of any such guardianship, even if it had existed: nor do the particular passages leant upon, when fairly interpreted, countenance the idea of its existence. We have already seen how the proof fails in respect to Michael,—not being an angel, in the ordinary sense, but the Lord Himself as the Angel of the Covenant. He, the Jehovah-Mediator, the King and Head of the old as well as of the new dispensation, was fitly denominated the Prince of the covenant-people.* But "the prince of the kingdom of Persia," who stands, by way of contrast, over against this Divine Head of the Theocracy, is the mere earthly potentate, the only real head of that kingdom. Such also is "the prince of Grecia," afterwards mentioned. The Lord in the heavens, by His angelic agencies and providential arrangements, contends with these earthly powers and dominions: they might succeed in gaining certain advantages, or creating a certain delay; but the result could not be long doubtful, and the victory is soon announced to be on the Lord's side. This is the substance of the representation in Daniel.

(2.) The idea of a guardian-angel for each particular believer, or, as it is often put, for each individual child, (the natural child, in the first instance, then the spiritual,) has met with much more general acceptance than the one already noticed, and still has the support of distinguished commentators. It is chiefly based on our Lord's statement in Matt. xviii. 10: "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." Alford, as well as Meyer, holds the plain teaching of the passage to be, that individuals have certain angels appointed to them as their special guardians; and on Acts xii. 15, where he again refers to the passage, he affirms, not only that the doctrine of guardian-angels had been distinctly asserted by our Lord, but that the disciples, on the ground of His teaching, naturally spoke of Peter's angel, and believed that the guardian-angel sometimes appeared in the likeness of the person himself. So also Stier, (on Matt. xviii. 10,) while he admits that the language points only by way of allusion to special guardian-angels of persons, holds the doctrine on this ground, and the unanimous sense of the Fathers, to be beyond any reasonable doubt. "Every child," he affirms, "has his angel until sin drives him away; as we may still be able to trace in the reflection of the angelic appearance in the countenance and aspect of children. Every believer, again, who may have come into a saved condition through the grace of redemption, gets, as a new spiritual child, his angel again; whom now he especially needs, in the weakness of his spiritual commencement, for deeper-reaching experiences of guardianship and admonition."...... I am no way moved by these high authorities and confident asser

*The learned author, following Luther, Witsius, Turretine, and others, takes Michael to be a name of CHRIST. Much may be said, as his paragraphs show, on Still, we must hold the point to be undecided. The terms in Jude 9 seem hardly applicable to Him who is higher than the highest of created powers.-EDITORS.

that side of a long-agitated question.

tions; for they seem to me to impose a sense upon the words of our Lord, which they neither necessarily bear nor naturally convey. The readiness and unanimity with which the Fathers found in them the doctrine of guardian-angels, are easily understood from the universal belief in the Heathen world-a belief accredited, and often largely expatiated upon, in its highest philosophy-of attending genii or dæmons attached to single persons. On such a point the Fathers were peculiarly disqualified for being careful and discriminating guides; of which the following comment of Jerome may serve as a sufficient proof :-" Because their angels in heaven always see the face of the Father: The great dignity of souls, that each should have from his natural birth (ab ortu nativitatis) an angel appointed for his guardianship. Whence we read in the Apocalypse of John, Write these things to the angel of Ephesus, Thyatira, &c. The Apostle also commands the heads of women to be veiled in the churches, on account of the angels." Much sounder and more discriminating is the note of Calvin: "The words of Christ do not import that one angel is in perpetuity attached to this person or that; and the notion is at variance with the whole teaching of Scripture, which testifies that angels encamp round about the righteous; and not to one angel alone, but to many, has it been commanded to protect every one of the faithful.” "Let us have done, therefore," he justly adds, "with that comment concerning a good and evil genius; and be content with holding that to angels is committed the care of the whole church, so that they can bring succour to individual members as necessity or profit may require." This plainly appears to be the correct view of the passage. It does not speak of little children simply as such, but of believers under this character; nor does it speak of individual relationships subsisting between these and the angels, but of the common interest they have in angelic ministrations, which extend to the apparently least and lowest of their number.* Even in Acts xii. 7, where a very special work had to be accomplished for Peter by the ministry of an angel, there is nothing of the historian's own that implies any individual or personal relationship of the one to the other: the angel is not called Peter's angel, nor represented as waiting upon him like a tutelary guardian ; on the contrary, he is designated "the angel of the Lord," and is spoken of as coming to Peter to do the particular office required, and again departing from him when it was done. It is true, the inmates of Mary's house, when they could not credit the report of the damsel, that Peter himself was at the door, said, as if finding in the thought the only conceivable explanation of the matter, "It is his angel." But, as Ode has justly stated, "it is not everything recorded by the Evangelists as spoken by the Jews, or even by the disciples of

