SECTION II

the angel Gabriel

(Luke 1)

That theocratic energy which was the soul of Israel’s development, that silent process by which God was becoming man, and man becoming the son of God, seemed in the days of Herod the Great, if viewed according to general appearances, to have become almost extinct. But these appearances must have been deceptive. Never was a great and holy energy stunted to death in the midst of its development; and least of all could this most deeply human, this divine-human impulse, which was the energizing principle of the world’s history, which had begun in such reality, evaporate at last into mere ideals and pictures of life. But it was in entire conformity with the nature of this its sublimest development, that the noble energy should concentrate itself in the secret recesses of the most profound and elect minds of Israel; that it should ripen in such minds into the form of an infinite mourning after God, an unspeakable anticipation and longing; and thus, constituting a state of perfect recipiency, should be waiting in silent expectation for a corresponding divine operation, a new revelation. While the nation in general seemed dying away like the body of an aged man, its glowing life had concentrated itself in the vital recesses of this body, and was there awaiting the hour of its second birth. So great an expectation—an expectation which God Himself had been bringing to maturity, by means of the works He had wrought during so many centuries of the world’s history—could not fail of its accomplishment, that positive communication of life which it needed, and of whose advent it was itself a prophecy.

This expectation, though silent and secret, was strained to the very uttermost; hence its fulfilment could not but ensue in such sudden and great manifestations of the power of God, as might be compared to violent storms. It is after a long and anxious pause, on a sultry and stormy day, that the lightning generally appears. At last it darts suddenly forth, its wondrous flames unite heaven and earth, the thunder rolls, and now stroke upon stroke of thunder and lightning follow with no ambiguous purpose—for a new tone is to be given to the atmosphere to refresh the earth.

It was so with that objective divine operation which Zacharias and Mary experienced, when the birth of the forerunner was announced and promised to the former, and of the Lord to the latter.

This great and wonderful operation of God presupposed a matured recipiency in the deepest and noblest minds in Israel. It is in such a state of recipiency that we meet with the venerable priest Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth: they were pious and righteous in the true Israelite sense. Mary appears on the scene as the handmaid of the Lord, the theocratic heroine, ready to surrender her whole life to God, and acquainted, as well as her priestly relatives, with the spiritual nature of Messiah’s dignity and kingdom. A similar state of perfect recipiency, in which the blossom of Israelite desire opened its petals to the sunshine of the new revelation, prevailed among the elect of those days, in general: Simeon and Anna are the representatives of this recipiency.

Such hearts, however, as were to be capable of welcoming and receiving the highest revelation of grace in its bodily manifestation, had to be prepared not merely by the bestowal of noble dispositions, but by their development—not merely in the school of Israelite doctrine, but of Israelite experience. They had to be thoroughly unhappy in the truest sense, to be brought to despair of the goodness of the old exterior world, and to experience, in the annihilation of their former ideals, the judgment of God upon its sinfulness, in which they also saw its misery and sadness. Thus alone could they have given up those false notions of a Messiah which were the ruin of their nation; thus alone have known the happiness of receiving, with a poverty of spirit deep as their knowledge of the world, the Prince of the heavenly kingdom, who was to change judgment into salvation, and to build up a new world upon the ruins of the old.

The great sorrow of Zacharias and Elisabeth is known. They had no son. A threefold deprivation, since, under the Old Testament, piety had the promise of an earthly blessing, since the solitariness of their life in the hill country would make the time of advanced age the more gloomy, and since they would not behold the delight, the glory of Israel, which in their longing hearts would be naturally blended with the form of the child which was denied to them. The sorrow of Anna is equally manifest. It was as a widow that she took up her abode in the temple, after the death of her husband. The happiness of her life seems to have been buried with him. The aged Simeon was a theocratic Jeremiah, whom his sorrow for Israel, his ardent longing for the Messiah, had made a wandering Jew in a nobler sense. He was not to die till he had seen the Messiah. He must have breathed forth a long last sigh when he uttered the words, ‘This child is set for the fall of many in Israel.’ He had penetrated the hypocritical nature of most of the fathers and leaders of the nation; but he was also acquainted with the ardent desires of those who were quiet in the land, who were to rise again through the Messiah. The sword had entered into his own soul, or he would not have been able to announce a similar lot to Mary. But what was the school of misfortune Mary could have passed through before she received the annunciation? Certainly, mere talents, noble qualities of mind, a childhood filled with pious anticipations, heartfelt maidenly participation in Israel’s prayer for the advent of Messiah, enhanced by the proud yet sad consciousness of a descent from David concealed from the world, do not suffice to explain the secret of Mary’s preparedness to receive the wonderful communication of the New Testament life, in the strength and fulness of its incarnation. As a Jewess, she must have given up the old Israelite world, must have been brought to bury her old ideals by some judgment of the Lord. At all events, this complete renunciation of the world must have been developed during the progress of some great visitation which she had experienced. But in what did her sorrow consist? Had she not borne it with holy womanliness, and concealed it under an ‘anointed face’? She seems to have been early betrothed to Joseph, according to Israelite law and custom. Perhaps she had been entrusted, as an orphan, to the protecting care of her older relation. But when the rich qualities of her glorious mind had attained to the maturity of maidenhood; when her freer and greater spirit, which was all unconsciously approaching to the New Testament standard, awoke within her, with all its wants; she then became conscious of the grave nature of this tie. Joseph did not understand her, in her deepest experiences. She was increasingly feeling the sad condition of the house of David and of Israel, which was so secretly forming into a judgment upon the inner life of her solitary heart. But, like a true daughter of Israel, she anointed her face; from the burnt sacrifice in which she offered up her first dreams of life and of the world to the great Israelite duty of legal obedience, she came forth as the virgin, in whom the new world was to have its beginning, the promise of the Redeemer to work with divine creative power, in whose womb the Gospel could assume flesh and blood.

