The object, on the occasions referred to, was to instruct and influence, by visible and tangible realities presented to the senses. To suppose some of the agents and acts to have been what they are declared to be, and others to have been illusions, unreal, imaginary, is to defeat the object of them, divest them of all certainty, and justify the same inference with respect to the human as to the celestial agents. In numerous instances it is evident that the power of vision in men was so enlarged, that they beheld objects not ordinarily visible to them. Had that augmented power continued, those objects would have continued to be visible, and so far from being less, would have been more free from illusion and uncertainty; and it is absurd, and contrary to all analogy, to suppose that it did not render their vision as certain, and their inference from it as just, in respect to every person and object apprehended by it, as in respect to any one of them. And if, as in the case of the three who appeared to Abraham, and in other cases, they did not see the persons in the likeness of men whom they are declared to have seen, then we have no ground of certainty that they themselves were present, or acted the parts ascribed to them. It is observed above that in every instance of the personal manifestation of the Messenger Jehovah under the ancient dispensations, he was distinctly recognized in the likeness of man. On many occasions he is expressly called a man; and in various instances acts peculiar to a man are ascribed to him. Thus, at his appearance to Abraham in the plain of Mamre, to Jacob at Peni-El, to Joshua, to Manoah, to Ezekiel, to Daniel, to Amos, and to Zechariah, he is expressly called a man; in Eden and in the plain of Mamre he walked and spoke as a man; to Moses he spake face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend, and of him it was said, "the similitude of Jehovah shall he behold;" to Balaam, Joshua, and David, he appeared with a drawn sword in his hand; when accepting the offering of Gideon, he put forth the staff that was in his hand, and touched the sacrifice; he "touched Elijah, and said, Arise and eat." Again, in the instances in which it is said that he appeared to Abraham and others, without specifying that his person was visible, and in those in which it is said that he came, or that the Word of the Lord came, to Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, and the prophets, the things said and done are, as to matter and manner, in respect to the persons addressed or spoken of, reference to circumstances of time and place, particularity of directions and details, similar to those in which he visibly appeared as man.