* If the words of Christ in this most gracious text do not rather exhibit the "little ones as themselves heirs of a blessed immortality. The phraseology, "their angels," if taken as referring to ministering angels of God, is unexampled in Scripture.-EDITORS,

Christ, which is sound and worthy of credit......That Peter himself did not believe that any particular angel was assigned to him for guardianship, clearly enough appears from this, that when he got out of prison, and followed the angel as his guide, he did not as yet know it to be true that an angel was the actor, but thought he saw a vision ; and at length, after the departure of the angel, having come to himself, he said, "Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent His angel, and hath delivered me from the hand of Herod."

*

(3.) The last notion we were to consider, respecting the ministry of angels, is the special charge they are supposed to take of Christian assemblies. This notion rests entirely upon two passages: the one, Eccles. v. 4-6, which has been already examined, and shown to have no proper bearing on this, or any other point, connected with angelic agency; the other, 1 Cor. xi. 10, in which the Apostle says, "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head, because of the angels." It is said in the course of a discussion on the subject of female attire in the public assemblies. At the same time, it is proper to bear in mind, (what expositors too commonly overlook,) that the immediate object of the statement is of a general kind, and has respect to the relation of the woman to the man, as determined by the order of their creation: "For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause," namely, on account of that relative position and destiny, "ought the woman to have power on her head, because of the angels." It is plainly the attire and aspect of the woman, as indicative of her proper place, that the Apostle has here more immediately in view, and not merely nor directly her appearance and bearing in the church. This last and more specific point he would derive simply as a practical conclusion from the other. Now, as to the import of what he says on the more general subject, there can be little doubt that what is meant by having power or authority (ovoíav) on the head, is having what visibly exhibited that; namely, a veiled or covered appearance, which is the natural symbol of a dependent or subordinate position. There is no force in the objection, that it is rather the want of authority, than the possession of it, which is ascribed to the woman; for it proceeds on a mistaken view of the expression, as if the Apostle meant she had the power to use it as her own. The reverse,

* The priesthood was, of old, God's delegated ministry for making known the things pertaining to His will and worship; in that respect, His angel-interpreter. And thus we obtain a ready explanation of Eccles. v. 4-6: "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay......Neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error; "that is, Neither rashly utter with thy lips what thou hast not moral strength and fixedness of purpose to perform; nor, if thou shouldst have uttered it, go before the priesthood, the Lord's deputed agents to wait on such things, and say it was an error, as if, by making an easy confession of having done wrong in uttering the vow, the evil could be remedied. 2 Y

VOL. IV.-FIFTH SERIES.

rather, is what is indicated. The expression is entirely similar to that used by the centurion in Matt. viii. 9, " For I also am a man under authority," (inò iovolav,)-he stood, as it were, under its law and ordination, having a right and a call to do whatever it authorized him to do,-that, but no more. So the woman here ought (opeλ) to have authority or power upon her head; in other words, something in the very attire and aspect of her head to denote that authority lay upon her. A veiled appearance-naturally, by her long hair, and artificially, by an appropriate head-dress-is such a thing: it is a sign of respect and submission toward the higher authority lodged in the man, and betokens that it is hers to do with ministrations of service, rather than with the right of government and control.

Hence the feminine aspect which, in the ancient ordinance of the Nazarite vow, the person bound by it had to assume. The Nazarite placed himself in strict subservience to God, whose authority rested upon him in a manner quite peculiar. To mark this, he had to let his hair grow like a woman's; so that, as the woman in relation to the man, so he in relation to God, might be said to have power or authority on his head. The parting with the symbol of his position (as in the case of Samson) was, in effect, abandoning the covenantrelation under which he stood-breaking loose from God.

