They
communed with the Saviour in his glory of transfiguration, sustained
him in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb; and as they had
thronged the earth at his coming, so they seem to have hovered in the
air in multitudes at the hour of his ascension. Beautiful as they seem,
they are never mere poetic adornments. The occasions of their appearing
are grand. The reasons are weighty. Their demeanor suggests and befits
the highest conception of superior beings. These are the very elements
that a rude age could not fashion. Could a sensuous age invent an order
of beings, which, touching the earth from a heavenly height on its most
momentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had refined
the human taste and moral appreciation, remain ineffably superior in
delicacy, in pure spirituality, to the demands of criticism? Their very
coming and going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly are seen
in the air as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky, in
a summer's day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. They
vibrate between the visible and the invisible. They come without motion.
They go without flight. They dawn and disappear. Their words are few,
but the Advent Chorus yet is sounding its music through the world.
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