. Earth was unconscious of this birth, but heaven knew
it. There was holy ecstacy in all the shining ranks above, and "angels
seem, as birds new-come in spring, to have flown hither and thither, in
songful mood, dipping their white wings into our atmosphere, just
touching the earth or glancing along its surface, as sea birds skim the
surface of the sea."

Around all the events of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the
flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its
music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible
is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the
Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning
light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come
upon her. No sooner is the infant Jesus laid in his manger than the door
of heaven opens and there comes trooping forth a radiant throng, filling
the midnight sky with splendor and proclaiming to earth the glad
tidings. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and strengthened
him in the garden. More than twelve legions of angels waited to do his
bidding when he was arrested. Angels rolled away the stone from his tomb
and sat by the empty grave, announcing his resurrection as they had
announced his birth; and as they thronged the skies at his coming, so
they hovered in the air at his going; and when he comes again he shall
come in his glory with all the holy angels with him.

These angels are still in the world as the ministers of God, though
invisible to mortal eyes. We see the firefly only through the little
luminous section of its flight, but it still flies on after it ceases to
be visible. So we see these angels only through that shining section of
their path in which they waited on Jesus; but they are still flying
through the world as invisible spirits. The angels of little ones are
always before the face of their Father in heaven, and as they bore the
spirit of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom, so they still may bear departing
spirits up the shining stairway of the stars to the eternal home. We
know not in what wide ways they minister to us; how there is a rush of
angel wings to the cradle of every new-born babe; how they constantly
pitch their tents around us in the viewless fields of air; and how often
they bear us up lest we dash our feet against a stone.

How little we know of the world in which we live! We weigh its rocks and
grind them up an