Reason and the individual Will. Faith is the source and sum, the energy and principle of the fidelity of man to God, by the subordination of his human will, in all provinces of his nature, to his reason, as the sum of spiritual Truth, representing and manifesting the Will Divine.-ID, Confessions of an Inquiring Mind.

† Infidel France, in the height and frenzy of her barbarities and wickedness on throwing off the recognition of the divine authority of the Supreme and Moral Governor of the Universe, substituted as the idol of national worship a worse than pagan object in the gross exhibition of the nude prostitute of an egregiously depraved imagination as the unnatural, unphilosophical and lying representative of the "Goddess of Reason." For this, and other abominations, fearful jud ments are still suspended over her, G. C.