p. 127I am afraid from the tone of your remarks last month, that we are not yet at the end of your objections?—I am giving you the chance of thoroughly flooring me.
That would be a pleasant way of looking at it if being floored, you would remain floored.—I shall always get up again, of course, if you leave me wind enough.
I have no inclination to get the better of you for the mere sake of the thing. I only wish to establish the most momentous truth we have been discussing—the most momentous it is possible to conceive.—Well, I think so far as I can judge myself, there is nothing I am so willing to have established. I am fully inclined to think with David that it is “the fool that says in his heart, There is no God.” At the same time, I wish the last cloud speck of an objection to be answered and disposed of. This is why I speak so frankly, and seem, perhaps, more of an unbeliever than I am. p. 128 So far, so good. What is your objection now? Last month you said a good deal about angels. Why should there be angels?—Oh, my good friend, you might as well ask, Why should there be men? Why should there be stars? Why should there be anything?
Ah, but you don’t catch my meaning. Your theory of God, as I might call it—speaking as yet as an outsider—seems to me to dispense with the need of angels.
How so?—Well, you speak of a Presence filling heaven and earth, and of a Being whose perception and power are co-extensive with this universal Presence. If this is a correct conception, does it not render angels superfluous? Why should God have angels to do what He can do Himself? The idea of a messenger or servant seems rather to belong to human weakness, does it not? We would not employ servants, I think, if we could do as easily as thought what we employ them to do?
I begin to get a glimmer of where you are. Well, what have you to say?—I think it is facts we have to do with rather than any speculation as to whether facts might not have been otherwise.
But facts must agree with one another?—Doubtless they do so; but sometimes the agreement may not be obvious to our limited faculties.
Do you say, then, that you cannot reconcile the idea of angels with the fact of God’s omniscience?—I do not say that. What I say is that the mode of the Divine subsistence, as I may phrase it, is necessarily too entirely beyond our knowledge to enable us to conclude that angelic instrumentality is a superfluity. What do we know of Spirit, still less its relation to the personal consciousness, power, p. 129 and wisdom of the Eternal Creator? We know of its existence: that is all. We know nothing of its nature or mode of operation.
I regret to hear you speak in such doubtful terms.—You need not; they are terms applicable to almost any branch of human knowledge. Air and light and life and gravitation are all things known as facts only. They are not comprehended in their essence. Even water is quite an inscrutable element, though so common.
I think you go too far there. The chemical ingredients of air and water are known.
But what do you know of the chemical ingredients? You call a certain gas oxygen or hydrogen, as the case may be. You know of the existence of these elemental gases: but do you comprehend what they are in themselves?—Their molecular constitution has been investigated; so many atoms combining with so many other atoms, in a certain order, produce gases or fluids or solids with certain fixed peculiarities.
Yes, you rattle it off easily enough, according to the text books of science.—It is not rattle, but fact.
Well, I mean that in the employment of these terms, you are still on the surface of things. You do not touch the bottom. What is an atom, and how did it originate?—I saw a suggestion the other day that atoms were minute rings of ether.
Yes, we live in the age of “suggestions,” but where is the value of suggestion as the basis of actual knowledge? Who ever saw an atom? What is ether out of which an atom can be made? Is ether also made of atoms? How can that be if atoms are made of ether? What is light made of? What is gravitation made of? What is electricity made of? It does not solve the problem or evade p. 130 the difficulty to call them “modes of motion,” as is the habit with the latest philosophy: motion of what? and how did it acquire the motion? and why are not all motions alike, and all atoms alike? and why is the universe not a wide Sahara of dead uniformity instead of the sparkling variegated frame of wisdom and power and diversity that we behold? No, my friend, no: all that we can know of facts is their superficial aspect; and therefore when I say that we only know of the existence of Spirit, but nothing of its essence or modes, I only say what is affirmable of the commonest branches of knowledge.
Well, what application do you make of that qualification to the subject in hand?—I look at space filled with Spirit in extension—invisible, subtle, simultaneous throughout the universe—having none of the limitations of space to which finite mortals stand related. The electrical achievements of this century enable me to understand how to this Spirit there is no distance, and no impediment, and that the Eternal Intelligence enshrined in the heart of it, as the Bible reveals, must needs be in touch with all parts of immensity and have control of all things.
That is the very idea that seems to me to exclude the idea of angels.—Ah, but you must take all parts of the subject. Though God thus fills and holds heaven and earth in Himself, it is evident that He has constituted them on a principle that gives them mechanical independence of Himself. They work by the laws and qualities He has imparted to them. They form, as it were, a.framework in which He hides Himself as the latent Power while having all in His control.
That is your theory, isn’t it?—No; not in the sense of fancy or guess. It is inevitable truth resulting p. 131 from the existence of God, as demonstrated in all the ways we have passed under review; and from the self-evident fact of the automatic action of the universe. The two things must be taken together. They yield this result—that God having made the universe, has taken up a passive position within it, as we might say, which possibly renders the employment of angels a necessity, notwithstanding that He knows all and can perform all; and if not a necessity, at least a pleasing mode of exercising His power—much more interesting, certainly, than working the universe by mere Spirit, as an engine is worked by steam.
You become less positive?—I think you see your answer. You may get it from the case of our own race. God was under no necessity to make man. But He has made him, and we must admit that the stuff incorporate in a living, intelligent, obedient and appreciative race is stuff in a more interesting form, than if it existed in the form of lifeless dust, or inorganic cloud, or moisture, or abstract Spirit.
I am afraid mankind are not so interesting as you make them out to be.—I am speaking of man as God intended him to be, and as he will be when God’s purpose with him as accomplished. The argument is much more powerful when applied to the angels of His power, “who do His pleasure, hearkening to the voice of His word.” They may not be essential to the management of the universe, but they form a much more interesting apparatus of management than the naked Spirit of God, quietly filling the solemn solitudes of immensity.