Zacharias and Mary may be regarded as pre-eminently the mature fruits of the tree of Old Testament discipline and education. Divine illumination and divine chastisement had sanctified them, and led them to the very entrance of that Holy of Holies, where they might receive the announcement of the New Testament revelation of God.

The theocratic operation which, according to God’s righteous arrangement, such a disposition as theirs could not fail to experience, was naturally the last and highest manifestation of the Old Testament agency of God; of the power of God energizing towards its redeeming incarnation.

When, under the Old Covenant, God revealed Himself to the elect of Israel, these revelations were ever made with reference to His last and highest revelation, His manifestation in the God-man. They were the beginnings of His incarnation. Hence these divine operations always took a human form, in the prophetic ecstasy of those hearts that were visited, in the plastic power of their intuition, and especially when their vision attained the highest degree of intensity. The Son of man who was ever in the bosom of the Father as the coming One, or the Son of God who was ever in the heart of man as the desired One, appeared as present to the spiritually illumined, inwardly perceptive vision of the holy seers. This was the angel of God’s presence; the eternal Man in the self-contemplation of God, the God-man about to become such in the ardent desires of Israel’s life, the non-temporal Christ ever present by the Spirit to the minds of the prophets. Hence He is identified with Jehovah, as well as distinguished from Him.¹

The high communication in which God finally stilled the universal struggle between His super-mundane concealment, and matured human desire for Him, resulted in two great manifestations of His miraculous agency, an agency at once theocratic and gracious. The first preliminary communication was made to Zacharias. It was a creative agency, which in its revivifying action prepared the life of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. The second and more glorious communication was made to Mary. It deposited in her soul, in the soul of her organism, the germ of the incarnation of Christ.

Both these elect vessels received this communication in an ecstasy, in which the creative power of God, as a gracious power, manifested itself to them under the form of an angel, and in which the interaction which took place between their minds, and the divine power which came upon them, caused them distinctly to recognize in this divine power the word of revelation, and formed itself into a dialogue with the angel. They trembled before the power of this manifestation, in which the word of God flowed into their souls as a creative power. They called the angel who brought them the word which laid in them the foundation of a new æon, according to the power of his word, Gabriel, the man of God, the hero of God.

This angel of the presence, whom many in Israel had seen under various circumstances, was called Raphael in the sphere of popular life, when bringing deliverance or assistance to the necessities of the individual. But when to the view of the inspired he presented himself personally as the creative announcer of the kingdom of heaven, of the new æon of the world, he was called Gabriel. When, finally, he appeared before them as the victor over the old son, as the destroyer of the kingdom of the old serpent, he was called Michael. It is always the same christological operation, the one image of Christ; but this one image in ever varying relations; the angel of the presence developing his different modes of operation.² After what has already been said, it might seem to some superfluous to notice in this place the general objections made to the biblical doctrine of angels. Our view, however, of the angel Gabriel would be very erroneously judged, if regarded as antagonistic to the objectivity of the angelic world. Hence it will be necessary, for its further confirmation, that it should be stated in connection with the general doctrine of angels.

