Acts 5 - Introduction

Excursus A.

The Hebrew Doctrine respecting Angels before the captivity.

In the Jerusalem Talmud we read how ‘the names of the angels went up by the hand of Israel out of Babylon,' and the date of the prophecy of Daniel, in which book the work and office of the Angelic Host is especially described, at first seems to support the statement. In the book of Daniel, in addition to many general remarks respecting angels, we read of two holy beings who are described for the first time by the names ‘Michael,' which signifies ‘who is like God,' and ‘Gabriel,' ‘the man of God.' Based probably upon the remark of the Talmud and the personal mention of Michael and Gabriel in the book of Daniel, and possibly also upon the mysterious chapter called the ‘chariot' in Ezekiel, a notion has become widely diffused that the doctrine taught in the New Testament respecting angels was a new thing, and that no positive teaching respecting these spiritual ones is to be found of an earlier date than the prophecy of Daniel, B.C. 534. But a rapid examination of the Old Testament doctrine will show how direct is the teaching even of the very earliest books on this subject.

At the closed gates of Paradise were placed the cherubim (Genesis 3:24); an angel or angels are mentioned in connection with the lives of Abraham, Rebecca, and Jacob. In the book of Job they are referred to on several occasions; at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai they were present in myriads. In the First Book of Kings we hear of them again, when Ahab's false prophets obtained, by the help of a lying spirit, power to deceive to his destruction Ahab who wished to be deceived. There is little doubt but that the horses of fire and chariots of fire which carried Elijah up to heaven, and subsequently gathered round Elisha at Dothan, were symbols of angelic presence.

Without touching on the presence, so often mentioned in the earlier books of the Old Testament, of the angel of the Lord, who constantly speaks with authority, as in Genesis 16:10-13, and in many other passages as the Lord God Almighty, and who is commonly believed to have been no other than the Second Person of the adorable Trinity, we have, in this short inquiry, shown how the presence of angels among men is distinctly referred to in the Pentateuch, Kings, Psalms, and Job; while Isaiah speaks of the seraphim (the fiery spirits), alludes to their functions about the Most High, and tells us how one of these glorious ones was sent to touch the prophet with a burning coal symbolic of his heavenly purification.

We gather from these references in the older books of the Old Testament, that there lives in the presence of God a vast assembly, myriads upon myriads of spiritual beings higher than we, but infinitely removed from God, mighty in strength, doers of His word, who ceaselessly bless and praise God; wise also, to whom He gives charge to guard His own in all their ways, ascending and descending to and from heaven and earth, and who variously minister to men, most often invisibly. Such is the doctrine taught in the older holy books Genesis to Isaiah. To gather together this teaching, no reference whatever is necessary to the prophecies of Ezekiel, Daniel, or Zechariah, who wrote during or after the captivity. With the exception of the names of Michael and Gabriel, little is told us by Daniel respecting these glorious ones which we did not know before.

The writings of the great Hebrew Rabbi Maimonides, a bitter enemy to Christianity, who taught some 700 years ago, are recognised by the Jews even at the present day, as an admirable exposition of their law and of the main principles of their creed. He writes in his Yad, ‘ that angels exist through the power and the goodness of the Holy One; that there is a variety in their names and degrees.' He enumerates ten degrees or grades of rank among these beings, as mentioned in the Old Testament, and says, ‘All these can discern their Creator, and know Him with an exceeding great knowledge a knowledge which the power of the sons of men cannot obtain to and reach' (from the Yad Hachazakah, cap. xi.).

Excursus B.

On the Position of Women in the Christian System.

Among the causes which have contributed to the rapid spread of Christianity, and even in the most degraded centres to a new and far higher moral tone of thought and life, the influence of women has hardly received its due share of attention.

