Article May 12, 1923 Issue

Angels

EMMA H. SAYLES

We adults can look back to the years of our childhood and remember our childish imagery of angels, with their wings and crowns and golden harps, and also how we loved to entertain these pictures. But we never knew what it meant to make practical obedience to the Bible command to "entertain angels," until Christian Science came, and Mary Baker Eddy gave to the world the intelligent concept of angels which came to her waiting thought.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581) Mrs. Eddy gives this definition: "Angels. God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." And in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 306) she writes: "When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts. Oh, may you feel this touch,—it is not the clasping of hands, nor a loved person present; it is more than this: it is a spiritual idea that lights your path!" With this changed view of angels, we begin to reach upward to the source of all good, divine Mind, the one intelligence; and as we begin to think spiritual and eternal thoughts, we realize that we, too, are having angels visit us, bringing messages direct from God, with no human opinions, theories, and speculations to rob us of the assurance that these ideas are right, pure, and holy.

When passing through his Peniel, the struggle of the human against the incoming of the divine, Jacob caught a gleam of the infinite and spake to the angel, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me;" and it was here, because of his watchfulness and vigilance in holding on to the vision of the real, that he triumphed. The one evil, the so-called mortal or human mind, would drive away the angel-thought when it appears; and we need to be on the alert that we do not let go of it, but entertain the true or spiritual idea until it becomes our own, so surely and securely that no suggestion of evil can rob us of this pearl. With each right thought retained, evil belief will grow less troublesome, less active, until in due time, we too can say with Jesus, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."

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