I am Raphael, one of the seven angels, who present the prayers of the Saints before the throne and who go in and out of the courts of Heaven…. I cannot eat and drink and walk the earth with you; I am less than a breath. Now therefore, give God thanks; for I go unto Him that sent me.’ This quotation taken from the play Tobias and the Angel, by James Bridie,and itself a paraphrase of the scriptural account of Raphael's farewell to Tobias and his son, sums up the varying angelic activities which are described in the Old and New Testaments. They are shown to us in the courts of heaven, and for this we must depend on the attempted descriptions of visions descriptions necessarily failing in words, for their human authors were 'carried up into Paradise, and heard mysteries which man is not allowed to utter' (II Cor. xii,4), yet, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, conjuring up a picture of power, splendour and light.