ecome in our latter
years indissolubly bound up with our history and our joy? And thus the
angels, whom on earth we have never seen, will, nevertheless, when the
manhood of our being is reached, become our intimate friends and dear
companions for ever. Let us not forget, however, that the angels know
each saint on earth more intimately than the saints themselves are
known by their nearest friends. "For are they not all ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of
salvation?" But this fact suggests another analogy between our social
relationships with men and angels,--viz., that as earthly friends who
have been acquainted with ourselves and our family history during
the forgotten days of infancy, are met by us, in after-years, not as
strangers, but with feelings of sympathy and intimacy akin to those
awakened by old kindred; even so will the saint, on reaching heaven,
find God's angels to be, not strangers, but old friends who have known
all about him from the day of his birth until the hour of his death.
It is true that these high and holy ones belong to a different order
of beings from ourselves, and this, we might be disposed to think,
must prevent the possibility of their sympathising with us. But let us
remember, that while in material forms there is no one common abiding
type, by which, for example, the vegetable, beast, bird, or fish are
formed; yet that it is quite otherwise with intellectual and moral
beings, who are all necessarily made like God, and therefore like
one another. And, finally, though we might conjecture that beings
possessed of such vast stores of knowledge, the accumulated wealth
of ages, and of such high and glorious intellects, would necessarily
repel our approaches by the awe they would inspire in a child of earth
when with all his ignorance he enters heaven, yet let our confidence
be restored by remembering the fact, that in them, as in the great
Jehovah, all majesty and wisdom become attractive when combined with,
and directed by love. The love which enables us to cling to the
Almighty and love Him as a Father, will enable us to meet the angels
in peace, and to love them as brethren. And thus I am persuaded that
a saint on earth, compassed about as he is with his many infirmities,
would even now feel more "at home," so to speak, with angels, because
of their perfect sympathising love, than with most of his fellow-men,
because of their remaining pride and selfish