We may now revert to a subject which we mentioned incidentally a few pages back--viz., the ideas which induced priestly inventors to depict the angels of their imagination in a particular form. Those who are familiar with the Bible, and not with any other book, and who decline to examine into the ways of God in the universe generally, will naturally reply to our strictures that the angels of the Jews were described in a particular fashion, because they were seen "in the visions of Elohim" (Ezek. i. 1; Dan. x. 5, 6; and Rev. i. 10-20). But this observation involves the idea that the angels which have appeared are so various in shape, that an individual who had seen and described one, could not enable another man to recognize a similar messenger when seen under another form. In Genesis xviii, xix., xxxii., and Judges xiii, angels assume the form of men; in Isaiah vi. they have six wings--one pair being used to cover the face, another to cover the feet, and another to fly with. To this it may be objected that what Isaiah described were seraphim; yet verse 6 shows that one of these, at least, was a messenger or envoy. In Ezekiel i. we find an apparent description of angels, or an envoy, which is so involved that it is most difficult to understand it. In Daniel x. an archangel is described as a brilliant man whose body was like the beryl--_tarshish_--a stone of a sea-green colour probably; or, possibly, a topaz, "whose eyes were like lightning, and whose arms and feet were like polished brass, and whose loins were girded with fine gold"--as if to conceal his sex--a characteristic which we find, from Matt. xxii. 30, angels do not possess. The writer's description must, therefore, be classed with that of afreets, genii, and the like, in the _Arabian Nights_ tales. In Zechariah, again, we find an angel or envoys described (ch. i.)--(a), "as a man riding upon a red horse," having behind him "red horses, speckled and white" (v. 8); (6), as "four horns" (vv. 18,19); (c), as "four carpenters" (w. 20, 21.) Again, in chap, v., we find an angel in "a flying roll;" another in "an ephah;" another in a big piece of lead, and another in a woman, and still another in two beings of the same nature.