THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3400, 14 May 1919, Page 58

THE GARLAND.

FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 298. By Dtjncan Wkight, Dunedin. ■ THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS. Were, truth our uttered language, angels might talk with men And God-illumined earth should see the Golden Age again. Ma/n, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's moat assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep.—Shakespeare. Dr Thomas Guthrie wrote:—"More tears a<re shed in playhouses than in churches." And Milton wrote: —" Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth." George Herbert sang: Sunday's observe; think when the bells do chime, "Tis angels' mrusio. i Robert Burton (1576-1640) wrote: " Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long." In Psalm xci, 11, Ave read: "For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." In her •most helpful volume on the Old Testament Jane T. Stoddart has the following by a Jewish writer:—"Throughout the Maccabean period men saw . angels on every side as armed men, and beheld warriors in the sky, for they themselves were war-like. When after the Roman destruction of the State the valour of the Jews cooled, and they no longer dreamed of recovering their independence by force of arms, they met angels in the form of Elijah, the type of the national intensity and energy, and yet withal himself unarmed. . . . As time went on the

angels changed with it. Philo, the nobleminded Alexandrian Jew, thought that God would not have created this imperfect world without some intermediate agency; so the angels appeared- to him as such agencies. Familiar with all the languages that come from the tortured heart, like Gabriel knowing all the tongues of men, our prophets and our priests were called angels. 'Who are ministering angels?' asked a Talmudist, and he answered, 'The Rabbis.' "

Then in the life of Bishop George Moberly of Salisbury, the following story is told by Mrs Moberly:—"One day I was walking down Kingsgate street (Winchester) to our house, when the little children with the nurse on the opposite side of the street were coming back from their walk. Little George, about four or five years old, caught sight of me and ran across the road to meet me. At the same moment Lady Rivera's large carriage with two horses dashed up and caught him. It was a terrible instant. Both the nurses and I saw him among the horses' legs, and it seemed impossible that anything could save him, when to our surprise he was seen standing by his nurse on the footpath. The carriage did not stop, the driver having apparently not seen him. I hurried across the road, and in reply to our quostion the little boy said, ' An angel came and took me out.' The boy was afterwards a scholar of Winchester College and Corpus Christi, Oxford. He won the Stanhope, Arnold, and* Ellerton prizes. After many years of clerical work he became principal of the Lichfield Theological College, and died in 1895. To the end of his life he said that he remern-

bered the incident perfectly, and that he J had been lifted up and put back on the j pavement by someone in white."

Let us* here quote from Win. Blake Farewell, green fields and happy grove Where flocks have took delight: Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angola bright: Unseen Ihey pour blessing And joy without ceasing On. each bud and blossom,

On each sleeping bosom. They look in, every thoughtless neat "Where- birds are cover'd warm; xhey visit caves of every beast, - To keep them from all harm. If they see any weeping That should have boen sleeping They pour sleep on their head And sit down by their bed.

A lady -writer has for us this suggestive message anent guardian angels: —"It would require the tongues of angels themselves to recite all that we owe to these benign and vigilant guardians. They watch by the cradle of the new-born babes, and spread, their celestial wings round the tottering steps of infancy. If the path of life be difficult and thorny, and evil spirits work us shame and woe, they sustain us; they bear the voice of our complaining, of our supplication, of our repentance, up to the foot of God's throne, and bring us back in return a pitying benediction to strengthen and to cheer. When passion and temptation strive for the mastery, they encourage us to resist; when we conquer, they crown us; when we falter and fail, they compassionate and grieve over us; when we are obstinate in polluting our own souls, and perverted not only in act, but in will, they leave us; and woe to them that are so left! But the good angel does not quit his charge until his protection is despised, rejected, and utterly repudiated. Wonderful the fervour of their love; wonderful their meekness and patience, who endure from day to day the spectacle of the unveiled human heart with all its miserable weaknesses and vanities, its inordinate desires and selfish purposes! Constant to us in death, they contend against the powers of darkness for the• emancipated spirit."

The word "angel" literally means a messenger, as in Luke vii, 24; but specially a messenger-of God, who does God's bidding, as you have it in Psalm civ, 4, where we read : ' Who maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flaming fire." " Angels are pure spirits, though they are permitted to assume a visible form when God desires to see them. God is a spirit, and He is waited upon by spirits in His royal courts. Angels are like winds for mystery, force, and invisibility, and no doubt the winds themselves are often the angels or messengers of God. Gcd, who makes His angels to be as winds, can also make winds to be His angels, and they are constantly so in the economy of Nature. ' His ministers a flaming fire.' Here, too, we may choose which we will of two meanings: God's ministers or servants He makes to be as swift, potent, and terrible as'fire, and on the other hand He makes fire, that devouring element, to be His minister flaming forth upon His errands. That the passage refers to angels is clear from Hebrews l, 7, and it was most proper to mention them here in connection with light and the heavens, and immediately after the robes and palace of the Great King. Should not the retinue of the Lord of Hosts be mentioned as well as His chariot? It would have been a flaw in the description of the universe had not the angels been alluded to, and this is the most appropriate place for~their introduction. When we think of the extraordinary powers entrusted to angelic beings, and the mysterious glory of the seraphim and the, four living creatures, we are led to reflect upon the glory of the Master whom they serve, and, again, we cry out with the Psalmist, '0 Lord, my God, Thou art very great."—(C. H. Spurgeon.)

