Great is the art,
Great be the manners, of the bard.
He shall not his brain encumber
With the coil of rhythm and number;
But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
He shall aye climb
For his rhyme.
"Pass in, pass in," the angels say
The three Divine are in this hierarchy, First the Dominions, and the Virtues next;
And the third order is that of the Powers. The in the dances twain penultimate
The Principalities and Archangels wheel; The last is wholly of angelic sports.
These orders upward all of them are gazing,
And downward so prevail, that unto God
They all attracted are and all attract.
To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.
By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.
Strenuous intellectual work and the study of God's Nature are the angels that will lead me through all the troubles of this life with consolation, strength, and uncompromising rigor.
Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification.
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil . He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, a shadow on those features fair and thin. And softly, from the hushed and darkened room, two angels issued, where but one went in.