the revealed will of God, which we have already stated, and from which,
in the abstract, probably few would dissent, an anxiety to force the
word of God into at least an acquiescence in the invocation of saints
and angels, indicates a disposition to comply with his injunctions,
wherever they seem to clash with our own view, only so far as we cannot
avoid compliance; and to seek how we may with any show of propriety
evade the spirit of those commands. Instead of that full, free, and
unstinted submission of our own inclinations and propensities to the
Almighty's will wherever we can discover it, which those entertain whom
the Lord seeketh to worship Him; to look for exceptions and to act upon
them, bears upon it the stamp of a reserved and grudging service. After
so many positive warnings, enactments, and denunciations, against
seeking by prayer the aid of any other being whatever, surely a positive
command would have been absolutely necessary to justify a mortal man in
preferring any prayer to any being, saint, angel, or archangel, save
only the Supreme Deity alone. Instead of any such command or even
permission appearing, not one single word occurs, from the first
syllable in the Book of Genesis to the last of the prophet Malachi,
which could even by implication be brought to countenance the practice
of approaching any created being in prayer.

But let us now look to the examples on this subject afforded in the Old
Testament. Many, very many a prayer is recorded of holy men, of inspired
men, of men, to whose holiness and integrity and acceptance {22} the
Holy Spirit bears witness; yet among these prayers there is not found
one invocation addressed to saint or angel. I will not here anticipate
the observations which it will be necessary to make in consequence of
the extraordinary argument which has been devised, to account for the
absence of invocations to saints before the resurrection of Christ,
namely, that before that event the saints were not admitted into heaven.