ance. And as the angels had a special charge "to bear him up in their hands, lest at any time he should dash his foot against a stone," Psa. xci, 11, 12; Matt. iv, 6; Luke iv, 10, 11; it is very probable that some of these invisible human guardians saw the Saviour continually; and that he was always, from the manger to the cross, an object of more peculiar and constant angelic ministration than any other person ever was, or ever will be to the end of time. 2. A second view may be taken of this phrase; and one which is worthy of very serious attention, and of deep importance to the great doctrine of Christ's resurrection. The word ayyéλois may here be translated; for the English angel is not strictly a translation, but a mere modification or abbreviation of the Greek ayyɛλoç, or the Latin angelus. The term means simply the bearer of a message or order. It will then stand,-" seen of messengers ;" that is, he was occasionally seen, for forty days, after his resurrection and before his ascension, by several persons chosen for that purpose, Acts x, 40, 41; who were appointed to be his messengers to Jews and Gentiles, in announcing to them his deliverance for our offences, and his restoration to life for our justification. Christ appeared to his eleven disciples, and to others, eleven different times, before he ascended into heaven. 1. He appeared to Mary Magdalene, John xx, 1. 2. To several other pious females who went to the tomb with embalming spices, Luke xxiv, 10. 3. To the two disappointed disciples who went to the village of Emmaus, Luke xxiv, 13. 4. To St. Peter, who was then alone, Luke xxiv, 34; and 1 Cor. xv, 5. 5. To the ten in the absence of Thomas, John xx, 24. 6. Eight days after to the eleven, when Thomas was with them, John xx, 26. 7. To the seven disciples on the sea of Tiberias, John xxi, 1, 2. 8. To the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee, Matt. xxviii, 16, 17. 9. To about five hundred brethren at once, 1 Cor. xv, 6. 10. To St. James, 1 Cor. xv, 7. And 11. To all the apostles, when he ascended up to the right hand of his Father, Luke xxiv, 51; Acts i, 9. When the character of these witnesses is considered, and the cir. cumstances in which they announced this event, and the favorable opportunities they had of seeing Christ and of being assured that he was the very person who had been nailed to the cross; when all this is remembered, the testimony of these messengers ought not only to be credited by every one, but it cannot be consistently rejected. And as Christ was seen by these persons, so they preached him to the Gen. tiles, and he was believed on in the world. But 3. We may give the word seen the Jewish acceptation, and it will then strongly support the doctrine, in illustration of which the passage was adduced. The verb to see in the Scriptures signifies, 1. To behold with the natural eyes, Exod. xxxiv, 30, "And when Adam and all the children of Israel saw Moses, the skin of his face shone." 2. To hear, Exod. xx, 18; Rev. i, 12, " And all the people saw," i. e., heard, “the thunderings and the noise of the trumpet." "And I turned to see the voice," i. e., to hear the voice, " that spake unto me.' 3. To feel, Psa. xc, 15, "Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen," i. e., felt “evil.” 4. To taste," Psa. xxxiv, 8, “O taste and see that the Lord is good," i. e., see by tasting. Also Luke ii, 26, and John viii, 51. 66 5. To observe with approbation, Gen. i, 4, " And God saw the light that it was good," i. e., he approved it. 6. To look upon with consideration and observation, Matt. xxii, 11, "And when the king came in to see the guests," &c., i. e., to inspect them. 7. To visit, 1 Sam. xv, 35, "And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death," i. e., he no more visited him; and 1 Cor. xvi, 7. 8. To suffer or bear with, Ezra iv, 14, “It was not meet for us to see the king's dishonor," i. e., to suffer, or bear with it. 9. To enjoy, John iii, 3, "Except a man be born again he cannot see," i. e., enjoy or possess, "the kingdom of God." 10. To avoid or beware, Rev. xix, 10, “And I fell at his feet to worship him, and he said unto me, See," i. e., beware that "thou do it not." 11. To have the full fruition of God in heaven, Matt. v, 8, "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God," i. e., they shall realize his glorious presence through eternity. 12. To believe in, and rely upon, Heb. xi, 27, " For he endured as seeing him who is invisible," i. e., he had faith and confidence in the unseen God. 13. To perceive by experience, Exod. v, 19, " And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case," i. e., they experienced this. Also Rom, vii, 23. 