MEDITATING on the query of a correspondent in reference to this subject, an item of evidence to show that Christ did have a literal, personal existence before his incarnation, as truly as since that event, occurred to our mind, which, though it may have many times been used, we have never chanced to see. We refer to what is recorded of him in Daniel x. Gabriel, who was commissioned to make Daniel understand the vision, at the expiration of his three weeks’ fast came to him, and in explaining the cause of his delay, said, “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, lo! Michael, one of the chief princes [or as the margin reads, the first of the chief princes], came to help me; and I remained there with the king of Persia.” Michael, the first of the chief princes, came to assist the angel Gabriel in his work. He was, therefore, just as much a personal being as was the angel Gabriel himself. It only remains, then, to show that Michael was Christ, and we prove his personal existence at least 534 years before the incarnation. And this is easily done. Jude calls him the archangel: “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the Devil,” &c. Verse 9. Whatever, therefore, is spoken in the Bible in reference to the archangel, is spoken in reference to Michael. Now Paul says that when the Lord himself descends from Heaven with a shout to raise the sleeping saints, it is with the voice of the archangel. 1 Thess. iv, 16. The voice of Michael, then, is heard at the resurrection of the righteous. Once more the Scriptures tell us whose voice is heard, and this time it declares plainly that it is the voice of the Son of God: “For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” John v, 26–29. Thus three steps in the argument bring us to the conclusion: John says that the voice of the Son of God is heard when the dead are raised. Paul says that that voice is the voice of the archangel. And Jude says that the archangel is Michael. Or, more concisely stated, the Son of God is the archangel; the archangel is Michael; and Michael was present with Gabriel, assisting him in his mission to Daniel, 534 years before the Christian era. There may be minds which do not find sufficient evidence of the pre-existence of Christ in the statement he made to the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am,” or in what he says about the glory he had with the Father before the world was; but we fail to see how they can come to any other conclusion, from the facts here alluded to, than that Christ did have an existence, more than simply in the purpose of God, before his manifestation in the flesh.