The vision tarries, but come it shall. In answer to the cry of blood that rises to heaven with a different voice from that of Abel's, peace shall reign and wars shall cease. By the hands that men nailed to a cross God will break the bow, the battle, and the spear--burning the chariot in the fire. And though any peace which our age may enjoy should be only a breathing-time, but a pause in the roar of the bloody tempest, let us improve it to remedy all wrongs at home; to educate our ignorant and neglected masses; to eradicate the vices that disgrace and degrade our nation; to build up the Church wherever it lies in ruins; to extend not so much Britain's empire as Christ's kingdom abroad, and so hasten forward the happy time when the Song of the Angels shall be echoed from every land, and the voices of the skies of Bethlehem shall be lost in the grander, fuller, nobler chorus of all nations, singing, Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will toward men! _PART VI._ Though the last to be dropped into its place, the keystone is of all the stones of an arch the first in importance; the others span no flood, carry no weight, are of 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.