Editorial December 14, 1946 Issue

Are We Companioning with Angels?

John Randall Dunn

Humanity has many reasons to be grateful to the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. In the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy has brought to human apprehension not only the "lost chord" of spiritual healing, but an inspired sense of the Holy Scriptures, through which one truly learns to understand and to speak the new tongue of Spirit. Consider, for example, her teaching as to angels. Who among those reared in the orthodox Christian faiths does not recall his early childhood concept of angels? Was he not assured, after the evening devotions, that angelic forms would hover over his bed to guard his rest? Just what the angels would be doing "if I should die before I wake," to quote the familiar juvenile prayer of our yesteryears, was not revealed; and what a thought was this to give a child before going to sleep!

Hear the satisfying, intelligent, healing statements about angels on pages 298 and 299 of Science and Health: "Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial visitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their individualism may be." And again: "My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried its fondest earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys."

The revered Leader of Christian Science is surely on firm Biblical ground in her spiritual interpretation of the term "angel," for the word in both Hebrew and Greek Scripture means simply messenger. And has not every appearance of an angel in Bible narratives really been the coming of a right, saving idea, a message or intuition of good?

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