The theologians who have furnished their ideal messengers with wings show, in the first place, that they have the idea of an air upon which the sails can strike--of muscular structures to move the pinions, and of the necessity for food to enable the motive power to be kept up. The idea of a winged angel, therefore, necessarily implies a belief in the presence of a solid material body moving through an aeriform fluid, resembling the atmosphere just above the earth's surface. That there really was this belief associated with celestial messengers we find in the Jewish scriptures, wherein it is stated, as if it were a common occurrence, that angels came to talk familiarly with men; as, for example, Gen. xviii, xix., xxxii.; and Judges i., where we are told that an angel came from Gilgal to Bochim, to deliver a statement, to the Hebrews, such as a silly girl at Lourdes asserted the Virgin Mary had come from Heaven to make to her; see also Judges xiii., and the book of Tobit. That angels were, moreover, supposed to possess thews and sinews, we find from Gen. xxxii. 24-30, wherein we are told that some celestial being wrestled with Jacob, but could not prevail against him. In a previous chapter, although it is only in a dream, Jacob saw them mount and descend a ladder as if their wings--if they then had them--were useless. We shall not now be far from the truth, if we affirm that winged messengers, envoys, or angels, can only be supposed to exist by individuals whose god is nothing more than a man without universal power and knowledge. To any one who believes God to be omnipresent, the idea of His having ambassadors, or vicars upon earth, is blasphemous.