“It is one of the wonders of divine love that even our blemishes and sins God will take when we truly repent of them and give them into his hands, and will in some way make them to be blessings. A friend once showed Ruskin a costly handkerchief on which a blot of ink had been made. ‘Nothing can be done with that,’ the friend said, thinking the handkerchief worthless and ruined now. Ruskin carried it away with him, and after a time sent it back to his friend. In a most skilful and artistic way, he had made a fine design in India ink, using the blot as its basis. Instead of being ruined, the handkerchief was made far more beautiful and valuable. So God takes the blots and stains upon our lives, the disfiguring blemishes, when we commit them to him, and by his marvellous grace changes them into marks of beauty. David’s grievous sin was not only forgiven, but was made a transforming power in his life. Peter’s pitiful fall became a step upward through his Lord’s forgiveness and gentle dealing.” So “men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things” (Tennyson, In Memoriam, I). Section IV.—Good And Evil Angels. As ministers of divine providence there is a class of finite beings, greater in intelligence and power than man in his present state, some of whom positively serve God’s purpose by holiness and voluntary execution of his will, some negatively, by giving examples to the universe of defeated and punished rebellion, and by illustrating God’s distinguishing grace in man’s salvation. The scholastic subtleties which encumbered this doctrine in the Middle Ages, and the exaggerated representations of the power of evil spirits which then prevailed, have led, by a natural reaction, to an undue depreciation of it in more recent times. For scholastic discussions, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa (ed. Migne), 1:833-993. The scholastics debated the questions, how many angels could stand at once on the point of a needle (relation of angels to space); whether an angel could be in two places at the same time; how great was the interval between the creation of angels and their fall; whether the sin of the first angel caused the sin of the rest; whether as many retained their integrity as fell; whether our atmosphere is the place of punishment for fallen angels; whether guardian-angels have charge of children from baptism, from birth, or while the infant is yet in the womb of the mother; even the excrements of angels were subjects of discussion, for if there was “_angels’ food_” (_Ps. 78:25_), and if angels ate (_Gen. 18:8_), it was argued that we must take the logical consequences.