But when the angels then sing: "On earth peace, good will toward men!" you stop short; you cannot sing that. The tone is too high for you. When you look at your own life, it seems to be burdened much more with strife and worry and trouble than lightened by peace. And what do the heavenly hosts mean when they sing about good will toward yourself—O, well, it isn't much!
Then if you look beyond the narrow confines of your own life and behold the church of the Lord, where peace should be far more firmly rooted, then—what then? "The eye sees strife and only strife," and the people speak about peace and tremble in the thunder of cannon. They bleed and scream pitifully on the battlefield because of their wounds—and at home under the pressure of military budgets.
No, you cannot join in the singing!
But how, then, could the angels sing as they did that Christmas night? Was not the world filled with war and disturbances in those days, too? Was not the world full of souls in quest of lost peace? Yes, even so! And the angels saw it. But they saw something more.
Amidst all the restlessness of a disturbed world they saw a little Child on His mother's knee. In this child's eyes the sacred peace of Heaven was reflected. So that was at least one human soul in all the millions of mankind where perfect peace reigned on earth.
Toward this, the only one, the angels looked.
When, then, you seek peace on earth, look not in the direction of the world, of the struggling masses, but look toward Jesus—not as He was that night on His mother's knee in the inn near Bethlehem—for He is there no more, but as He is in His church, in His word, and in His institutions. His church on earth is that mother's knee upon which you shall find Him, and where you, in a world filled with war and strife, shall find peace and repose for your own soul.
The angels made no attempt whatever to penetrate into the strife of the world or to unravel its troubles. Neither shall you so do. On the other hand, they tried to look into the eye of the Saviour, and there they beheld Peace—a heavenly Peace which they had not seen on earth since that evening hour when Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden, and when one of their own kind was placed on guard with a flaming sword at the portals of Paradise. Then night fell upon earth. But Christmas Eve the new day began to arise from out of the darkness. Then they saw again a human being in the depth of whose soul reigned the Peace of Heaven, and therefore they bore their good will.
The peace and the good will, then, was in this one man, and through Him born into the millions of mankind. The angels had seen this one, and therefore they could sing as they did.