The Sheepfold and the Common; Or, Within and Without. Vol. 2 (of 2)East, Timothy
Religion
The Sheepfold and the Common; Or, Within and Without. Vol. 2 (of 2)
East, Timothy
Christian life; Christian life -- Pictorial works
"HE WAS SEEN OF ANGELS."--"Our knowledge," said the eloquent
preacher, "of angels is very superficial; yet we know, they are
beings of a superior order--holy, intelligent, powerful, and
benevolent. Jesus Christ was seen of them, at his birth, during
his temptation in the wilderness, when enduring the agonizing
conflict in the garden of Gethsemane, and on the morning of his
resurrection; and they came to witness, and to take a ministering
part in his ascension, when he went to resume the glory which he
had with the Father before the world was. This SEEING him, denotes
the intense interest they felt in his personal honour, and in the
design of his mission to earth. 'Which things,' says the apostle
Peter--that is the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow--'the angels desire to look into.' They pry into and labour
to comprehend the grand theory of human redemption; and watch
with intense solicitude its practical working in the soul of man.
Hence, our Lord says, 'There is joy in the presence of the angels
of God over one sinner that repenteth.' Yes, brethren, these pure
and exalted spirits become comparatively insensible to the glories
of the celestial world, when in the act of seeing a sinner who is
ready to perish, rescued from the fearful peril of his condition,
as we should become comparatively, if not absolutely insensible
to the grandest and most picturesque scenery of nature, if we
stood on some eminence, gazing on the heroine coming out of her
father's cottage, hastening to the frothy beach, springing into the
fishing-boat, braving the fury of the tempest and the wild uproar
of the storm, to rescue the shipwrecked mariners from a vessel
sinking in the deep waters. For it is a law of their nature, no
less than of ours, that gratification shall yield to sympathy, and
that the sight of deliverance from fatal danger, shall have a more
gratifying effect on a sensitive and benevolent heart, than the
most brilliant and exciting scenes which can be presented to the
imagination, or to the senses;--thus demonstrating by a process
as certain as any undeviating law of the material economy, that
every order of being, except infernal spirits, have an instinctive
abhorrence of the disastrous crisis in the progress of suffering;
and that they feel an ecstasy of emotion which no sights of grandeur
or of beauty, and which no sounds of melody can excite, when they
behold an unanticipated deliverance from some horrifying and fatal
termination. There stands the poor criminal on the fatal platform,
and the minister of death is near him, making the necessary
arrangements for his execution; deep sympathy is expressed in every
countenance, many sighs are heaved, and many weep; the silent prayer
is offered up, and all are breathless, expecting the drop to fall
which is to hurl him with convulsive agonies into the other world.
But there is a momentary pause, as an act of homage to a stranger,
who very unexpectedly makes his appearance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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