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The Revealing Angels

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Suddenly and without warning they came -

The Revealing Angels came.

Suddenly and simultaneously, through city streets,

Through quiet lanes and country roads they walked.

They walked crying: 'God has sent us to find

The vilest sinners of earth.

We are to bring them before Him, before the Lord of Life.'

Their voices were like bugles;

And then all war, all strife,

And all the noises of the world grew still;

And no one talked;

And no one toiled, but many strove to flee away.

Robbers and thieves, and those sunk in drunkenness and crime,

Men and women of evil repute,

And mothers with fatherless children in their arms, all strove to hide.

But the Revealing Angels passed them by,

Saying: 'Not you, not you.

Another day, when we shall come again

Unto the haunts of men,

Then we will call your names;

But God has asked us first to bring to him

Those guilty of greater shames

Than lust, or theft, or drunkenness, or vice -

Yea, greater than murder done in passion,

Or self-destruction done in dark despair.

Now in His Holy Name we call:

Come one and all

Come forth; reveal your faces.'

Then through the awful silence of the world,

Where noise had ceased, they came -

The sinful hosts.

They came from lowly and from lofty places,

Some poorly clad, but many clothed like queens;

They came from scenes of revel and from toil;

From haunts of sin, from palaces, from homes,

From boudoirs, and from churches.

They came like ghosts -

THE VAST BRIGADES OF WOMEN WHO HAD SLAIN

THEIR HELPLESS, UNBORN CHILDREN. With them trailed

Lovers and husbands who had said, 'Do this,'

And those who helped for hire.

They stood before the Angels - before the Revealing

Angels they stood.

And they heard the Angels say,

And all the listening world heard the Angels say:

'These are the vilest sinners of all;

For the Lord of Life made sex that birth might come;

Made sex and its keen compelling desire

To fashion bodies wherein souls might go

From lower planes to higher,

Until the end is reached (which is Beginning).

They have stolen the costly pleasures of the senses

And refused to pay God's price.

They have come together, these men and these women,

As male and female they have come together

In the great creative act.

They have invited souls, and then flung them out into space;

They have made a jest of God's design.

All other sins look white beside this sinning;

All other sins may be condoned, forgiven;

All other sinners may be cleansed and shriven;

Not these, not these.

Pass on, and meet God's eyes.'

The vast brigade moved forward, and behind then walked the Angels,

Walked the sorrowful Revealing Angels.