ads of the
brooding cherubim who sat above the Mercy-seat, gazing down upon the
miracle of love that was manifested beneath them there. But be that as
it may, the idea conveyed is that of eager desire and fixed attention.

Now I am not going to enlarge at all upon the thought that is here
conveyed, except just to make the one remark that people have often
said, 'Why should a race of insignificant creatures on this little globe
of ours be so dignified in the divine procedure as that there should be
the stupendous mystery of the Incarnation, and the Death for their
sakes?' _Not_ for their sakes only, for the New Testament commits itself
to the thought that whilst sinful men are the only subjects of the
redeeming grace of Jesus Christ, other orders of creatures do benefit
thereby, and do learn from it what else they would not have known, of
the mystery and the miracle and the majesty of the Divine love. 'To the
principalities and the powers in heavenly places He hath made known by
the Church the manifold wisdom of God.' And we can understand how these
other orders--what we call higher orders, which they may be or they may
not--of being, learn to know God as we learn to know Him, by the
manifestation of Himself in His acts, and how the crown of all
manifestations consists in this, that He visits the sinful sons of men,
and by His own dear Son brings them back again. The elder brethren in
the Father's house do not grudge the ring and the robe given to the
prodigals; rather they learn therein more than they knew before of the
loving-kindness of God.

Now all that is nowadays ignored, and it is not fashionable to speak
about the interest of angels in the success of Redemption, and a good
many 'advanced' Christians do not believe in angels at all, because they
'cannot verify' the doctrine. I, for my part, accept the teaching, which
seems to me to be a great deal more reasonable than to suppose that the
rest of the universe is void of creatures that can praise and love and
know God. I accept the teaching, and think that Peter was, perhaps, not
a dreamer when he said, 'The angels desire to look into these things.'
They do not share in the blessings of redemption, but they can behold
what they do not themselves experience. The Seer in the Revelation was
not mistaken, when he believed that he heard redeemed men leading the
chorus to Him that had redeemed them by His blood out of all nations,
and then heard the thunderous echo from