Verses 20-23
The Angel In Life
Laws without angels would turn life into weary drudgery. Life has never been left without some touch of the Divine presence and love. From the very first this has been characteristic of our history. When our first parents were cast out of the garden, the Lord said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent." That was a prophecy, bright as an angel, comforting as a gospel, spoken from heaven. The difficulty is that we will interfere with the personality of the Angel; we will concern ourselves about his figure and name. Instead of accepting the ministry, and answering a great and solemn appeal addressed to our noblest faculties, we ask the little questions of prying and often profane curiosity. It would seem to be our nature to spoil everything. We take the instrument to pieces to find the music, instead of yielding ourselves to the call of its blast, to the elevation of its inspiring gladness, and to the infinite tenderness of its benediction. We are cursed with the spirit of vain curiosity. We expend ourselves in the asking of little questions, instead of plunging into God's great sea of grace, and love, and comfort, and waiting patiently for revelations which may address themselves to the curiosity which is premature, and to the prying which now can get no great answers. The solemn the grand, fact is, that in our life there is an Angel, a spirit, a presence; a ministry without definite name and altogether without measurableness; a gracious ministry, a most tender and comforting service, always operating upon our life's necessity and our heart's pain. Let us rest in that conviction for a moment or two until we see how we can establish it by references to facts, experiences, consciousness against which there can be no witness. We prove some assumptions by the facts which flow from them. We can only establish the existence of some substances by grouping together the phenomena which they present. Into the substances themselves philosophy cannot penetrate; but philosophy can gather together the appearances, sometimes all the elements and effects which are grouped under the name of phenomena, and can reason from these groupings that there must be underneath some unknown, some unknowable substance which expresses itself in these superficial and visible appearances. So our assumption that there is an Angel ahead of us, a radiant light in advance, a heavenly presence in our whole life, may be established by references which appeal not to imagination only but to experience; and if we can establish such events we shall have also to establish the sublime doctrine that in the midst of humanity there is a light of Divinity, and at the head of all the truly upward advancing host of men goes the Angel appointed of God.
See how our life is redeemed from baseness by the assumption that an Angel is leading it. Who can believe that an Angel has been appointed to conduct a life which must end in the grave? The anticlimax is shocking; the suggestion is charged with the very spirit of profanity. We could not allow it in poetry; we should resent it in history; we should despise it in all dramatic compilations and representations. You must not yoke a steed of any blood in too small and mean a chariot; you degrade some horses of repute by sending them to do certain base and unworthy service. Is it not so with men also? Are there not men whose names are so lofty, so illustrious, that we could never consent to their doing certain actions too vulgar and low to be worthy of their brilliant repute? Does not the law admit of the highest and widest application? If an Angel is leading us, is he leading us to the grave? Surely it would not need an Angel to conduct us to that poor destiny! We could wander thither ourselves; the blind could lead us, and they that have no intelligence could plunge us into that dark pit. And we feel that we are not being led to the grave. It is possible that some of us may have so lived that the grave would be too good a destiny for us; but I speak of those who have tasted of the sweetness of true life, who have risen above the dreary round of mere existence, and who have tasted in ever so small a degree of the wine of immortality, men who have felt throbs of infinite life, hearts that have been conscious of pulsings never started by human ingenuity, and such men shrink from the suggestion that all this life, so full of sacred possibility and gracious experience, should terminate in the gloom of the grave. Who says that life was not meant for the grave? The Angel. Whose ministry is a daily pledge against annihilation? The Angel's. What is it within us that detests the grave, that turns away from it with aversion, that will not be sent into so lone and mean a prison? It is "the Divinity that stirs within us."