The doctrine of angels is derived first from the testimony of theocratic spirits, of elect individuals. They saw visions; and inquiry must first concern itself with their testimony. When the narratives of such visions are declared to be myths because they relate this miraculous occurrence, a vision, criticism is entirely overthrown. In the zeal of negation, it is overlooked that it is only the vision of the narrator which has first to be dealt with. Now, mythology has neither the modesty nor refinement to speak of visions in which the inhabitants of the heavenly world appear. In her world, the vision and the sensuous perception are one and the same; the unearthly beings go about freely, and are seen with earthly eyes, for their world itself is a mythological vision. It is quite otherwise with the appearances of angels in the lives of the saints, though the traditions of some of these narratives in the Old Testament show a tinge of the mythological in their setting.³ According to the testimony of the theocratic Church, the saints saw visions. These assurances rest upon the same foundation of veracity upon which their inspired testimony to the principles of the heavenly life, which they planted in the earth, depends. The critic has first duly to estimate the difference between the subjective vision and its objective matter, unless he would rashly and hastily cut the Gordian knot with his sword. He must not proceed strictly to test the objectivity of the vision till he has first treated its subjective dignity with reverence.

This remark, that angelic appearances are chiefly found in the form of visions, has not, however, to be set before the critic alone, but also before the orthodox. Never has an angel been seen in the usual direction of the eyes towards the surface of the earth, when the eyes have been in their ordinary sensuous condition. Such a sight seems rather to have depended upon some peculiarity of mind, some special frame, at some great crisis of the world’s history, which may be regarded as predisposing to an extraordinary revelation.⁴ As the eye that beholds the sun must be endowed with the sun-gazing capacity, so must there be a spiritual disposition in those who behold spirits, an angelic one in those to whom angels appear. This explains the reason, perhaps, why one of the women who visited the tomb saw two angels, when the other perceived but one; why the apostles so suddenly saw angels standing beside them on the Mount of Olives, and other similar circumstances. The capacity for such sight would be different in different men, and in the same man at different moments. It depends upon a frame of mind in which the eye of the body does not stand in its usual opposition to the inner eye, the sight of the heart; in which the polar opposition between the two is annulled in the unity which is the foundation of both. The eye of the body is, so to speak, plunged into the depths of the heart; the inmost heart has entered into the bodily eye; and thus the visionary and ecstatic man has a glimpse of a world in which the contrast between the internal and external disappears, in which the struggle between heaven and earth is extinct. Such seeing, therefore, is no common perception, but a vision. It is certain that the Bible sometimes speaks of angels with dogmatic certainty (e.g., Heb 2:2), and sometimes in a symbolical manner. We must consequently distinguish between symbolical visions of angels, and such statements as agree with the notion of an objective angelic world.

Even symbolical visions of angels are more or less objective, inasmuch as the ecstasy must always be the result of an influence which must be looked upon as a divine operation.

Most numerous are those subjective and symbolical representations of angels, which are found in the history of all times and places. When man receives with delight some great assistance from on high, an angel is present to his mind by means of that plastic power which intuitively thus regards the circumstance. This form is actual in his mind. It is, as formerly remarked, his ‘second sight’ of Christ. Such angelic appearances must occur under the most varied forms. Indeed, education, and even variety of mental perception, will exert their influence on the forms of these representations of angels, though they are not mere subjective fictions, but the results of a divine influence upon the mind. Of a more important character are those great angelic forms who pass through the world, as spirits of vengeance, of pestilence, of death, or similar divine messengers, in conjunction with the powers of the elements. They represent the extraordinary visitations of God, exhibiting them in their true character, as mysterious powers proceeding immediately from God, and in their highest purpose, as sent with reference to the glory of Christ. Thus coming from God, and thus referring to Christ, even the darkest visitation becomes an angel of light, and solemnizes its symbolic incarnation.⁵

But the most exalted operations of God are those in which the communication of His very life are concerned, in which the whole incarnation of Christ is expressed. These appear to the spectator, as has been pointed out above, as the angel of the divine presence. Hence out of one image are developed various images of the archangel. The archangel surpasses the ordinary angelic world as an image and operation of Christ: Christ stands above the angels.

But as operations may become angels in the horizon of the spectators, so also may angels manifest themselves in operations. That Holy Scripture does announce the appearance of actual angels, cannot be denied, nor has anything as yet been advanced antagonistic to this announcement.

