His angels.
The mention of them is introduced here in order to show how the blessed promise of Psalms 91:10 is fulfilled. The angels are continually spoken of in Scripture. First of all, we read of them in connection with the story of Hagar, and from thence onward the pages of Holy Scripture make perpetual references to them. It, therefore, cannot but be important to us that we should understand, so far as we may, what is written concerning them. For we cannot think that their work and ministry are finished, and that now they have nothing to do with us, nor we with them. We feel sure that the reverse is the truth. True, there has been much of mere imagination in the representations that have been given of angels by poets, painters, and preachers alike. They have been the makers of men's common ideas concerning the angels, and have caused not a little misunderstanding and loss thereby. But a careful study of the Scriptures will show that truth on this confessedly mysterious and difficult theme is both attainable and full of profit. Consider—
I. THE REALITY OF THE ANGELIC WORLD.
1. This the Scriptures plainly assert. They are spoken of there in clear and positive manner, as to their high dignity, their sanctity, power, blessedness, their heavenly home, their employments, vast numbers, and immortality. All this is told of the holy angels. But there are evil ones likewise, who are represented as serving under their prince, Satan, as the holy angels under God. They are evil, wretched, full of malignity, and reserved foreverlasting punishment.
2. And this teaching is to be regarded as literally true. It is not, as some have said, an accommodation to the popular beliefs of the day.
3. Analogy also confirms this. Is not all life, from the lowest zoophyte up to the most gifted of the sons of men, one continual ascent? But why should the progression halt with man? Why should there not be an ascent beyond, as there is up to, ourselves? All analogy leads us to think there is, and to be on the look out and expectation for orders of beings that may span the vast distance that separates man from God. And the Bible confirms this.
II. THEIR NATURE.
1. Who and what are they? Much has been assumed concerning them; as that they existed long before the creation of man; that they are altogether different in nature from man; that some of them kept not their first estate, etc.
2. But may it not be that angels are perfected men? The poet Young thus writes—
"Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing?
Angels are men of a superior kind;
Angels are men in lighter habit clad,
High o'er celestial mountains winged in flight,
And men are angels loaded for an hour,
Who wade this miry vale, and climb with pain
And slippery step the bottom of the steep."
Why may not this be true? For there is no being higher in nature than man, except God himself. If angels be different from men, why, then, were men created at all? If, without all man's toil and pain, beings existed who could render to God the love, worship, and service he desired, wherefore man's much sorrow and misery? But if, on the other hand, it be true that there is no other entrance on the angelic state than by this weary life of ours, the mournful mystery of life has some light shed upon it. And angels are often called men, and appeared as such. And our Lord said that in the resurrection we shall be as angels; and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (12) we are said to have come to myriads of angels, and the following sentence shows that they are the same as "the Church of the Firstborn, and the spirits of just men made perfect." And the quotation by the writers of 2 Peter and Jude, from the same passage in the apocryphal and unauthoritative Book of Enoch, need not stand in the way of the reasonable and helpful belief we have been maintaining. Milton—that mighty manufacturer of so much mischievous mistake—is the real author of men's common beliefs about the angelic world. And they who hold such beliefs lose much.
III. THEIR OFFICE. They are said, in these verses:
1. To have charge of the people of God. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth," etc.?
2. They keep God's servants in all their ways. Perhaps by suggesting thoughts, purposes, and resolves. But we do not certainly know. If we could see them at their work, we should be in peril of worshipping them, as St. John was.
3. They sustain them, upbear them, so that not alone by great ills, but by little ones, they shall be unhurt.
4. They give victorious power over all kinds of spiritual foes (verse 13).
IV. THE HELP THAT THESE TRUTHS RENDER.
1. The heavenly world and its employments become more real to us. We know that our work shall not be perpetual singing, but high, holy, blessed service.
2. The mystery of life is lightened. We see whither we are going, and wherefore here we have to suffer.
3. One chief pain of death is lessened. For we are not debarred from rendering service to those we leave behind. The thought that we can no more help our loved ones is one of the pains of death. But by this blessed teaching it is taken away.—S.C.