14. To have a sufficiency of knowledge, so as not to need any more, John ix, 41, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see," i. e., we know enough, "therefore, your sin remaineth." And 15. To pass over other meanings of the word, it signifies to learn or know, either by natural observation, as in Gen. xxxvii, 14, when Joseph was commanded to go and "see" if his brethren were well; or by revelation, as in Isa. ii, 1, where it is stated that the prophet "saw the word concerning Judah and Jerusalem;" or by any other means of information. This is the sense in which the term is to be taken in 1 Tim. iii, 16, "God manifest in the flesh-was seen" that is, known, “ by angels." The incarnation of the Deity is the greatest mystery, the most sublime doctrine, and the most impressive motive to obedience, in the whole system of gospel truth. And though this feature of the Christian religion was typified and foretold under the Jewish dispensation; yet not only were the prophets themselves in a great measure ignorant of the real and full import of their own predictions; and the Jews, in general, of the true typical character of their own institutions; but even the angels, whose knowledge is far more extensive, and whose opportunities for acquiring it are far more favorable than ours, con tinued in the same ignorance, until Christ had actually come into the world, and had borne our sins in his own body on the tree. Then they saw the divine Majesty in a new relation to his offending creatures-that of a Redeemer-and a Redeemer too, by becoming, in a very mysterious manner, the ransom price himself. Such a relation they never knew him to sustain to any other race of beings before. And it is but reasonable to suppose that the assumption of human nature by the second person of the Trinity was to the angels what the rising sun is to the natural world, and what the volume of inspiration is to us: the clouds and darkness that before surrounded their invisible Creator, notwithstanding all the previous views they had had of his character, fled away speedily before the glorious Sun of righteousness when he arose upon the earth with healing in his wings; and the unveiled Deity stood before them in inaccessible light! Redemption is to us the greatest blessing we could ever enjoy; and it is to the angels a kind of sacred Bible, in which they have revealed to them more awful and adorable displays of infinite justice, wisdom, and love, than they will ever discover in the extended volume of nature, which also bears the evident marks of power, design, and goodness, and which they have been carefully reading for ages upon ages. This may not be an improper place to condemn a sentiment which has been advanced on this subject by one of the most learned and honored writers of the present century, Dr. Thomas Dick, of Scotland. In his Christian Philosopher, No. X., of the Appendix, he has the fol lowing language: "The sentiment that there never was, nor ever will be, so wonderful a display of the divine glory, as in the cross of Christ, has been reiterated a thousand times in sermons and systems of divinity, and is still repeated by certain preachers as if it were an incontrovertible axiom, which ought never to be called in question; but it is nothing more than a presumptuous assumption, which has a tendency to limit the perfections of the Deity." "That the wisdom of God is nowhere so illustriously displayed throughout the universe as in the plan of redemption," he calls "a vague and untenable notion, that ought to be discarded." It is gratifying to see that a note of reprobation has been appended to this opinion by the American editor, in the Philadelphia edition of this work, 1835. In that note an extract may be found from the History of Redemption, by President Edwards, which forms a striking contrast to the above quotation from Dr. Dick: "From what has been said," observes this eminent divine, "one may argue that the work of redemption is the greatest of all God's work, of which we have any notice, and it is the end of all his other works." No passage of Scripture, indeed, asserts in so many words, that to redeem the world of mankind, through the death of Christ, was superior to its creation by omnipotent Power; yet it holds so prominent a place in the Bible, that this is obviously the plain and just inference Hence the thought so beautifully expressed by the poet, Samuel Wes ley, is strictly correct: "Twas great to speak the world from naught; 'Twas greater to redeem." Similar is the language of Dr. Watts: "Father, how wide thy glories shine! Known through the earth by thousand signs, "Part of thy name divinely stands, But when we view thy strange design Where vengeance and compassion join, Here the whole Deity is known, Nor dares a creature guess Which of the glories brightest shone, The justice or the grace." In conclusion on this point, let the pious reader remember that, while we can