Then again, who could ask an Angel to be a guest in a heart given up to evil thoughts and purposes? Given the consciousness that an Angel is leading us, and instantly a series of preparations must be set up corresponding with the quality and title of the leading Angel of our pilgrimage. We prepare for some guests. According to the quality of the guest is the range and costliness of our preparation. Whom our love expects our love provides for. When we are longing for the coming one, saying, "The presence will make the house the sweeter and the brighter, and the speech will fill our life with new poetry and new hope. Oh, why tarry the chariot wheels?" then we make adequate that is to say, proportionate preparation. The touch of love is dainty, the invention of love is fertile, the expenditure of love is without a grudge or a murmur, another touch must be given to the most delicate arrangement; some addition must be made to the most plentiful accommodation; love must run over the programme just once more to see that every line is worthily written. Then the front door must be opened widely, and the arms, and the heart, and the whole being to receive the guest of love. And that is so in the higher regions. If an Angel is going to lead me, the Angel must have a chamber in my heart prepared worthy of myself. Chamber! nay, the whole heart must be the guest-room; he must occupy every corner of it, and I must array it with robes of purity and brightness that he may feel himself at home, even though he may have come from heaven to do some service for my poor life. Any appeal that so works upon every kind of faculty, upon imagination, conscience, will, force, must be an appeal that will do the life good. It calls us to perfectness, to preparedness, to a nobility corresponding in some degree with the nobility of the guest whom we entertain. If you please, you can fill your heart-house with mean occupants. There are evil visitants that will sit down in unprepared hearts and eat up your life a mouthful at a time. It lies within your power not within your right to make your heart-chamber the gathering place of evil things, evil thoughts, evil presences; but any conviction that would lead in that direction proves its own baseness, lies beyond the circle of argument, and is not to be treated seriously by earnest men. Now it is the distinguishing characteristic of Bible-teaching that it wants clean hearts, large hearts, ample entertainment, noble thoughts, sweet patience, complete sacrifice, having in it the pledge of final and eternal resurrection. Any book offering such suggestions of Angel presences, radiant leaderships, Divine associations, proves its own goodness, and its own inexpressible value.
Suppose, however, that in our obstinacy and narrowness of mind we hesitate to accept the suggestion of a living Angel, we lose nothing of all the gracious meaning of the text by substituting other terms. We have to grow up to the apprehension of Angelhood; but the stages of growth can be marked by common terms, and so the growth can be proved to be possible. Many a life has in it a memory playing the part of an Angel, a recollection full of tenderness, a reminiscence that lures the life forward little by little up steep places and through lone and dark valleys. Some might call such a memory an Angel. Why not? It discharges the offices of a blessed minister, it redeems life from despair, it fills life with gracious encouragement, it nourishes life in times of destitution and dejection. Now whilst some minds may be unable to accept the transcendental suggestion of Angel ministry, it is a poor mind hardly to be reasoned with that cannot conceive the idea that a memory, a recollection, a vow, an oath, may play an inspiring part in human education, and may save men from evil deeds in the time of tremendous temptation. We all have memories of that blessed kind. We know the vow we spoke, the oath we took, the pledge we gave, the word that passed from us and became solemn by sanctions that could not be remitted except at the expense of the soul's integrity. Yet we have killed many an Angel. What slaughter we have left behind us! Stains redder than blood show the awful track our lives have made. Mark Antony pointed put the various rents in the robe of the murdered Caesar, and identified each rent with the name of the cruel smiter. So we could do with the robe of our own lives. See where the dewy pureness of young prayer lies mangled; see where the holiest oath of obedience lies with a gashed throat which can never be healed; see where purposes chaste as mountain snow lie murdered and forgotten; see where words of honour plighted at last interviews in whispers softened by tears lie crushed, contemned and mocked, gather up all the images, the facts, and the proofs, which memory will accumulate, and, as you look upon the hideous heap, regard it as God's Angel, unheeded, degraded, murdered! Thus we do not escape the pressure of the argument by refusing to accept the supernatural term angel; we do not elude the critical judgment by endeavouring to run away from appearances which are charged with such high titles as Spirit, Angel, Divine minister. We have to answer appeals formed in terms of our own creation. Our common speech itself gathers up into an expression of judgment, and if we imagine that we have never seen an Angel or resented his ministry, we have to account for it that our memory, our vow, our plighted word, our testimonies spoken to the dying, have been forgotten, neglected, abandoned, disavowed; and when we have answered a lower appeal we may be prepared to reply to the challenge which sounds upon us with a more terrific thunder from higher places.
