Our idea of a guardian angel is so spiritual and so pure that it is difficult for us to understand the curious results this belief has occasionally produced among the primitive peoples. A weird tale is told of a Congo negro who killed his mother so as to gain an especially powerful guardian spirit.[493] The dreadful deed was perpetrated in the full conviction that the mother’s love would remain unshaken, while her power for good would be increased. Such ferocious egoism does not find an exact parallel among civilized peoples, but the underlying principle is unfortunately too often illustrated in our midst at the present day. The belief in guardian angels has the best of Scripture warrant as offered by the text Matthew, chapter xviii, v. 10, where Christ speaking of little children says: “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in Heaven.” Another New Testament passage testifying distinctly to the existence of this belief in the Apostolic Age, is in the Acts of the Apostles (xii, 15), where we read that after the miraculous rescue of Peter from his imprisonment, his friends could not believe the report that he had been seen standing at the door of their dwelling, and exclaimed: “It is his angel.” That not only individuals but nations also had special guardian angels was, as we have already noted, a belief held to a certain extent among the Jews after the Babylonian Captivity. To the trace of this in the tenth chapter of Daniel (vs. 13, 21), where Michael stands for Israel, may be added the evidence afforded by the Greek Septuagint version of Deuteronomy xxxii, 8, part of the “Song of Moses.” Here the Revised version based on our Hebrew text reads: He set the bounds of the peoples, According to the number of the children of Israel. The Septuagint translators, however, must have had a slightly different text before them for they render the last words: “According to the number of God’s angels.” It therefore seems probable that they read in Hebrew _benê Elohim_ instead of _benê Yisrael_. Of the _benê Elohim_ or “Sons of God” we read in Genesis, chapter vi, verse 2, that they wedded with the “Daughters of Men.” This has been given a poetic form by Thomas Moore in his “Loves of the Angels.” The Book of Job also, in its Prologue in Heaven (i, 6–12), introduces the “Sons of God” among whom appeared Satan, the “Adversary.” Of angel names, as has been noted, there is Biblical warrant only for Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, the last-mentioned, in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit; to these IV Esdras (not a canonical book) adds Jeremiel and Uriel, names not admitted by the Church. [Illustration: THE ANGEL RAPHAEL REFUSING THE GIFTS OFFERED BY TOBIT By Giovanni Biliverti. Pitti Palace, Florence. ]