Angels, and teaches that they are "ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister;"[298] but what is their ministry, what
the nature of their work, what their relationship to human beings, all
that was part of the instruction given in the Lesser Mysteries, as the
actual communication with them was enjoyed in the Greater, but in modern
days these truths have sunk into the background, except the little that
is taught in the Greek and Roman communions. For the Protestant, "the
ministry of angels" is little more than a phrase. In addition to all
these, man is himself a constant creator of invisible beings, for the
vibrations of his thoughts and desires create forms of subtle matter the
only life of which is the thought or the desire which ensouls them; he
thus creates an army of invisible servants, who range through the
invisible worlds seeking to do his will. Yet, again, there are in these
worlds human helpers, who work there in their subtle bodies while their
physical bodies are sleeping, whose attentive ear may catch a cry for
help. And to crown all, there is the ever-present, ever-conscious Life
of God Himself, potent and responsive at every point of His realm, of
Him without whose knowledge not a sparrow falleth to the ground,[299]
not a dumb creature thrills in joy or pain, not a child laughs or
sobs--that all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining Life and Love,
in which we live and move.[300] As nought that can give pleasure or pain
can touch the human body without the sensory nerves carrying the message
of its impact to the brain-centres, and as there thrills down from those
centres through the motor nerves the answer that welcomes or repels, so
does every vibration in the universe, which is His body, touch the
consciousness of God, and draw thence responsive action. Nerve-cells,
nerve-threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and
moving, but it is the _man_ that feels and acts; so may myriads of
Intelligences be the agents, but it is God who knows and answers.
Nothing can be so small as not to affect that delicate omnipresent
consciousness, nothing so vast as to transcend it. We are so limited
that the very idea of such an all-embracing consciousness staggers and
confounds us; yet perhaps a gnat might be as hard bestead if he tried to
measure the consciousness of Pythagoras. Professor Huxley, in a
remarkable passage, has imagined the possibility of the existence of
beings rising higher and higher in