ANGELIC MINISTRY.
“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?”
—Heb. i. 14.
“He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”—Ps. xci.
11.
“The angel of the Lord encampeth round
about them that fear him, and delivereth them.”
—Ps. xxxiv. 7.
Say, why do sceptic hearts decline
In nature more than earth to view?
We cannot trace the word divine,
But angel-forms attend us through:
Salvation's heirs they watch and keep
Both when they wake, and while they sleep.
And how could perill'd infants rove
Light as elastic breezes play,
Secure as if in heaven above
They tripp'd along some crystal way,
Unless beloved by angel-powers
Who hover round their fleeting hours?
All Nature feels a lovely awe
Environing the aidless child;
And fancy dreams her iron law
Before it grows relax'd and mild;
E'en the stern brute a babe will spare;
And why?—some angel watches there.
When shepherds on the midnight-plain
Of Judah kept their flocks at night,
Who hymn'd that heaven-reecho'd strain
At which applauding Worlds grow bright,
But angels, whose ethereal tongue
The glorious Incarnation sung?
And when the Fiend of darkness tried
To wrestle down that perfect will,
By which the Prince of Peace defied
His threefold power of lying ill,
Behold! yon Seraph leaves his throne
To soothe Him when the fiend had flown.
But, turn to dread Gethsemane;
That garden pall'd with spectral gloom
Where, bow'd with wordless agony
Messiah bled, before his doom,
That bloody sweat,—that crimson dew
Which strain'd His tortured spirit through!
E'en then, from yon bright Host above
A sympathetic angel came,
And o'er him warbled tones of love
Which dropt like balm upon His frame;
For, dread to think!—imputed sin
Convulsed His finite soul within.
But when before the radiant morn
The Lord of Resurrection rose,
Winding the grave-clothes Death had worn,
As though just risen from repose,
Two angels watch'd, as guardians meet,
Where lay His awful head and feet.
And like a sunburst from the south
On wings of archangelic sheen,
To roll from that sepulchral mouth
The rocky stone where Christ had been,—
Two Creatures of celestial might
Came speeding down from worlds of light.
So when at length Emmanuel soar'd
And left His loved disciples' view,
While their ascending glance adored
The Lord, who back to heaven withdrew,
What bounding hopes within them burn
When angels say, “He shall return!”