The Divine presence in life, by whatever name we may distinguish it, is pledged to two effects, supposing our spirit and our conduct to be right. God undertakes our cause as against our enemies. Would we could leave our enemies in his hands! I do not now speak altogether of merely human enemies because where there is enmity between man and man, though it never can be justified, yet it admits of such modification in the system of words as to throw responsibility upon both sides but I speak of other enemies, the enmity expressed by evil desire, by the pressure of temptation, by all the array against the soul's health and weal of the principalities of the power of the air, the princes of darkness, the spirits of evil. Send the Angel to fight the Angel; let the Angel of Light fight the Angel of Darkness. We have no weapon of our own invention and manufacture fine enough to strike the subtle presence; but God is our Guardian. Are not his angels "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be the heirs of salvation"? Sometimes we in our own human personality have not to fight, we have to stand still and see the salvation of God, to stand back in God's eternity and say, "The battle is not mine, but thine; I cannot fight these dark ones; I cannot strike these presences, for they elude all weapons at my disposal: undertake for me and I will stand hands down waiting to see the outworking of thy redemption." If we had more faith we should have fewer enemies; if we had more trust in God we should have less anxiety about our foes. We must not encounter the serpent alone; we must not attempt to find answers in the ingenuity of our own minds to the plaguing challenges and temptations of the evil one. The enemies arrayed against us are not those of flesh and blood, or we might in some degree meet them, elude them, disappoint them, we fight "not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world," what have we to oppose to these? The Angel God's Angel, the white-robed one, and he by his holiness shall overthrow all evil, for it lies with the Lord to chase the darkness and with holiness to put down all iniquity.
The second effect to which the Divine presence in our life is pledged is that we shall be blessed with the contentment which is riches. God said he would take sickness away from the midst of his people: "There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil." We must not be too literal, or here we shall miss the meaning. As we have been in danger of misinterpreting the term angel, we are equally in danger of misinterpreting the term sickness, or poverty, or the general word circumstances. We know nothing about these terms in the fulness of their meaning. We do but live an approximate life; we see hints and beginnings, not fruitions and completions. What will God do for us then? He will give us a contented spirit. What does a contented spirit do for a man? It turns his poverty into wealth, his sickness into energy, his loss into gain; it gives him to feel that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, but is a life hidden in the mystery of God's own being. Thus we have mysteries amongst us which the common or carnal mind cannot understand. Man asking God's blessing upon what appears to be unblest poverty, men saying it is enough when we can discover next to nothing in the hand uplifted in recognition of Divine goodness. Thus we hear voices coming from the bed of affliction that have in them the subdued tones of absolute triumph; thus the sick-chamber is turned into the church of the house, and if we would recover from dejection, and repining, and sorrow, we must go to the bedside of affliction and learn there how wondrous is the ministry of God's Angel, how perfecting and ennobling the influence of God's grace.
The "hornets," spoken of in Exodus 23:28 , must be taken figuratively. The Egyptian made as a symbol of princely quality and princely power the wasp and the bee. These were Egyptian symbols. Remembering the history of his people, going back to the period of their Egyptian bondage, seeing upon Egyptian banner, and fresco, and all manner of things royal, the image of the wasp and the bee, God said, I will send hornets before thee that can do more than these painted things can possibly do: I will destroy by a power that cannot be controlled: I will kill armies by hornets, I will dissolve hosts by winds that are charged with elements that life cannot withstand; I will be thy friend. God does not fight with one weapon; God's method cannot be predicted. The wind is his, and the pestilence, and the tempest, and many things that we cannot name or control, and they are all pledged to work in favour of the cause of righteousness and the white banner of truth. Thus our hearts may claim a great and solid comfort. We are not going through the wilderness alone. As Christians we believe in the guardianship of Christ. Our prayer is "Jesus, still lead on." Angel of the Covenant, let us feel assured of thy continued presence. Guide us with thine eye. The road is long, hard, and often inhospitable, but it is measured every inch, and no man could lengthen it. It is good for us to be sometimes in the wilderness; there we long for rest, there we sigh for companionship, there we mourn for one sight of flowers and one trill of birds carolling in the sunny air. The wilderness tames our passion, chastens our ambition, modifies our vanity: we can do nothing in sand; we cannot cool the fierce air; we cannot melt the rocks into streams of water. In the city man becomes boastful, there men outrun one another and get richer than their brethren; they spread themselves like green bay-trees; and fester in the noisomeness of unblest success; but in the waste of the wilderness, in the dead flats of affliction, in the monotony of sorrow, they learn how frail they are, how helpless, how dependent upon Angel ministries. Bless God for the wilderness; thank God for the long nights; be thankful that you have been in the school of poverty and have undergone the searching and testing of much discipline. Take the right view of your trials. You are nearer heaven for the graves you have dug if you have accepted bereavements in the right spirit; you are wiser for the losses you have bravely borne, you are nobler for all the sacrifices you have willingly completed. Sanctified affliction is an Angel that never misses the gate of heaven.
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