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The Scriptural representation brings down the ministration of angels to what appears trivial and insignificant, in place of confining it to some great crisis in the history of the righteous. And it is this fact which is so forcibly set before us by our text. For what contrast can be greater? We direct you to the examining whatsoever is told you in the Bible as to the nature and endowments of angels. You cannot come from such an examination but with minds fraught with a persuasion of the greatness and gloriousness of the Heavenly Hosts, impressed with a sense of the vastness of their capacities, the splendour of their excellence, the majesty of their strength. And then we set you to the considering what occupation can be worthy of creatures thus preeminently illustrious; not allowing you indeed to indulge the excursions of imagination, which might rapidly hurry you into the invisible world, and there place before you the thrones and dominions of those whom God is pleased to honour as His instruments in the government of the universe; but confining you to the single truth, that angels have offices to perform to the Church, and that every righteous man is a subject of their ministrations. I want a guardianship which will go with me to my everyday duties, which will be around me in my everyday trials, which shall attend me in the household, in the street, in my business, in my prayers, in my recreations; which I may be aware of as watchful where there is no apparent peril, and which I may be assured of as sufficient where there is the worst. And such a guardianship is revealed to me, when the hosts of heaven are affirmed to be employed on the protecting me against the most trifling accident. Oh! it might not do much towards cheering and elevating the poor and unknown of the flock, or towards the daily, hourly upholding of such as have higher places to fill, to be told of angels as encamping, as they encamped about Elisha, crowding the mountain with chariots of fire and horses of fire, when the King of Syria sent a great host to take the man of God. It cannot be often, if ever, that there is anything parallel to this peril of the prophet. But it just brings the celestial armies, in all their powerfulness, into the scenes of ordinary life — in other words, it gives to the doctrine of a Divine providence all that extensiveness, that individuality, that applicability to the most inconsiderable events, as well as that adequacy to the most important, which we require, if the doctrine is to be of worth and of efficacy, at all times, to all ranks, and in all cases — to be told that God has commissioned angels, the mightiest of His creatures, to bear us up in their hands, not lest we fall over a precipice, come beneath an avalanche, sink in a torrent, but lest at any time we hurt our foot against a stone. We are far, however, from being content with this view of the passage. There is indeed something that is exquisitely soothing and encouraging in the thought that angels, as ministering spirits, are so mindful of us that they look to the very pebbles which might cause us to trip; — how can we be other than safe if we do but trust in the Lord, when there is such care for our safety that the highest of created beings sedulously remove the least impediments, or watch that we surmount them? But this proceeds on the supposition that the hurting the foot against a stone is a trivial thing. We have spoken of the contrast in the text as though it were matter of surprise, that such an instrumentality as that of angels should be employed to so insignificant an end as that of preventing the hurting the foot against a stone. But is it an insignificant end? Is there, after all, any want of keeping between the agency and the act, so that there is even the appearance of angels being unworthily employed, employed on what is beneath them, when engaged in bearing us up, lest at any time we hurt the foot against a stone? Nay, the hurting the foot against a stone has often laid the foundation of fatal bodily disease: the injury which seemed too trifling to be worth notice has produced extreme sickness, and ended in death. Is it different in spiritual respects, in regard of the soul, to which the promise in our text must be specially applied? Not a jot. Or, if there be a difference, it is only that the peril to the soul from a slight injury is far greater than that to the body: the worst spiritual diseases might commonly be traced to inconsiderable beginnings. There is many a man who evinces, for a time, a steadfast attention to religion, walking with all care in the path of God's commandments, using appointed means of grace, and avoiding occasions of sin, but who, after a while, in the expressive language of Scripture, leaves his first love, declines from spirituality, and is dead, though he may yet have a name to live. But how does it commonly happen that such a man falls away from the struggle for salvation, and mingles with the multitude that walk the broad road? Is it ordinarily through some one powerful and undisguised assault that he is turned from the faith, or over one huge obstacle that he falls to rise not again? Not so. It is almost invariably through little things that such a man destroys his soul. He fails to take notice of little things, and they accumulate into great. He concedes in little things, and thus gradually gives up much; he relaxes in little things, and thus in time loosens every bond. Because it is a little thing, he counts it of little moment; utterly forgetting that millions are made up of units, that immensity is constituted of atoms. Because it is only a stone, a pebble, against which his foot strikes, he makes light of the hindrance; not caring that he is contracting a habit of stumbling or not observing that, whenever he trips, there must be some diminution in the speed with which he runs the way of God's commandments, and that, however slowly, these diminutions are certainly bringing him to a stand. Learn, from what angels are intent to do for you, what you should be earnest in endeavouring to do for yourselves. Those glorious, though invisible, beings bestow not their vigilance and carefulness on what is unworthy so lofty an instrumentality. They would not give such earnest heed to pebbles in the way, if it were not that pebbles are what men stumble over till precipitated into perdition, or what they mount upon till elevated into excellence. And if it might make you feel as though it were only at some great crisis, under some extraordinary temptation, or confronted by more than common enemies, that you had need for anxiety, effort, and prayer, to be told of angels as attending you to ward off the thunderbolt, or chain the tempest, oh, let it teach you how easy a thing it is to lose the soul, from what insignificant beginnings may fatal disease rise, with what unwearied earnestness you should avoid disobeying God in trifles, conforming to the world in trifles, relaxing in duty in trifles, to be told that angels, creatures of surpassing splendour and might, are commissioned to bear us up in their hands, not lest at any time we rush into the lion's den, or fall from the mountain top, but "lest at any time we hurt the foot against a stone."

(H. Melvill, B.D.)

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KJV: They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

WEB: They will bear you up in their hands, so that you won't dash your foot against a stone.