Some seek to avoid this question by the remark, that the doctrine of angels belongs neither to the dogmatic nor religious matter of Scripture.⁶ Did then the Scriptures concern themselves to give us information about the physiology of angels? In the end, however, even such a view would not deliver us from this difficult question. Our religious view of life must embrace the whole world; and whether the doctrine of angels is in the Bible or not, we must try to come to a decision about it.⁷ A multitude of objections to the doctrine of angels has been advanced. We will take these objections in pairs, that is to say, we will arrange them in opposing pairs, as casting light upon or abolishing each other. At one time, it is said that God has no local palace in heaven, and keeps no such heavenly court, after the fashion of Oriental princes, as the idea of angels supposes.⁸ Then, again, angels are represented as beings existing between two worlds, who, as such, must be lost in the regions of empty space.⁹ The one representation is evidently antagonistic to the other, and they might therefore be left to annihilate each other. We will, however, consider them separately. If the doctrine of Jehovah’s heavenly palace were really found in its literal sense in the Old Testament, Judaism would be a kind of Heathenism; and the doctrine of God’s omnipresence could not be so decidedly expressed in its view of the world, as e.g. in Ps. 139. Every unprejudiced mind must easily perceive that in the light of this doctrine, as well as in the whole teaching of Hebrew Monotheism, such words as relate to the special dwelling-place of God in heaven, must have a symbolical meaning. Let us now consider the angels of the highest heaven, or of the citadel of the universe, as beings existing between the worlds. This view of their peculiarity may perhaps be found in Jean Paul, but not in John or Paul. Holy Scripture knows nothing of this abstract inter-mundanism (comp. 1Co 15:40, Mat 22:30). Hence, neither the heathen court of angels, nor these modern ethereal angels, are scriptural. The next pair of objections appears in the following form.¹⁰ First, it is said angels are incorporeal beings; and an incorporeal being cannot appear. Then it is remarked, that it would be contrary to divine providence, if there were such beings and appearances, since their agency would deprive men of their independence. Therefore an angel is an incorporeal being, and yet again so substantial a one, that he attacks human independence. When, however, the notion of incorporeal individuals is considered by itself, it is evident that a phantom is but produced for the sake of obtruding it upon the Bible. For in the Bible all beings have their proper bodies, conformably to their spheres (1Co 15:38). This notion, however, could hardly maintain itself in presence of the test furnished by a sound view of the world. For the form of individual personality must be everywhere recognized in creation, as a power which as a speaking monad must, by its very existence, assimilate corporeal matter. But it is said that the existence of angels disturbs human spontaneity. Somewhat in the same manner, perhaps, that moonlight interferes with the regulations for the lighting of the streets. Demoniacal human spirits seem most fearfully to interfere with the independence of thousands; yet they actually exist. Angels, on the contrary, only manifest themselves with extreme rarity to the inner man of the receptive spirit, and not without being more or less bidden by his frame of mind. As the muses visit the poet alone, so do the angels visit only the religious and elect. Again, it is at one time said that the Jews brought back a more particular, definite doctrine of angels from the Babylonian captivity, and that the names given to the angels were the result of the influence of the Zend religion.¹¹ Then it is found strange that the angels, and especially Gabriel, should bear Hebrew names.¹² It may be conceded that the Jews, under the influence of the Persian doctrine of Amshaspands, did further develop their doctrine of angels. But from the circumstance that these more developed forms of angels bear Hebrew names, and are represented as speaking the Hebrew tongue, it must be allowed that the development in general, is one quite in conformity with Israelite Monotheism. The fact, however, of a fresh development within the theocratic soil being promoted by a heathen influence, is not equivalent to the implantation of a heathen notion, as the critic supposes when he says, ‘Were these notions false as long as they were confined to strangers, and not true until they were transferred to the Jews?’ The Jews always had their own doctrine of angels (comp. Gen. 19.) If this doctrine was developed under foreign influences, this development nevertheless was organically conformable to the organism of Monotheism.¹³ Its angels could as little be transformed into Amshaspands, genii, or inferior gods, as the fallen spirit, Satan, could be transformed into Ahrimanes, the evil god. The germ, however, from which they developed their high-enthroned spirits was, as we have seen, the angel of the divine presence. This development may even be regarded as a development of Old Testament Christology, inasmuch as the separate forms of the life of the coming Messiah were therein explained (comp. Isa 11:2, Rev 1:4). The Israelite had no need to introduce the number seven from the Amshaspands into this development; for he was already accustomed to discover the fulness of life in the same holy number: to meet with this number elsewhere, could at most incite him thus to represent the forms of the angel of the covenant. The obscuration of Christology first began with the decay of the conviction that visions of the becoming God-man were dogmatically fixed in these angel forms. It was, therefore, not only allowable, but a proceeding which reformed old errors, when the true theocrats of Israel called the glorious manifestation of the becoming Messiah by the name of Gabriel. The theocratic seer thereby testified at once to his sense for the ideal and for history. His sense for the ideal, in giving the angel a name which designated him as an operation. He called the creative operation of grace, in its divine power, the hero of God, because it appeared to him in the divine-human form. His sense for history, because this divine operation was continually reappearing in Israel; it had its rhythm, it repeated and enhanced its manifestations. Therefore the seer who had seen it, fixed it and named it according to his own experience. This name then became a sign to any other who might or who was to experience it. He might be convinced of communion with his fellow-believers even in this experience and recognition. A theocratic Church could not but designate its heavenly experiences, because it experienced the definite progress of God’s redeeming purpose in a succession of events, and not a nameless alternation of divine things in physical perpetuity.