' THE BOY AND HIS aNIGEI/S. (By Hannah F. Gould). Oh! mother I've been with angels to-day I I was out alone in the forest to play— Chasing the butterflies, watching the bees, And hearing the woodpecker tapping the trees; So I played and) I played; till so weary i grew, I sat down to rest in th& shade of a yew, While the birds sang so sweetly high up in the top, I held my breath, mother, for fear they would stop! Thus a long while I sat, looking up to the skyLooking up to the clouds that went hurrying by, When I heard a voice calling just over my head, That sounded as if "Come, oh, brother," it said; -and there, right over the top of the tree, Oh, mother, an angel was beck'ning to me I

And, "brother," once more, "come, oh, brother!" he cried, And flew on bright pinions drawn to my side! And, mother, oh! never was being Sebright As the one which then beamed on my wonderful sight! His face was as_ fair as the delicate shell, His hair down his shoulders in fair ringlets fell With eyes resting on me, so melting with love, Were as soft and mild as the eyes of a dove! And somehow, deer mother, I felt not afraid, As his hand on my brow he caressingly laid, And whispered softly and gently to me—

"Come, brother, the angels are waiting for thee!"

And! then on my forehead he gently prest Such kisses!—oh! mother, they thrilled thro' my breast. As swifily as lightning leaps down from on high, When the chariots of God roll along the black sky! While his breath floating round me, was soft as the breeze That played in my tresses, and rustled the

trees; At last on my head a great blessing he poured, Then plumed his bright pinions and upward he soared!

And up, up ho went through the blue sky so far

WOMAN HEALS WOUNDED BY MUSIC. EXPERIMENT IN AMERICA. AN IDEA WITH A BIG FUTURE. It may be only a short time (says a writer in the New Yorlr Evening Post) before it will be a matter of common knowledge and consent that music, by its infinite and finely-shaded rhythm and vibration, timbre, and pitch, can heal not only mental but certain kinds of bodily illness. But just at present it is a totally new idea, and is being brought to attention for the first time through Miss Margaxet Anderton, who has been working along these lines with-Canadian soldiers for sonic time. "Ifc is the object of the course to cover the psycho-physiological action of music and to provide practical training for therapeutic treatment under medical control/' stated an announcement by the authorities of Columbia University, referring to a proposed course under its auspices. _ Miss Anderton is an Englishwoman by birth and a pianist by profession., and from the timo when, she first began to really think about anything, she says, she has been thinking about and reading about and experimenting with the practical and positive effects of music, and gradually developing her ideas until they might be offered as an assistance to the medical profession. Not that there are many books to read. There are very few, and those few chiefly ■French. "When I was in Paris studying," 1 Miss Anderton said, "I picked up a book one day which dealt with the subject. That gave new impetus to my own research work, which has really been going on all my life. But, aside from the few French books I found, there seems to be nothing as yet to learn from books about it. Almost all I have found out I have found out for myself. Little things occurred constantly to throw some light on the subject, and then finally the war came, which focussed things for me.

"Thero are two chief ways of treating patients," Miss Anderton continued, "though in detail no two cases can bo treated alike. But, v as a general thing, I administer the music for any form of war neurosis, which is largely mental, and have the man produce the music himself in orthopaedic cases or those of paralysis. ...Different instruments ire used for different typ>33 of trouble. The timbre of an instrument probably plays the largest part in musical healing, and for this reason wind instruments are good because of their peculiar quality. Wood instruments are particularly potent for a certain kind of war neurosis because of j their penetrating, sustained tone. Instruments are usually better than vocal music, for with the human voice the personal element, which is usually not desirible, enters in. At times, however, the voice is best. The timbre of wood instruments, hov. ever, affects .the nerve centres more than does the voice _ or the piano. This is especially good with deaf people, who feel the vibrations in the spine." Some of the cures seem Ijttle short of miraculous —and it depends on the definition of the word miracle whether they are short of it. Memories have been brought back to men suffering with aphasia; acute temporary insanity done away with; paralysed muscles restored. One captain who had been hurled into the air and then buried in debris at the bursting of a bomb had never been able to remember even his own name until the music got him. Tests have been made upon well men, and it has been ascertained that certain pitches or harmonic combinations, have a certain bodily effect. At present the effect on the throat of a certain chord in a. certain key is being investigated, and it may prove to be of help in dealing with paralysis of the jaw. The correspondence between colour and sound vibrations is also threaded into the healing work. This, too, has been worked on for years bv Miss Anderton. "I had often thought about it," she said, " but it was crystallised for me one night after a concert, when a man came to me in a state of great excitement," and asked mo why he had seen a certain colour around a piano all the time that I was playing a certain composition. I looked up the vibrations of that colour, and they were the same as the vibrations of the dominant tone of the piece."