character (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which may well put all of you at pause.  Were they idly imagined to be real beings? and did they so usurp the place of the true God?  Or were they actually real beings,—­evil spirits,—­leading men away from the true God?  Or is it conceivable that they might have been real beings,—­good spirits,—­entrusted with some message from the true God?  These were the questions you wanted to ask; were they not, Lucilla?

Lucilla.  Yes, indeed.

L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which are described in the book of your own religion;—­their personality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical visions.  For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this which he sees is not a real thing; but merely a significant dream.  Also, when Zachariah sees the speckled horses among the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the vision symbolical;—­you do not think of them as real spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses.  But when you are told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of personality begins to force itself upon you.  And though you might, in a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the power of death,—­in your stronger and more earnest moods you will rather conceive of him as a real and living angel.  And when you look back from the vision of the Apocalypse to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born, and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David’s vision at the threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in this death-angel becomes entirely defined, just as in the appearance of the angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary.

Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a personal spirit, must not the question instantly follow:  “Does this spirit exercise its functions towards one race of men only, or towards all men?  Was it an angel of death to the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?” You find a certain Divine agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed angel, executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to lower his kingly pride.  You find another (or perhaps the same) agency, made visible to a Christian prophet as an angel standing in the sun, calling to the birds that fly under heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings.  Is there anything impious in the thought that the same agency might have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by similar visions?—­that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed with the sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with blood), and exercising especially its power in the humiliation of the proud, might, at first, have been called only “Destroyer,” and afterwards, as the light,