In like manner, if ordinary people are asked to reconcile such passages as the following--"Who maketh his angels spirits;" "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have" (Luke xxiv. 39)--with a host of others, in which angels are said to have appeared, talked, and acted like men, they allege that "much of the phraseology of the Bible is metaphorical." But if it be granted that the language is metaphorical, must we not equally believe that the facts referred to are mythical; and if so, how much of the so-called inspired book can we trust? If metaphor and figure-imagery are cities of refuge for theologians, those who fly to them must remember, that there they must remain and live therein all their days; they cannot be citizens of the world, and yet never leave their asylum: if, for them, facts are fictions, by parity of reason fictions are facts. If, when an individual, said to be a prophet, and, as such, the mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost or of Jehovah, tells us that he saw and talked with an angel, who imparted to him such and such information, we are bound either to believe the whole statement or to reject it as valueless, _quoad_ revelation. If the man did see an angel, and that angel spoke, it must have been material; and if material, it could not be a spirit, and if not a spirit, it was not an angel.* If to this it be answered that individuals do see what they deem to be spirits--just as many a drunken man avers that he sees "blue devils," we grant it at once. We go still farther, and state that we know individuals in full possession, apparently, of all their senses, who see, occasionally, men, women, horses, dogs, and other things, which have no more existence than the figures which appear to us in dreams. Such men not only see imaginary beings, but they hear conversations or speeches which have no reality in them. But we cannot for a moment allow that such delusions of the senses are sterling, and such utterances, messages from the Almighty delivered by angels. To be logical, therefore, the theologian must either accept the stories told in the Bible about angelic beings as literally true, to the exclusion of all metaphor, or believe that every thing tainted by such celestial mythology is entirely of human invention. * The authority for this is Ps. civ. 4; Heb. L 7, 14,--"Who maketh his angels spirits;" "Are they not all ministering spirits?"