The religion of Christ, for the first time in the history of the world, gave to woman her proper share of dignity and influence in society; and for eighteen centuries have women, in grateful return, constituted themselves its most faithful supporters, quiet but untiring missionaries of that faith which had at first recognised their work and office in the world. In the group nearest the Messiah during His earthly toils, we find the little band of holy women watching, ministering, listening to the Divine Master; among His few intimates, the sisters of Bethany hold a distinguished place. These women stood in the darkness of the cross, they wept over and arranged with tender care the spices and grave-clothes of the tomb, they were among the first who with deep pure joy welcomed the Risen, and were among the earliest enumerations of the members of the new sect. ‘The women' are constantly and particularly mentioned throughout the first history of the Church, the ‘Acts:' they play a distinguished part, never what the severest critic would term an unwomanly one; but we find them always present to help, advise, console, and support: we see them publicly and privately doing in a calm, unostentatious way, the new great work which their Master had found for their hands to do.

In the three great nations of antiquity, very different was the ordinary position of woman. The usual oriental depreciation of the sex appears to have existed from very early times in the Hebrew commonwealth; of this the sacred writings contain abundant proof. Polygamy to a certain extent, apparently authorized, was certainly practised by the greatest and most distinguished of the nation. Compare, for instance, the lives of the three great sovereigns, Saul, David, and Solomon. The estimate of women among the Jews of a much later date, is curiously shown in the apocryphal but still important writing called Ecclesiasticus: ‘The badness of men is better than the goodness of women.' In Greece we speak of the historic age the foremost and most prominent type of womanhood was that unhappy and degraded being on whom now Christian, which has become public, opinion pronounces a sentence which, if not unmixed with sorrowful pity, is still one of extreme severity. Virtuous women, in the life of those brilliant republics, lived out of public sight, condemned by an iron custom to live in perfect seclusion. Turning to Rome in the days of the republic, while the legal position of the Roman women was extremely low, still the manners of the rising city were so severe that the prominent type of womanhood was of a far purer and loftier character than in Greece; but after the Punic Wars had introduced into Rome the luxury and riches of the East, the moral character of the people rapidly declined. Dissoluteness reached its climax in the early times of the Empire, almost in the very days which the ‘Acts' describes in the first part of the history. Juvenal, in his Sixth Satire, and the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, paint the terribly corrupt state of society during the golden days of the Caesars in colours too vivid for a writer of our age to reproduce; while the existence of such laws as Tacitus (Ann. xi. 85) relates as passed by Tiberius, give us some insight into the awful degradation into which the upper classes of the Roman ladies had sunk, public opinion hardly noticing this state of things. Of the condition of women in the great eastern monarchies of the old world, it is of course needless to speak. In the book o. Daniel we have a picture, accessible to all, of the degradation even of the exalted sharers of the Persian throne; in the changeless East, the present childish seclusion of women, their complete separation from all public society and work, is a fair representation of the existence which they led in all the great oriental kingdoms before the days of Christ.

Our Master claimed for man's hitherto petted toy, but despised companion, an equal place in the republic of redeemed souls, and placed the now ennobled sex under the guardianship of a higher and severer moral code than the world had ever before dreamed of. Nor, when the day of trial came, were these women followers of the Crucified found unworthy of the new place in the world's great work which the Founder of the religion and His companions had marked out for them. Amid the records of the early Church, the pure and noble figures of the women martyrs of Christ attract our reverence and respect even in that age of heroic suffering.

But it was in the vast development of charity in its noblest aspects, that greatest of all changes which Christianity has worked in our world, that they have found at last their true sphere. In the older religions of the great political systems which successively flourished before the days of Christ, charity in its broad Christian aspect perhaps existed, but only as an exotic; it never possessed any real place in the hearts and homes of men, till the Master told His own that love to Him meant love to all the suffering and heavy-laden here; then in the organization of that great work of Christian charity, women became at once prominent. In the first struggling days of the new faith, in the front rank, we see Dorcas, and other holy women like her, quietly, faithfully living the new life sketched out for them by that Teacher they all loved so well. As the religion of Christ spread over the empire, and vast institutions of charity were founded in all lands, the work and duties of Christian women multiplied; for in this noble warfare against suffering they were ever the foremost pioneers: in this division of Christian work and progress, those have ever been the truest and most successful workers who, under another system, had been relegated to a childish and worse than useless inactivity. Their work and influence has lasted from the year of the crucifixion to our own days.