2. There are many who believe in angels theo- retically. They take the teaching of tlie NT in a thoroughly literal sense. They are prepared to maintain and contend that Jesus Christ believed in tlu- ic ;il i\i-iiiiri- (if an;^('l* : iind, inconsequence, ;i l.i'lin" ii, ,11, :■,.], iMiiu, [.arl m' their ' creed' ; but an;:cl~ W.w' ihi jurt in tlicir iiiiirr religious life. Some achiiit, ii..l \viUi(nit re.uret and self-reproach, that angels do not seem .so real t'l them as fliey did to Jesus; while others are reliutaiil lna.liiiii that it can be a fault to yearn as tlieydci fur hr.nt to-heart fellowship with God IliMisel'l, withmil lie- intervention of an angel ministry — to seek fui- direct interaction witli God, without even the holiest angel intervening in the sacredness of the communion. As a specimen of this attitude, we quote Jrom an article in the First Series of the Expositor (viii. 40911.) by R. Winterbotham : 'I do not mean to imply that we disbelieve either the existence or the ministry of angelic beings : we
cannot do so without rejecting and denying point blank tlie unquestioned and unquestionable dicta of our Lord and of His apostles. But I do say that our belief in angels is formal only, or at the best merely i>oetic. It does not strike its roots down into our religious consciousness, into tliat inner and unseen, but most real and often passion- ate, life of the soul towards God and the powers of the world to come.'
3. There are others yet again who set such a high value on the immediacy of the interaction of fellowship with God, believing, as they do, tliat it was the chief feature of Christ's teaching to reveal the possibility of fellowship with God as our Father —or led perhaps by scientific predilections to feel tliat there is now no room for angels in our modern world— that they sweep away the intervention of angels, and are reluctant to admit that the Lord Jesus really believed in their existence. They would believe rather that He accommodated Him- self in this matter to current popular notions. For instance, Beyschlag maintains that ' the immediate relation to the world in wliich Jesus viewed His heavenly Father left no room for such i)ersonal intermediate beings' [as tlie .lews uf tliat time be- lieved in]. In passages like Lk 1_'^ ami 15'" angels are 'a poetic paraphrase for Cml Himself.' 'The holy angels of the Son of Man, with whom He will come again in His glory, are the rays of Divine majesty which is then to surround Him with splendour : they are the Divine powers with which He is to waken the dead.' And again, ' The most remarkable passage Ls Mt 18'", and it is the very passage whien we can least of all take in prosaic literalness. According to it, even the least of the children of men has his guardian angel who at all times has access to the Heavenly Father, viz. to complain to Him of the otiences done to his pro- tege on earth. But as God, accordiu" to Jesus, knows what happens to each of His children with- out needing to be told, in what other way can we conceive this entirely jioetical passage, than that in every child of man a peculiar thought of God has to be realized, which stands over his history, like a genius, or guardian spirit, and which God always remembers, so that everything which op- poses its realization on earth comes before Him as a complaint?' (New Test. Theology, i. 80 f.). Dr. Bruce is even more pronounced. In his Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 45) he says : ' For modern men, the angels are very much a dead theological cate- gory. Everywhere in the old Jewish world, they are next to nowhere in our world. They have practically disappeared from the universe in thought and in fact.' 'rhen, with a strange lapse of the his- toric sense, he adds : ' This subject was probably a weariness to the writer of our Epistle. A Jew, and well acijuainted with Jewish opinion, and i.Iili jrd I,, a.ljiist his argument to it, he was tired, I iiiiiip .t the angelic regime. 'Too much had h' I II iiiiiih- m| it in Rabbinical teaching and in |iii|iiil,n (i|iiiii(iii. It must not be supposed that he was in syiiipathy with either.'
A belief in angels among men of to-day depends
entirely on one's religious outlook, one's general
view ot Cod and the world. The man who has
111" ji\ ill. s. who has tuiled through mudi
li 1 1 uiiiv III l.iH' hi' can .sincerelyaffirni
; i ..I ihi- I Ini^iiaii ereed, ' I believe ill < ' 1 i'l l.iihii Alhii-hty,' will probably be re- liKl.-uit to take more cargo aboard than his faith can carry. In other words, lie will employ the Law of Parsimony, ' Entia prajter necessitatem non multiplicanda sunt,' and, linding the full satis- faction of his religious needs in direct intercourse with God the Father, will reject, or ignore as superfluous, the ministry of angels. So also the man of mystical tendencies, whose eager desire is
AKGELS
ANGELS
to have communion with the Divine — who claims to be endowed with a faculty by which he can cognize God, and receive immediate communica- tions from Him, is also likely to regard the inter- vention of angels between his spirit and the IHvine Spirit as an intrusion. And not less so is tliis the case with one who has leanings to Panthelsut — wliether he regards God as altogether immanent in the world, or as both immanent and transcen- dent. In proportion as one's thoughts centre on Divine immanence, and as one regards God as more or less identical with Force, variant but transmut- able, present everywhere, and everywhere causa- tive, in that proportion are one's thoughts drawn away from every theological conception but that of the One Great Cause of motion, life, and mind. There is no room for angels.