The arguments just cited against the doctrine of angels, as little disturb our faith in these heavenly beings, as the prowling of young bears over a sunny meadow would disturb the light fluttering of butterflies over its variegated flowers.¹⁴

Of more importance is the remark, that appearances of angels have become things unheard of in modern times, and thus seem, like ordinary spiritual apparitions, to have vanished before the daylight. It must not, however, be overlooked, that the angels of the old theocracy were only present at special periods, and when new foundations of revelation were to be laid. The modern world is indeed a deeper, broader, and more powerful stream, yet but a stream pursuing its appointed and regular course, an effluence only from the miraculous age of Christ’s appearing. The angels who appeared at His grave, opened at once that grave and our æon. This æon is to last till the end of the world. Then shall the angels again appear within the region of humanity (Mat 13:39). But the peculiarity of this Christian æon must also be taken into account. Christ appeared, and believing Christendom attained, by His Spirit, to the perception of His glory. There is now a satisfaction for the christological aspirations of man; the capacity for receiving angelic visions is absorbed in Christian knowledge. In this respect the angels may be compared to the stars of heaven, which disappear before the rising sun, while at noonday even the full moon seems but a white cloud.

The possibility of the existence of such beings as the angels of Holy Scripture is more and more corroborated by the discoveries of modern science. We see stars of all colours, and of every variety of material condition, traversing infinite space, many of a lightness as ethereal as golden dreams or spectral spheres. The spirits that inhabit them must correspond, in the rapidity and freedom of their powers of motion, to the elf-like nature of their abodes. To those philosophers, indeed, who see in all the starry canopy only ‘rocks of light,’ uninhabited wastes, the whole world of space is but an Ahriman, a dark world from which spirit is excluded. But if heaven is really inhabited, as we may expect according to the analogy of the earth, it cannot but be regarded as a vast realm of spirits. In this vast realm are found those ministering spirits whose objective existence is certainly assumed when they are spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But we must delay considering the various kinds of angelic beings till we have first considered the frames of mind which can apprehend them. In the stillness of night we may hear the rushing of the distant stream, which we could not perceive amidst the noises of day; and the light in a distant cottage window is seen to cast its gleam through the whole neighbourhood, while the burning of the whole cottage would scarcely have been noticed by daylight. The roar of Niagara is said to be much better heard at a certain distance than in its immediate vicinity. The same distinctions prevail within the sphere of the inner life. Most minds are incessantly and wholly filled, nay, tied and bound, with the bustle of external events. Their eyes can scarcely fix upon anything merely great or beautiful, which passes them bodily, because they seek the one thing needful in too many things, they suffer from the quest after everything. When, however, this quest after every kind of thing becomes the possessing demon of an age, or even its very worship, we cannot be surprised if that deeply contemplative mood, which believes in the passage of spirits from star to star, from heaven to earth, should disappear. When any one has once taken his position in the mill of world-craving selfishness, and has set all its wheels in motion, he could not hear the fall of Niagara, even if it were close at hand.

But there are souls that have a higher feeling for infinity, because they have the courage to let go those things among the many which are not in conformity with their disposition. They can even, under certain circumstances, welcome the ruin, the end of this world. It is, however, natural that one in whose eyes the world, with its fashions, passes away, should obtain an organ, or rather that the organ should be developed within him, by means of which he looks into the very heavens, and experiences heavenly influences. When the old world perishes, and a new one is expected from heaven, the noblest hearts are, so to speak, vacant, or rather open, for heaven; no longer filled by the old world, which, with its fashions and bustle, is dead to them. In such a condition, they are capable of hearing the voices of spirits, and of beholding the angels of God. It was in such a frame of mind that the women visited the tomb of Jesus; to them all the glory of the world was buried in that grave. Therefore they had an open eye for the messengers of heaven. Thus also was it that the eyes of the disciples were opened on Olivet, when Jesus ascended to heaven. Earth melted into nothingness when they saw the Lord depart from them; now, therefore, they were able to perceive the messengers from heaven, and to receive their message.

