SPEAKING OF ANGELS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 894, 21 September 1956, Page 25

SPEAKING OF ANGELS

"NOWADAYS, many tend to think of God, not so much as all-mighty-but rather as ‘all-matey’." This "vulgar if telling aphorism" is quoted by the Reverend George MacLeod, leader of the Iona Community, talking in the BBC programme St. Michael and All Angels. In this meditation on the character of angels Dr. MacLeod talks about the part that angels play in our common life. "I want first," he says in his opening sentence, "to speak of angels: then

= eee to ask what has happened to them, and finally, see how their ministry can be received." He traces the history of Man’s relationship with angels, from the fall of the temple-when, as Josephus recorded, ghostly voices said "Let us depart hence," as St. Michael and his angels left the- Jewish people’ for the new Christian religion-through to the last visitation, the Angels of Mons, in 1914. Dr. MacLeod blames the "burdensome acids of modernity and materialism" for our loss of the key to the consciousness of the angels; and comments that one of the greatest problems of modern faith is "the democratisation of God Himself." He mentions Karl Marx-*"sitting in the British Museum, chewing at his pencil, writing his gloomy thesis that all was material"; and, attacking presentday materialism, remarks that we have lost "the ancient true insight" that "all forces ... all forms ... are ultimately personal, all motion ultimately directed . at the fulfilment of Man... whether it be the contours of a cloud as for Daniel, or the outlines of a living lamb as for St. John." Dr. MacLeod, a forceful, humorous speaker, is the leader of the now famous Iona Community, which acts as a link between the industrial worker and the Church of Scotland. As founder of the Community, he has inspired much of its effort to establish the relation between work and worship. St. Michael and All Angels will be broadcast in a YC station link on Michaelmas Day, Saturday, September 29, at 10.40 p.m,