We see, then, the fitness of the veiled appearance of the woman's head. But why this because, or for the sake, of the angels? Whatever may be meant, one thing should be distinctly understood,-that, from the brief and abrupt manner in which the allusion is made, (not a word of explanation going before or coming after,) it can have reference to no recondite or mysterious point-nothing in itself of doubtful speculation, or capable of being ascertained only by minute and laborious search. Points of such a nature, together with the Rabbinical or Heathen lore on which they are grounded, must be out of place here, as such allusion could only have tended to perplex or mislead. Proceeding, therefore, on the ground now laid down, we have to dismiss from our minds all peculiar and unusual applications of the term "angels ;" and, also, all fanciful notions regarding the acts of real angels-such as their supposed habit of veiling their faces before God, which is never mentioned of angels, strictly so called; or having a sort of superintendence and oversight of Christian assemblies, a matter nowhere else intimated in Scripture. We have simply to consider, whether there be any broad and palpable facts, respecting the angelic world, which, without violence or constraint, may be fitly brought into juxtaposition with the proper place and

* Unless we expound Isai. vi. 2 as referring to one of the angelic orders. Dr. Fairbairn inclines to the view which identifies the seraphim with the cherubim; and he regards these composite figures as "representations to the eye of faith of earth's living creaturehood, and more especially of its rational and immortal though fallen head, with reference to the better hopes and destiny in prospect." ("Typology," 2d edition, vol. i., p. 240.)-EDITORS.

bearing of women. We know nothing of this description, unless it be what their very name imports-their position and calling as ministering spirits before God, from which one section of them fell, but which the rest kept, to their honour and blessing. This, however, is enough; it furnishes precisely the link of connexion between them and woman. Her place, in relation to man, is like that of the angels of God; it is to do the part of a ministering agent and loving help, not independently to rule and scheme for herself. It is by abiding under this law, that she becomes either a subject or an instrument of blessing. Hence, when she fell, it was by departing from this order, by attempting to act an independent part, as if no yoke of authority lay upon her, and she might be an authority and a law to herselfquitting her appointed place of ministering, for the coveted place of independent action. So, too, was it, in the higher regions of existence, with the angels that lost their first estate: they strove, in like manner, against the prime law of their being, which was to minister and serve, and aspired to be and act as from themselves. By this vain and wicked attempt they fell; and the fall of Eve, through their instrumentality, was but the image and echo of their own. Now, is it unnatural to suppose that the Apostle, while tracing up the matter concerning woman's place and bearing in society to the origin and fountain of things, should also have reminded them of these instructive facts? The order of things in this lower world (he virtually said to them) serves as an image of the heavenly. Relations of superiority and subservience exist there as well as here; and the harmony and blessedness of both worlds alike depend upon these relations being duly kept. To disregard them, is the sure road to confusion and every evil work. Let the woman, therefore, recognising this,-and remembering how the evil that originated in ambitious striving in the heavenly places, renewed itself on earth by the like spirit taking possession of her bosom,-feel that it is good to wear perpetually the badge of subjection to authority. It is at once safe and proper for her to retain it; and so, instead of constantly repeating the catastrophe of the fallen angels, she will show her readiness to fulfil that angel-relationship, with its ministrations of service, for which she was brought into being, and exhibit before the blessed ministers of light a reflection of their own happy order and loving obedience.

It may be added, in respect to false views of angelic ministration, and as an additional proof of their contrariety to the truth of Scripture, that the countenance they too commonly received from the Fathers produced its natural fruit, throughout the early church, in a prevailing tendency to angel-worship. The Fathers, however, opposed this tendency, and sometimes by formal synodal acts denounced the practice, in which it showed itself, of dedicating particular churches to certain angels, and calling them by their names. In the rightness of this opposition, the inconsistency with which it was connected may be overlooked but it were hard to see how, if the guardianship of distinct regions, of particular persons, and of Christian assemblies, were assigned to individual angels, these should not have received a