The beholders of angels become in their ecstasy, as it were, released from the common interests of earth, temporarily ‘absent from the body;’ and therefore spiritually disposed beings having intercommunion with a higher sphere of life, and that a sphere which bends down towards theirs, as they in spirit rise towards it.¹⁵ But when the spirits of different spheres of life have a common interest, which equally embraces both, they actually meet together in one sphere; they now operate upon each other, and, when their influences are mutually felt, they are even capable of being personally visible to each other. When the aspirations of Greece invisibly concurred with the missionary impulses of Paul on the sea-coast of Troas, like two approaching flames, then Paul saw in a vision a man of Macedonia standing before him (Act 16:9).¹⁶ The spirits of Peter and Cornelius so strongly influenced each other, when Peter at Joppa had approached the town of Cesarea, that each was in a vision directed to the other (Acts 10.) If these two cases do not exactly express the relation between the spirits of earth and those of a higher world (though in the case of Peter there is at the same time a communication between Christ and himself, and in the case of Cornelius, the communication between him and the objective angel-world cannot be denied),¹⁷ yet they are, on the other hand, specially adapted, as examples easily comprehensible, to exemplify the law of visions which we have laid down. The history of the transfiguration, however, presents us with a more difficult and more eminent example. The relative intercourse between the spirits of Moses and Elias, and Christ, draws them into the Lord’s sphere of life, when He was about to inaugurate his last journey to His death by His transfiguration; and by the powerful rapport between Jesus and His disciples, they also were partakers of this vision. A contrast to this attraction which takes place between God’s heroes from sphere to sphere, causing them spiritually to blend in one sphere, is found in the general rapport between angels and children. The peculiar affinity between the moon and the sea is well known; we understand that a somnambulist may be, as it were, possessed by the influence of light of the new moon; it is known that sainfoin celebrates the influence of the sun by a gentle trembling like a passing spirit; we are acquainted with the infinitely far-reaching influences of light, and are inclined, in all these respects, to believe in the most spirit-like influences, even in matter. But when the immeasurably distant influence of spirits upon spirits—it might almost be said, of the most delicate of lights upon the most delicate lights—is spoken of, then common sense stumps in its clumsiest wooden shoes into the midst of the discussion, and dismisses the matter with the cheap remark: Imagination, enthusiastic illusions, or legends. When the full import of the sympathies, of which a faint notion is expressed when the tendencies of this age are allowed to speak out, is scientifically recognized, we shall be forced to acknowledge that the influences of spirits between star and star must be far more powerful than that of starry light, or of any other attracting or repelling forces.

We conclude, then, that when spirits dwelling in different spheres are brought to identity of disposition, when one thought vibrates in them, one interest animates them, they will exert an influence upon each other, and may be sent to one another.¹⁸

But every influence of this kind may become plastic in the mind of the ecstatic. As in photography¹⁹ a means has been found of fixing and rendering visible the images reflected upon a surface, by objects placed opposite to it; So is an ecstasy a similar means of detaining certain spiritual influences, and translating them according to their actual import in sight and speech, which in truth they already are, though in a latent manner. Objects are always reflecting their images upon opposite surfaces; but photography alone makes them visible and preserves them. So also are spirits ever influencing spirits, though at great distances; but it is only in the ecstatic state that these influences obtain an actual plastic form.

From what has been advanced, then, it follows that appearances of spirits from other worlds are, under the given conditions, imaginable, when the visionary mind, freed from its own world, receives from the spirit most kindred to itself in another world, an influence which its own plastic agency translates into form, words, and perhaps also into a name; just as the light reflected from one countenance to another is re-formed into a countenance in the eye of the latter.

Since, however, souls are active in their operations, these influences between distances may be regarded as approaches.

The spirits, however, of the subtler regions of the universe, whose corporeity must be almost identical with their operations, as far as their delicacy is concerned, must be able in this organization to hover through the world with a freedom which can scarcely be represented by the most refined of earthly comparisons. The kingdom of God embraces in its development various spheres; as the history of civilization does various countries. The spirits of education who promote civilization upon earth are not restrained by the boundaries of nations, they overleap mountains and provinces. It is even so with the spirits of the theocracy; they overpass the barriers of the earthly senses, the limitations of earth. But when the intercourse between them is to become a special influence of heaven upon earth, this ever takes place at a most critical and decisive period, preordained by God. It is then that the Lord sends His holy angels.

