“I take comfort in thinking so; but, to be serious, even admitting that these passages refer to a superior race, must there not be some similarity in the laws which govern existence in the heavenly world? Since these gracious deeds are performed by what we are accustomed to call ‘spiritual beings,’ why may they not as well be done by people from this world as from anywhere else? Besides, there is another point, and a reasonable one, to be made. The word angel in the original[A] means, strictly, _a messenger_. It applies to any servant of God, animate or inanimate. An east wind is as much an angel as Michael. Again, the generic terms, ‘spirits,’ ‘gods,’ ‘sons of God,’ are used interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you see, I fancy that I find a way for you and Roy and me and all of us, straight into the shining ministry. Mary, Mary, wouldn’t you like to go this very afternoon?” [A] ἄγγελος. She lay back in the grass, with her face up-turned to the sky, and drew a long breath, wearily. I do not think she meant me to hear it. I did not answer her, for it came over me with such a hopeless thrill, how good it would be to be taken to Roy, there by his beautiful grave, with the ivy and the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover-leaves round about; and that it could not be, and how long it was to wait,--it came over me so that I could not speak. “There!” she said, suddenly rousing, “what a thoughtless, wicked thing it was to say! And I meant to give you only the good cheer of a cheery friend. No, I do not care to go this afternoon, nor any afternoon, till my Father is ready for me. Wherever he has most for me to do, there I wish,--yes, I think I _wish_ to stay. He knows best.” After a pause, I asked again, “Why did He not tell us more about this thing,--about their presence with us? You see if I could _know_ it!” “The mystery of the Bible lies not so much in what it says, as in what it does not say,” she replied. “But I suppose that we have been told all that we can comprehend in this world. Knowledge on one point might involve knowledge on another, like the links of a chain, till it stretched far beyond our capacity. At any rate, it is not for me to break the silence. That is God’s affair. I can only accept the fact. Nevertheless, as Dr. Chalmers says: ‘It were well for us all could we carefully draw the line between the secret things which belong to God and the things which are revealed and belong to us and to our children.’ Some one else,--Whately, I think,--I remember to have noticed as speaking about these very subjects to this effect,--that precisely because we know so little of them, it is the more important that we ‘should endeavor so to dwell on them as to make the most of what little knowledge we have.’” “Aunt Winifred, you are such a comfort!”