f no value, without it. It gives unity to
the separate parts, and locking all together, makes them one. Of such
consequence to the other parts of the Angels' Song is its last clause.
It was not simply Glory to God, nor peace on earth, but good will
toward men, which made the angels messengers of mercy, and the news
they brought tidings of great joy. Glory to God! Amid the rush of the
waters that drowned the world, and the roar of the flames that laid
Sodom in ashes, they sang glory to God. God is glorious in acts of
judgment as well as in acts of mercy--"the God of Glory thundereth."
So on shores strewn with the corpses of the dead, beside a sea which
opened its gates for the escape of Israel and closed them on Egypt,
burying king and bannered host beneath its whirling waves, Moses and
Miriam cried, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea! Then the deep
lifted up its voice, and all the waves of the sea sang Glory to God!
as, bearing the dead in on their foaming crests, they laid them at
Moses' feet. And when that judgment comes to which these are but as
the big drops that prepare us for a burst of thunder and the rushing
rain, when the great white throne is set, and the books are opened,
and the Judge rises in awful majesty to pronounce words of doom, the
voices of ten times ten thousand saints shall add, Amen; and in an
outburst of praise that drowns the wail of the lost, the whole host of
angels shall sing, Glory to God! With such ascription of praise
Christ's heralds would have announced His advent, had He come not to
save, but to destroy.

"Glory to God," the first clause of this song, does not, therefore,
necessarily involve good will towards men; and no more does the
second, "peace on earth." Peace! Peace was in the valley where the
prophet stood with the grim wrecks of war around him,--friend and foe
sleeping side by side, skeletons silently turning to dust, and swords
to rust. Peace is in the battle-field when the last gun is fired, and,
the last of the dying having groaned out his soul in a gush of blood,
the heaving mass is still. Peace was on the sea and the storm suddenly
became a calm, when the waves leaping up against the flying ship
obtained their prey, and from the deck where he stood summoned by the
voice, Arise, O thou that sleepest, and call upon thy God, Jonah was
flung into the jaws of death. Peace was in that land he had ravaged of
w