Do they really believe themselves to partake in their life-struggle of the kindness and care of the blessed angels who take delight in ministrations for their benefit? Do they believe they are united by intimate bonds with all Christ's followers? Do they believe that the union is not separated by the death of any of them, but that they have communion with all the saints who have departed this life in the faith and now enjoy the presence of the Father? Would not a sermon conceived in the terms of this standard treatise excite an instant sensation as tending toward the errors of Spiritualism? And let us recollect that the Apostles' Creed from which this is taken was as much a standard with our Pilgrim Fathers as the Cambridge Platform. If we look back to Cotton Mather's Magnalia, we shall find that the belief in the ministration of angels and the conflict of invisible spirits, good and evil, in the affairs of men, was practical and influential in the times of our fathers. If we look at the first New England Systematic Theology, that of Dr. Dwight, we shall find the subject of Angels and Devils and their ministry among men fully considered. In the present theological course at Andover that subject is wholly omitted. What may be the custom in other theological seminaries of the present day we will not say. We will now show what the teaching and the feeling of the primitive church was on the subject of the departed dead and the ministrations of angels. In _Coleman's Christian Antiquities_, under the head of Death and Burial of the Early Christians, we find evidence of the great and wide difference which existed between the Christian community and all the other world, whether Jews or heathen, in regard to the vividness of their conceptions of immortality. The Christian who died was not counted as lost from their number--the fellowship with him was still unbroken. The theory and the practice of the Christians was to look on the departed as no otherwise severed from them than the man who has gone to New York is divided from his family in Boston. He is not within the scope of the senses, he can not be addressed, but he is the same person, with the same heart, still living and loving, and partners with them of all joys and sorrows.