easily perceive some of the natural attributes of God in the mighty fabric of the universe, redemption is a spotless mirror, in which man and angels, and other intelligent beings who may be ac. quainted with it, may clearly discover his moral perfections. And if it be of more consequence that an individual should be holy, just, and good, rather than strong and wise; so that work of the supreme Being, which most obviously manifests his holiness, justice, and love, is of much more importance than that through which his power and intelligence appear. There are several of the divine attributes, and especially mercy, which extends relief to the miserable, and pardon to the guilty, and which seems to crown every other, that cannot be seen in creation at all; while, in redemption, as Dr. Watts has it, with emphasis, Angels 66 "The whole Deity is known." sung creation, for in that they shared: Creation's great superior, MAN! is thine; Thine is redemption." Night Thoughts, Night IV. The cross of Christ is to be the burden of every sermon; it is the medium of access to the throne of God; and it is to constitute the principal theme of praise in the heavenly world; which cannot be said of the works of nature, however stupendous they may seem in the eye of an enamored philosopher. We pass on to another verse. 1 Cor. xiii, 1, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." The Corinthians were anxious to attain to much eminence in the church of Christ, and this they thoougt they could do by exercising the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. The apostle, however, teaches them a more excellent way of gaining this honorable standing in the Christian community, namely, by having genuine love to God and their fellow creatures. And he assures them that all other gifts, however good they might be, would profit them nothing without this. Therefore, if a man had the eloquence of Cicero; and the faith of Elijah; and the prophetic gift of Isaiah; and the zeal of St. Paul; and the wisdom of Solomon; and the almsgiving spirit of Wesley; without love, he would only be as a sounding brass or a noisy cymbal. "The tongues of angels" in this verse, may either mean, the language spoken by angels, or the method by which they communicate ideas to each other-which is the opinion of Dr. Macknight-or the particular ends by which the Jews thought angels could be invoked, adjured, collected, and dispersed, which Dr. Clarke gives as a probable meaning; or else it signifies the most perfect knowledge of all languages, and the power to speak them in the most eloquent mannerThis seems to be the true sense of the verse. And from this we infer, 1. That angels have some medium for the mutual communication of ideas. And, 2. That they have a full knowledge of all the different dialects spoken in this world, and are also acquainted with the other modes of interchanging thoughts, if any, that are practised in the numerous provinces of the universe. This may not only be deduced from the text, without giving it a far-fetched interpretation, but it likewise follows from the fact that they are the general messengers of the Lord of hosts. When they are in heaven, they speak the language of heaven; when they visit the earth, they use the dialects of men; and so also when they are sent as ambassa. dors to other worlds. There is one more passage on which a few remarks will be made before the close of this subject. Mark xiii, 32, "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." See also Matt. xxiv, 36. This verse has been the source of no inconsiderable perplexity to commentators and doctrinal writers; and it has been thought to oppose the idea that the angels are in possession of large stores of knowledge. Some critics have regarded the words, "Neither the Son," as an interpolation; but others, of equal celebrity, think, without sufficient authority. Those who refer the term Son altogether to the humanity of Christ, find in the text very little difficulty; but several who apply it exclusively to his essential divinity appear to be at a loss for a suitable explanation: because as God he of necessity knows all things, past, present, and to come, and, of course, the day and hour of the general judgment, as he knew the exact time of the fearful overthrow of Jerusalem, to which event the words primarily allude. Perhaps the best interpretation that can be given of this controverted passage is that adopted by the Rev. Mr. Townsend, in his notes on the New Testament; Dr. Macknight, in his Harmony of the Gospels; and other authors. This the reader will find at length in Rev. Mr. Watson's Exposition, which Mr. Horne pronounces a learned and original work, exhibiting the true theology of the sacred volume, and evading no real difficulty. See his Introduction to the critical Study |