THE ANGEL
BY GUY THORNE
Author of "When It Was Dark," "Made in His Image," "First It WasOrdained," Etc.
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1908, by
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PREFACE
I do not think a book of this sort requires a very lengthy foreword, butone or two things I feel it necessary to say concerning it. In the firstplace, I have to thank Mr. Hamilton Edwards for many valuablesuggestions concerning it, suggestions which, undoubtedly, helped mevery much in the writing.
The story is an attempt to impress upon readers the fact that we are,without doubt, surrounded on our way through life by unseen presences,unseen intelligences, which guard or attack that real portion of uswhich is ourselves—the soul.
Superficially, but only superficially, this is a very material age. Weare surrounded by so many material wonders that the unthinking person isinclined to believe, at any rate to state, that the material iseverything. Yet there is nothing more unsatisfying than the purelymaterial aspect of life, after all.
How can any one be surprised if the ordinary man is perplexed when he iscalled upon to decide questions of economy and morality, when thematerial point of view is all that he can see? For all questions ofmorality must necessarily depend—as long ago Plato pointed out—upon abelief in something which we cannot touch or see. Otherwise, moralityhas no significance and no meaning, except that of expediency.
If, when our body dies, our personality stops, then I can see nological reason whatever for trying to be good. To get all this life initself has to offer by means of any sort—provided they do not entailpersonal discomfort—is the logical philosophy of the materialist. Yetthe materialist, at the same time, is very frequently an honest andgood-living man. This is not because he is a materialist, for there isno reason for being honest, unless one is found out in one's dishonesty,but because there is implanted within that soul which he denies a sparkof the Divine Fire.
Of course, amongst thinking and really educated men and women,materialism is as out-moded as the bow and arrow in modern warfare, yetthe majority of people do not think very much, nor are they welleducated.
This story is an endeavour to point out that people who assert nowadaysthat Matthew Arnold's dogma, "miracles do not happen," are hopelesslyout of the run of modern thought.
Men like Sir Oliver Lodge are laboriously discovering some of the lawsof the Universe which give us portents and signs. No one who knowsto-day dares to sneer at parthenogenesis, or to repeat the slander ofCelsus about the Mother of God. It is only men who do not know, and menwho have grown rusty in reposing on their past reputations, who cannotsee that Materialism as a philosophy is dead.
Day by day fresh evidence of the power of the Spirit over Matter burstsupon us. A plea for "philosophic doubt," for Professor Huxley'sinfallibility, is no longer necessary. The very distinction betweenMatter and Spirit grows more and more difficult as Science developsanalytical power. The minds of men are being again prepared to receivethat supreme revelation which told of the wedding of the earth andHeaven, the taking of the Manhood into God.
The processes by which the hero of this story—Joseph—became what hewas have been carefully thought out, in order to provide an opportunityfor those who read the story, to get near to the explanation of some ofthose psychical truths which need not necessarily be supernatural, buto