doctrine has flowed into the minds of Christians and been generally accepted for divinely revealed truth. And as this book of Enoch is now regarded by all Protestant Christendom as utterly destitute of divine authority, therefore it must be conceded that the passages in Peter and Jude's epistles, obviously taken from this book, furnish no support to the absurd doctrine they have been so often cited to prove.
And now apply to each of these doctrines—the Old and the New—that highest and surest test of truth, its obvious practical tendency. Which is most benign and wholesome in its influence on the believer's life and character? According to the Old view, the angels are not men, and never were. They are quite outside the pale of our common humanity, created another and different order of beings from ourselves. What matters it to us, then, how wise and good and glorious they may be? For with all our strivings after the heavenly life, with all our acts of self-denial and self-crucifixion, with all our patient and persevering endeavors to follow the Lord in the regeneration, we can never become angels. Our human nature renders it impossible. We are a different order of beings.
Nor does the Old doctrine respecting the nature and origin of devils address itself to human fears, any more than that respecting the nature and origin of angels addresses itself to human hopes. For it teaches that the devils, too, are a different order of beings from us—different in their original nature and constitution; that they are fallen angels, and consequently were never men like
