fruit but sin! How many had been long since damned had not their angels begged for one more chance until, watered with affliction and pruned with poverty and sickness, they turned to God and brought forth fruit worthy of penance!
Brethren, in all religion there is no doctrine more poetical, more beautiful, more touching, and consoling than the doctrine of the angel guardians. It brings home to us our dignity as God's own children, His tender, fatherly love, the existence of innumerable foes to our salvation, our duty to cooperate with grace, and the purity and sanctity that should mark our lives, living, acting, speaking, thinking as we ever do in the presence of our angels. The effect of such a doctrine should certainly be to make salvation easier, and God forgive the sacrilegious hand that fain would rob us of it. Let us learn and frequently repeat that prayer :
" Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom His love commits me here;
Ever this day be at my side
To light and guard, to rule and guide."
So will our angels shield us from harm here and when our hour of dissolution comes, their hands will bear us as they bore the soul of Lazarus onward, upward, heavenward, into Abraham's bosom.
