Los Angeles herald., 1905-12-17
ANGELS; ARE THEY MALE
OR FEMALE? A DISCUSSION

no bodies. Murillo, too, filled his pic
ture of the Immaculate Conception"
with tiny winged heads. Perugino gave
us cherubin with three pairs of wings
surrounding Il baby face, no doubt
basing this fanciful image on that
verse in the Bible which speaks of the
cherubim with three pairs of wings,
one to cover the feet, one to cover the
face and the third to fly with.
Ruskin has this to say about the
use of wings in angel pictures: In the
earlier pictures there is "a certain con-
fidence in the way in which angels
trust to their wings. very characters
tic of a period of bold and simple con-
ception Modern science has taught us
that a wing cannot be anatomically
formed at the shoulders and, in pro-
portion as painters approach more and
more to the scientific as distinguished
from the contemplative state of mind,
they put the wings of the angels on
more timidly and dwell with greater
emphasis on the human form, with less
upon the wings until these last become
species of decorative appendageS, a
mere sign of an angel"
Todays Dicta
But what has religion of today to
say about the belief in and represen-
tation of angels? From the Unitarian
point OF view Tile Key. III. N.
Slicer gives ii as his opinion that
"angels were men and angelic at
tributes We're no more feminine than
masculine. The matter can hardly be
taken seriously, for the representation
of the angelic presence is simply part
of the symbolism of the devout, who
need symbols in their approach to the
spiritual sphere. All physical repre-
sentation of spiritual things is a sur
xyixyu nf nf
which carried over to the Christian
thought the Greek conception of Olym-
pus and its deities.
"The word angel simply means mes
senger,' and to the Christian
world. which thinks of God en-
throned in the other world
conveying his will by messen-
gers, the conception is a very natural
one. But to the devout mind God is
immanent, the vital center of the atom,
the soul of the atom as well as the soul
of the man.
There is a place for the poetry of
religion and the aesthetics of worship,
but it can never be more than the en-
broidery of thought and must be out
grown by the thoughtful. The human
soul in its most devout moments needs
The Catholic Idea
And what say those of other reli-
gious opinions? One of the rectors of
st. Patrick's cathedral answered
promptly: "Of course there are an
gels, and they are presented with
wings-large, beautiful and glorious
ones. Angels are creatures without
body and belong to the spirit world,
but as to what they really look like
! do not know, and probably nobody
does. Whether they have faces, fig
ures, drapery and wings is more than
we can say, but the pictorial interpre-
tation with which we are all familiar
is drawn from the Bible.
"Take the story Of st. Michael and
Lucifer, where the archangel drives
the demon away and the angel takes
part in a fierce struggle. In that in
stance he naturally is portrayed dressed
In full armor and with a sword. We
do not think of st. Michael in airy
draperies or otherwise clad than in
armor
"The definition of an angel is "a mes
senger,' one sent from God, and as
God is supposed to live in the heavenly
kingdom above us, his messengers, I'm
order to reach the earth, as they FREE
quently did In ancient times. were be-
lleved to have wings. The angels
spoken of in the Bible We're mostly
masculine. but as they were spirits
they must have been sexless.
protestant churches use angels as
decorative creatures more than Cath
olics do. Our statues are for the most
part those OF saints, because we
believe IL is better to place the figures
of those saints whom we know to have
suffered and lived like the rest OF us
before the eyes of the people as holy
examples than to give them angels
without body and soul 10 emulate,