University of Virginia Library

Thought-angels

Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial visitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their indi- vidualism may be. Human conjecture confers upon angels its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious out- lines, making them human creatures with suggestive

feathers; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor's thought when he carves his "Statue of Liberty," which embodies his concep- tion of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no physical antecedent reality save in the artist's own ob- servation and "chambers of imagery."