I laughed in spite of myself; nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the sacred stillness of the place. Her words were drawing away the bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull, dead greens of the ivy into its glow of golden color. “But the Bible, Aunt Winifred.” “The Bible does _not_ say a great deal on this point,” she said, “but it does not contradict me. In fact, it helps me; and, moreover, it would uphold me in black and white if it weren’t for one little obstacle.” “And that?” “That frowning ‘original Greek,’ which Gail Hamilton denounces with her righteous indignation. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is exactly what I want, than up hops a commentator, and says, this isn’t according to text, and means something entirely different; and Barnes says this, and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demonstrated the other, and very ignorant it is in you, too, not to know it! Here the other day I ferreted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to prove beyond question that angels and redeemed men were the same; where the angel says to John, you know, ‘Am I not of thy brethren the prophets?’ I thought that I had discovered a delightful thing which all the Fathers of the church had overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle Calvin, to be told that something was the matter,--a noun left out, or some other unanswerable and unreasonable horror, I don’t know what; and that it didn’t mean that he was of thy brethren the prophets at all! “You see, if it could be proved that the Christian dead become angels, we could have all that we need, direct from God, about--to use the beautiful old phrase--the communion of saints. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with angels who are at work on earth. They hold sweet converse with Abraham in his tent. They are intrusted to save the soul of Lot. An angel hears the wail of Hagar. The beautiful feet of an angel bring the good tidings to maiden Mary. An angel’s noiseless step guides Peter through the barred and bolted gate. Angels rolled the stone from the buried Christ, and angels sat there in the solemn morning,--O Mary! if we could have seen them! “Then there is that one question, direct, comprehensive,--we should not need anything else,--‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation?’ “But you see it never seems to have entered those commentators’ heads that all these beautiful things refer to any but a superior race of beings, like those from whose ranks Lucifer fell.” “How stupid in them!”