istian dispensations, as we find on the face of
Scripture, but as carrying on, as Scripture also implies, the economy
of the visible world. I considered them as the real causes of motion,
light, and life, and of those elementary principles of the physical
universe, which, when offered in their developments to our senses,
suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and of what are called
the laws of nature. I have drawn out this doctrine in my sermon for
Michaelmas day, written not later than 1834. I say of the angels,
"Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful
prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of
the robes of those whose faces see God." Again, I ask what would be
the thoughts of a man who, "when examining a flower, or a herb, or a
pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as something so beneath
him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered that he was in the
presence of some powerful being who was hidden behind the visible
things he was inspecting, who, though concealing his wise hand, was
giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being God's
instrument for the purpose, nay, whose robe and ornaments those
objects were, which he was so eager to analyse?" and I therefore
remark that "we may say with grateful and simple hearts with the
Three Holy Children, 'O all ye works of the Lord, etc., etc., bless
ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.'"

Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a
middle race, [greek: daimonia], neither in heaven, nor in hell;
partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or
malicious, as the case might be. They gave a sort of inspiration or
intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action
of bodies politic and associations, which is so different often from
that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and
the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and
communions. I thought they were inhabited by unseen intelligences. My
preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally lead me to
this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of "the Prince
of Persia" in the Prophet Daniel; and I think I considered that it
was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, when it
introduced "the Angels of the Seven Churches."

In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine. I said to my
great friend, S