Holy Scripture speaks of the appearing of angels in the most literal sense. We do not reckon the angel Gabriel among them, not because he is beneath this category, but far above it, as the angel of the divine presence, acting in creative power in the last moments prior to his incarnation.²⁰

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Notes

Even the most objective angelic apparition is symbolic, inasmuch as the nearest approach of a spirit ever requires the plastic co-operation of the mind of the spectator. The element of the symbolic enters even into love, as existing between man and man. The beloved object is a vision. On the other hand, even the most subjective vision of angels is not purely subjective; it is an objective divine operation coming in the light and power of a christological image from God to man. [Such an objectiveness as this, however, by no means comes up to that which is implied in Scripture; and it is to be regretted that the author has not more distinctly brought out the difference between the objective appearance of the angels themselves, and the objective operation by which the minds of men were prepared for their visits. For while the minds of those to whom they were sent were no doubt most frequently in a state of preparedness, that state of mind was so far from being the cause, that it was not invariably even a requisite condition of the appearance. See, e.g., the case of Sodom. Moreover, if angels appeared in bodies which could partake of earthly nourishment (as they sometimes did), are we not justified in concluding that these bodies were visible to the merely bodily eye? They were not, of course, sent at random, not sent as idlers to hover before those to whom they had no message; but those fit persons to whom they were sent saw them with the bodily organ of vision; and to prove that these persons were generally in an exalted frame of mind, is to prove nothing whatever regarding the objective appearance of what they then saw. The case of Samuel mistaking the voice of the Lord for the voice of Eli is instructive, in showing us the purely objective nature of such phenomena.-Ed.]

1) This angel was Jehovah Himself, so far as he was His manifestation, so far as he was the plastic image of His coming; but he was the angel of the Lord, so far as subjective contemplation clothed him with symbolical elements. He was more than any other actual angel, because he was Christ. He was not, however, the already incarnate Christ, but Christ on the road to His incarnation, as He preliminarily assumed flesh and blood in the plastic contemplations of the prophets, Comp. Gen. xviii, and xxii, 24; Exod. xxiii, 20,21, and xxxiii, 14; Mal. iii. 1. In the latter passage, this angel appears as the Angel of the Covenant, that is, of the interaction between Jehovah and Israel. [According to Hengstenberg (Christology, iv. 806, &e.), there are four opinions regarding this angel: 1. that he is a created angel employed to act in the name of God; 2. that he is a natural phenomenon or visible sign, by which Jehovah made His presence known; 3. that he is not a person distinct from Jehovah, but only a form of His manifestation ; and 4. (which is maintained by the great majority of trustworthy theologians) that he is the Logos of John.—ED]

2) The identity of the angel Gabriel with the angel of the presence appear from a comparison of the following passages, According to Dan. vii. 18, Daniel had a vision, evidently a vision of the Messiah (comp. Havernick’s Commentar, p. 243); he was like a son of man. According to chap, viii, 15, a vision stands before him like a man (כְּמַרְאֵה גָבֶר); this vision is afterwards, ver, 16, called Gabriel (נֵּבְרִיאֵל the man of God, the hero of God). While this angel is talking with him, the prophet falls fainting to the earth. But the angel touches him, and lifts him up again. ‘The appearance of Christ in His glory has exactly the same effect upon the Apostle John, according to Rev. i. 17. As long as Christ only appears to sinful man, His appearance as the concrete judgment of God strikes him to the earth ; but as soon as He touches him, that communication of life takes place, which lifts the condemned sinner up again. In chap. ix. 21, he who appears is called the man Gabriel (the man as more definitely the man of God). The mysterious man, chap. x. 5 (אִישׁ אֶהָד), appears alone, and in priestly glory, being represented in the same manner as the Messiah is by John, in the Apocalypse, chap. i. 18. To reassure the terror-stricken prophet, he takes the ordinary form of a son of Adam (כִּדְמוּת בְּנֵי אָדָם). He distinguishes the archangel Michael (vers. 13 and 24) from himself. For as the theocratic judgments were to further the theocratic revelations, Michael was to come to the assistance of Gabriel. The archangel Michael (מִיכָאֵל who is like God ?) executes the judgments of God (comp, Dan. xii. 1; 1 Thess. iv. 16; Jude ver. 9; Rey. xii. 7, 8). But as the angel of the presence is not quite identical with Christ as He appeared, but rather with Christ as about to appear, so also is it especially with the two forms into which the angel of the covenant branches off, Gabriel and Michael ; the former is the world’s redeemer becoming such, the latter the world’s judge becoming such, christological presentiments and the approach of divine judgment, giving to the good the preponderance over the evil. When, in the developments of Jewish Rabbinism the unity of the angel of the covenant was lost in various ramifications (Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, Uriel, and others), the misconception of the coming Messiah was already announced ; pure Israelite feeling, however, always recognized the identity of these angelic forms with the angel of the covenant. If the Rationalist will insist upon designating angelic apparitions as illusions, they must then be thus more strictly defined; they are the illusions of the very elect among mankind, and of their most exalted frames ; they are twin-children with those holiest convictions, which founded the new and Christian world upon those very frames which these illusions gave birth to, They would be illusions of a peculiar kind indeed.

