The Body-guard of Angels.
A KING'S court is his body-guard of honor, his soldiers a body-guard of service and defense. While these guards denote the rank of majesty, majesty distinguishes them with peculiar honor. In the entire realm, no person is of more importance than the king, therefore he must be protected at all points: his person from all accidents, his life from all plots and assassinations. His person is sacred, therefore no one may approach him to touch him or even to speak to him without the grace and the honor of a special condescension of the king. His crown is too glittering a jewel; his throne, his kingdom, his power, all prizes too vast and precious to be periled by unguarded exposure to ambition's fiery and clutching greed. History is too much a record of fearful tragedies of crowned heads, not to raise the warning cry of danger, danger, to them all. According to the Bible, Christians are kings. Their kingdom is not of this world, it is true—theirs is the heavenly—their crowns are not corruptible, but eternal—their inheritance undefiled, and that fadeth not away. In this world the Christian is passing onward to that glorious possession. Every step of his progress is surrounded with dangers, ruinous and fatal—he is liable to surprises and temptations—to injuries, losses, and great tribulations. Enemies, powerful, subtle, and unceasingly vigilant, throng about his path to beat him back, and spoil him of his heavenly honors. Could he but for one day see the full extent, or for one hour realize the stupendous forces that are marshaled against him, not only to hinder his full attainment, but to compass his complete perdition, he would quail, turn and fly, unless held onward by an Omnipotent power. But in this perilous journey—this momentous conflict—this struggle for an immortality in the blessedness of the eternal glory, the Christian is not left unaided and alone. No, not for one moment is he left to himself. Even when asleep, when overborne by toil, long watching, earnest battling, he lies down to rest to rise again with fresh zeal and fervor to carry onward the great purpose of salvation, angels are compassed about him. A great host—a body-guard of sleepless seraphim with swords of fire, close around to defend and preserve the heir of God—the joint-heir with Christ. The Christian has not happened by mere good adventure to reach a country, a city, a dwelling-place of angels, which, passing on to-morrow, he must leave, and also his "hosts," behind; but they are appointed to wait upon them to the last end. Where he sojourns, they encamp; where he dwells, they tarry round about; they build no palace for themselves, they found no cities for their homes, they have no more attachment to any place on the footstool than the army marching across the desert in a great campaign would think of staying or building in that desert—the camp of angels is a camp in motion—on the wing—going always with the soul destined to the kingdom of eternal life. David, as he went, felt borne up in their hands, lest his foot should be dashed against a stone. Elisha saw them with his very eyes riding in chariots of fire, out-numbering the hosts of the enemy around him by a great multitude—they were there to protect him, and were really around him, and in as great numbers when the natural eye did not perceive them as when it did. Daniel among the lions was surrounded with them, and the lions touched him not, but crouched only at his feet in their presence. The three in the furnace of fire stood upright with the Prince of angels himself, and he defended them so that the natural fire could not strike its flames against them, to crisp even one hair of their heads. Peter, Paul, Silas, and others, placed in inner dungeons, fastened to stocks and racks, found angels around them too. These ministering spirits—O with what love did they take the fetters off, with what joy did they throw wide open the barred and bolted gates, and as they trod the pavement, how the earth quaked beneath their feet. Voyaging on the deep, dashed and driven on and off by billow and storm, the angels never left Paul to a shipwreck's fate. Patmos was the camping place of angels so long as John was an exile there. And so, in all events, in all places, in all times and ages, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him. "They are ministering spirits," sent to minister unto all them who shall be heirs of salvation, to protect, defend, and uphold those whom Christ hath made kings and priests unto God.