p. 117Well, what are we to say to my difficulty about Omnipotence coming down to the earth and walking and talking like a man?—It is the old question of Solomon, “But will God indeed dwell upon the earth? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have built.”
Yes, that seems to be the question. What is the answer?—The answer will be found in the existence and function of the angels.
The angels? Who are they?—You must, of course, have heard of them.
Yes, I have heard of them, but I imagined they were part of the pretty fable of pulpit theology, which I understand you have discarded.—We have discarded the fables, certainly, but not what may be true in orthodox religion.
What! Do you go in then for little chubby heads and winged seraphic spectres?—No, not that at all, but for the angels of the Bible, who are as real as men, though of higher nature. p. 118 This is new to me.—You will find it true. The subject of angels is interwoven with Bible history all the way down, from the appearance of two at Sodom the night before its destruction (Gen. xix. 1) to the appearance in Patmos to John of the angel that exhibited to him the scenes of the Apocalypse (Rev. i. 1; xxii. 6). If you will study the recorded cases of their appearance, you will find they are beings more real than man; for they not only can eat and drink, but are immortal, and have control over the powers of Nature.
That is an extraordinary idea.
Open your mind and you may see it but a higher form of truth than you have yet been accustomed to. You do not suppose man is the highest form of life in the universe?—Far be it from me to suppose such a thing; yet man is the highest form of life I have seen.
But not than you have heard of if you take the Bible into account?—(Hesitatingly), Well, no.
And you have admitted the argument for its truth?—Yes.
Realize for a moment, then, the Bible representation of the subject. It is not merely that the appearance of angels is recorded many times, but their existence is expressly recognized, as by David in Psa. ciii. 20, 21: “Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye His hosts; and ye ministers of His, that do His pleasure”; or still more weightily by Christ is His most frequent allusions to them, as when He says, “The Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him” (Matt. xxv. 31).—I have no doubt it is so if you declare it to be so. I am not so well p. 119 acquainted with the Bible as I should like to be. But what strikes me is the extraordinary character of the doctrine.
It all depends upon what you mean by extraordinary. If you mean out of the run of ordinary mortal experience, it is no doubt extraordinary, but a thing may be out of the run of ordinary mortal experience, and yet very true, such as the appearance of a double comet or the fall of red snow.—Granted.
The existence of angels may be extraordinary in the sense of being a thing of which the current generation has had no experience, but it is far from extraordinary in the sense of being improbable or anomalous. It seems to me in the highest degree intrinsically probable, and opens out a conception of the universe that is sublime. The universe subsists in God, whose one Spirit embraces and covers all, but it is not manipulated in detail by Him. Having received a fixed constitution by His power and wisdom, though His discernment penetrates it everywhere, He does not interfere in its operations; it is allowed to work itself out by the laws and affinities imparted to it, subject to the supervision of the immortal class of agents revealed to us as the angels who receive His “charge” (Matt. iv. 6), and execute His decrees (Dan. ix. 23; Ex. xxiii. 20-23). This exhibits the universe as a much more interesting field of intelligence than if operated mechanically by a law of celestial instinct as we might say: Just as the earth is much more interesting as the scene of human tillage than it would be as a seed-growing paradise in man’s absence.—I might grant the beauty of the conceit if we were only permitted to have the same experience of the angelic management as we have of that of the horticulturists. p. 120 It is only a question of time, my friend, if you accept the teaching of Jesus. You may remember what he said to Nathanael: “Ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” The accomplished experience of the past is the guarantee of what is to come.—Well, I might concede all that, but I do not see how it bears upon the fact of God coming down, etc., which you introduced it to explain.
One fact more is necessary to make the explanation obvious. The angels bear the name of God, and what they do, God is said to do.
Angels bear the name of God!—Such is the fact, my friend, however it may shock you at first sight. A verbal illustration of it you have in what was said to Moses concerning the angel that should accompany the Israelitish host on their journey to the land of promise: “Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice,. . . . for My name is in him” (Exo. xxiii. 20). Direct proof is to be found in the application of the name of God over and over again to the angels that appeared in various phases of the Divine work. Take two instances: “The Angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Moses) in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. . . . Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face: for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exo. iii. 2, 6). The other instance is when Moses led Israel out of Egypt. It is said (Exo. xiii. 18), that “God led the people,” and that “the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud” (verse 21). This, in chapter xiv. 19, is p. 121 declared to be “the Angel of God which went before the camp of Israel.” This peculiarity you will find exemplified in Bible history over and over again.
It is an extraordinary peculiarity, I must say.
It may seem so, but it is the key to the difficulty you expressed in understanding what you described as the pettiness and localness of the recorded manifestations of the Deity. One God manifested in a plurality of subordinate agents is not an inconceivable idea, is it?—I must take time to think over it. I cannot say that it disposes of all my difficulty.