3) [This expression must be interpreted by the statements of the author in sec. 5, on the ideality of the Gospel History. In that section he uses the term ‘ mythological’ of whatever glorifies the actual in the ideal, and speaks of a-true mythology which saw the coming Redeemer in human persons or in ordinary events. If by mythological in the present passage he means, as it must’ be owned he seems to mean, something less christological and inspired, something merely human and erroneous, then he not only sadly mistakes the difference between Hebrew and heathen mythology, but gives up the very position he himself occupied in the above-mentioned section.—ED.]

4) [‘It is in accordance with the analogy of history that great manifestations and epochs, designed to satisfy the spiritual wants of ages, should be anticipated by the prophetic yearnings of pure and susceptible hearts, inspired by a secret divine consciousness.’ Neander, Life of Christ, p. 23.—ED.]

5) He maketh the winds His messengers, the flames of fire His ministers (Ps. civ. 4, German vers.) In His kingdom wind and fire are not abstract phenomena, as they are to the profane observer. The wind is here a body, having a soul, a thought of God, which urges it to fulfil God’s purposes ; it is this that makes it an angel. The flames of fire are animated, as it were, by the Lord’s commission, which they have to fulfil; it is this that makes them the ministers of His majesty.

6) Schleiermacher, der christliche Glaube, vol. i. p. 204.

7) [Not, however, forgetting the words of Calvin, ‘in tota religionis doctrina, tenendam esse unam modestiw et sobrietatis regulam, ne de rebus obscuris aliud vel loquamur, vel sentiamus, vel scire etiam appetamus quam quod Dei verbo fuerit nobis traditum, . . . Theologo non garriendo aures oblectare, sed vera, certa, utilia docendo, conscientias confirmare propositum est.’ And see what he says about the man who speaks as if he had dropped from heaven, and were telling us what he had seen with his eyes. Instit. I. xiv. 4—ED.]

8) Strauss, Leben Jesu, 4th edit. vol. i. 114.

9) Schleiermacher, der christl. Glaube, Pt. i. 204.

10) Comp. Strauss, Leben Jesu, vol. i. p.117. Comp. with respect to the second objection, the work of W. Hoffmann against Strauss, entitled: das Leben Jesu, &c., geprüft für Theologen und Nichttheologen, p.123.

11) Strauss, Leben Jesu, vol. i. p. 113.

12) Id. p. 114.

13) [See Hengstenberg's Dissert. on the Genuineness of Daniel, pp. 127-140 (Clark's Tr.) ; Fairbairn’s Hermeneutical Manual, p. 203, &c.; and the very able refutation of the rationalist arguments on this point by Mill, Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, pp. 123-135.—ED.]

14) [For satisfactory answers to the objection that God is immanent in the world, and therefore needs no angels—‘a sensitive concern for the honour of the Supreme,’ which Mill thinks is ‘somewhat misplaced and superfluous’—see Calvin's Instit. I. xiv. 11; Sibbes' Works, vi. 320 (Nichol’s Ed.) ; Mil’s Mythical Interpretation, p. 85; and Ebrard’s Gospel History, p. 165.—ED,]

15) 1 Pet. i. 12.

16) Formerly they brought the beautiful woman from Troy. Beauty had not satisfied them. Now the Crucified One was to be brought to them from Troas, for their salvation through His word.

17) Mary Magdalene, as released from earth, had an open sense for angels at the grave of Jesus ; but anxiety concerning the body of Jesus, as well as the attraction which the risen Saviour exercised over her mind, resulted in her rising rapidly and wondrously above the angelic appearance.

18) [It is quite possible that there exist many spiritual sympathies and relations with which we are yet unacquainted, but these are surely too uncertain to sustain the foregoing argument. And it is perhaps not very wise of us to invite an adversary into a region which he may term pseudo-scientific, and which may provoke him to taunt us with being driven from the region of ascertained and universally admitted facts—ED.]

19) Mirrors, in general, perform the same office in rendering our thoughts perceptible ; but the mirror does not detain the image, while photography renders it permanent. The former more resemble a dream, or passive mental clairvoyance, while photography is like the morally free state of ecstasy.

20) When the older theologians designated the angel of the covenant the uncreated Angel, they thereby declared that he was not an angel in the narrower sense, but more than one ; even Christ, appearing as an angel, prior to His incarnation.