10 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
“The Heavenly Host” 
Subject of Christmas Sermon by Rev. L. H. Ruge at the Congregational Church, Manchester 
It is the dusk of an average day 
of earth’s busy scene. The hum- 
drum activities have quieted down 
in the camp of the shepherds. The 
sheep are huddled down together in 
the fold for the air is chill, the cold 
nights have come down over the 
Judean hills.. The gentle slopes are 
asleep in these memorable, historic 
places where David kept his father’s 
flocks. 
It is an ordinary night to all ap- 
pearances, just like countless other 
nights that have thus come and 
gone, but this night becomes the 
turning joint of the ages. It splits 
the centuries into the old and the 
new. 
Afar off a radiance appears in the 
skies and a strange sound of celes- 
tial choirs floats faintly in the air. 
An old man among this group of 
reclining shepherds, muttering a 
prayer or crooning over a new lit- 
any from the synagogue service, sits 
up and looks and listens and won- 
ders. He shakes a sleeping comrade 
by the shoulder to look. Soon the 
whole company of shepherds are on 
their feet watching in awed amaze- 
ment this wonderous phenomena in 
the skies. 
The sombre and silent night has 
now become a blaze of glory and 
vocal with the chanting of celestial 
choirs. And never did the world 
need this message of hope more, of 
peace and good will, in any period 
of its history, than when the angels 
chanted the ‘‘Gloria in Excelsis’’ 
that night in the skies. 
It is about here however that we 
dismiss the whole subject of the an- 
gels from our mind. In all the ser- 
mons preached upon the Christmas 
theme the angels figure only in 
fights of oratorical fancy. 
Plato and Philo wrote about an- 
gels, but our philosophers have giv- 
en it up. Clement and Angustine 
thought. much about angels, but we 
think very little about them. 
The Bible refers to the angels be- 
tween two and three hundred times. 
It even gives us some positive pic- 
tures of them and matter-of-fact ac- 
counts of them, and yet they are in 
a realm of the unknown to us. Many 
paintings, some famous, have beau- 
tifully depicted this wondrous 
scene in the sky, but almost wholly 
allegorically. 
The story of the heavenly host is 
told in fanciful tales and in poetical 
figures. |The whole idea of an- 
gels seems to be modernly relegated 
to the realm of fairyland. So shad- 
owy has become this celestial choir 
that its reality never comes to us. It 
is a fanciful setting for the children 
and in the class with Santa Claus. 
If angels were real to the ancient 
seers and recorded in sacred history 
in a matter-of-fact way, why are 
they no longer real and matter-of- 
fact to us? 
Because, says the supercilious 
scientist and egotistical scholar, we 
are wiser today. 
Are we? Who among our pro- 
found modern seers has searched the 
universe to its remotest bounds and 
found it uninhabited? Who among 
the greatest scholars even has had a 
view beyond the vale and found it 
lifeless and silent? Perhaps, most 
likely, we are only more insensible 
to heavenly realities and boast our- 
selves of a folly which we mistake 
for wisdom. We do this daily in 
temporal affairs, then why not even 
more so in spiritual affairs, Isaiah 
speaks of wise men being turned 
backward and of their knowledge 
made foolish. And Paul was an ex- 
pert in analyzing the vanity of the 
world’s wisdom when he said the 
‘‘foolishness of God is, wiser than 
men’’ and ‘‘the wisdom of this world 
is foolishness with God’’. That in- 
dicates just about how wise we are 
today. 
There is a vast difference between 
mythology and angelology. Every 
conception of the celestials outside 
of the Bible is grotesque and hidious, 
with multiplicity of heads and eyes 
and hands and feet, that remind us 
of the dreams described as floating 
in the stifling atmosphere of an 
opium joint or of those things the al- 
cohol sot sees in his fearful visions. 
Every nation but the Jews, and they 
were tainted with it at times, had a 
fearful folklore such as still exist in 
Asia and elsewhere. A mythical zoo- 
logy inhabited earth and water and 
sky, and almost all of these were re- 
presented as malignant creatures, 
comprising a  Polytheism before 
which humanity cringed in abject 
fear, and these peasant shepherds, 
tainted with heathen mythology 
and supersition, feared when they 
saw the angels, for all the world 
feared the celestials. 
How absolutely different is the 
Biblical story and conception. The 
moment you step from the pages of 
mythology to the Bible you step into 
an entirely different universe. 
in 
what striking contrast are these 
benignant servants of God and man. 
From Genesis to Revelations the an-— 
gelic idea is neither derived nor de- 
rivable from either Arabia or Assy- 
ria. 
love. 
It is both manifestly unjust and 
unscientific to put angelology in the — 
class with mythology. 
Even the wings depicted upon the 
Angels are creatures that ex- — 
cite our reverence, admiration and 
angels are a mediaeval imagination. — 
Not a word in the Bible can be 
scientifically interpreted to mean 
winged creatures. 
For five centuries after Christ, and 
even longer, we still find no wings — 
ascribed to the angels. 
It is told that an Egyptian poet or- 
iginated the idea of the feminine cre- ~ 
atures with wings and so mediaeval 
and modern art portrays them’ and 
the pretty, oriental fancy clings to 
us. 
The Bible speaks of the Angels as 
‘like unto men’’. Michael and Ga- 
briel are like great broad-shouldered 
men. The servants of the Almighty 3 
are great and mighty beings, created ~ 
for the mighty universal work of 
ereation. 
Fleetness and power of movement 
and action are ascribed to them. 
They travel swifter than a ray of 
light, swifter than the electric cur- 
rent that quivers simultaneously at 
the ends of a wire that cireles the 
globe. 
The astronomers thought vaults 
from the earth to the frontiers of 
infinitude in the fraction of a mom- 
ent; then how much faster does 
an angel speed his thought? 
Wings are no symbols of celerity 
for these celestial creatures that ride 
upon the thoughts of the Almighty. 
They would never get anywhere if 
they had nothing better than wings 
to take them there. 
They are countless in number. | 
John saw one hundred million in one 
multitude alone. 
They are deathless. Stars and So- 
lar systems burn out. but their radi- 
ance never wanes. They are the 
heirs of planetary splendor. Who 
owns the garden you plant and 
hedge about, the butterfly that flits 
from flower to flower? Who owns 
Continued to next page, 
They out-speed a thought. 
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