It is said the angels who rebelled were among the most wise
and powerful of celestial creatures. None of them were more resplendent
in beauty than Lucifer, who drew with him, when he fell,
a third part of the stars of heaven.
The supposition that many beings, subordinate to the supreme
will, were employed in that disposition of matter called “the
creation,” is not only according to every system of religion, but
agreeable to all analogy. “God said, Let there be light; and light
was.” The King of Persia commanded a temple to be built, and
it rose. There is little more reason to believe that the first was
accomplished without multiplied means and agency than the last.
Every thing in natural history and in natural philosophy favors the
idea of an infinity of beings to supply the gradations between man
and the Sovereign of creation. Indeed, after thinking a little on
the subject, it seems almost absurd to believe the contrary. This
belief, besides, is far more pleasing in itself than that of regarding
the Supreme Giver of life only as an all-competent artisan.
M. l'Abbé Poule, discoursing upon a future state of existence,
gives the following passage:—
“Ils ne seront plus cachés, pour nous, ces êtres innombrables,
qui échappent à nos connoissances par leur éloignement ou par leur
petitesse; les différentes parties qui composent le vaste ensemble
de l'univers; leurs structures, leur rapport, leur harmonie; ils ne
seront plus des énigmes, pour nous, ces jeux surprenans, ces secrets
profonds de la nature, ces ressorts admirables que la providence
emploie pour la conservation et la propagation de tous les êtres.”
I translate from the French of M. de Châteaubriand the following
delightful passage: “The sovereign happiness of the elect is
a consciousness that their joys are never to be terminated. They
are incessantly in the same delicious state of mind as a mortal who
has just performed a good or heroic action, a man of genius who
has just given birth to a sublime conception, of a person in the
first transports of an unforbidden love, or the charms of a friendship
made certain by a long series of adversity. The nobler
passions are not extinguished by death, in the hearts of the just;
and whenever they are found, even on earth, respire something of
the grandeur and eternity of the Supreme Intelligence.”
