they
had no doubt[8]. This is a point of great importance to our argument,
and I will refer to a few passages in support of it.

[Footnote 8: A small section indeed of their countrymen in our
Saviour's time denied the reality of a future state, and the
existence of angels and spirits; but the sect was of then recent
origin, and the overwhelming majority believed as their fathers
had believed.]

When David, who had, as we know [1 Chron. xxi. 16.], visible
demonstration afforded him of the existence and ministration of the
angels, called upon them to unite with his own soul, and with all the
works of creation through all places of God's dominion, in praising
their merciful, glorious, and powerful Creator, he thus conveys to us
the exalted ideas with which he had been filled of their nature, their
excellence, and their ministration. "The Lord hath prepared his throne
in the heavens, and his {36} kingdom ruleth over all: Bless the Lord, ye
his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening
unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye
ministers of his that do his pleasure." [Ps. ciii. 19-21.] David knew
moreover that one of the offices, in the execution of which the angels
do God's pleasure, is that of succouring and defending us on earth. For
example, in one of the psalms used by the Church of Rome at complin, and
with the rest repeated in the Church of England, and prophetic of the
Redeemer, David, to whom this psalm is probably to be ascribed, declares
of the man who had made the Most High his refuge and strength, "There
shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling; for he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in
all thy ways; they shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy
foot against a stone." [Ps. xci. 10-12.] And again, with exquisitely
beautiful imagery, he represents those same blessed servants of heaven
as an army, as a host of God's spiritual soldiers keeping watch and ward
over the poorest of the children of men, who would take refuge in his
mercy: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him,
and delivereth them[9]." And yet David, the prophet of the Lord, never
addresses to these beings, high and glorious though they are, one single
invocation: he neither asks them to assist him, nor to pray for him, nor
to pray with him in his behalf.

[Footnote 9: Ps. xxxiv. 7. (Vu