IV.'

PARTICULAR JUDGMENT.

"It is appointed for men once to die, and after that, the judgment."-HEBREWS, ix. 27.

MAN'S life on earth, my Brethren, both in itself and in its relations to the hereafter, is a thing which even the greatest minds have a difficulty in grasping well. It is, in itself, so large and various; its relations to the hereafter are so numerous and vast, that for any ordinary intelligence-ay, for any purely human intelligence, however extraordinary-to take it in, in its entirety, at once, is simply impossible. It has, therefore, been always the custom-a custom indirectly sanctioned by our Lord-to represent it under a variety of figures, some of which illustrate it in one way and some in another. For instance, it is often spoken of as a stormy sea, whereon men are sailing, some in big ships and some in little-some in good ships and some in bad, but all with orders to bear up for a certain harbour of rest, and to keep clear and to steer wide of a certain gulf wherein many have gone down. Again, it is represented as a great battlefield, where men are fighting, some on the side of

the devil, and some on the side of God; some in a half-hearted undecided way, and some with a fiery zeal for their selected side; but all forced to lay down their arms when a certain trumpet begins to blow. Again, it is represented as a great garden, wherein men and women are so many fruit-trees, some of this kind and some of that, some small and stunted, others large of stem and with full-grown, far-extending boughs, but each expected to bring forth fruit in due season according to its kind. And so on: in numberless other figures and under numberless other lights does human fancy try to help human reason in comprehending human life.

But, from among all the figures of it that I have been able either to invent or to discover, I shall, this evening, use only one. You have, I am sure, often had it introduced to you before. It is because of its special suitableness to my present purpose that I select it now. In human life, my Brethren, accurately considered, there are just two great, very distinct, exhaustive stages. The one is short and temporal, beginning with our birth, ending when we die; the other commences with our death, and, once commenced, it never has an end. Now, our position in the first stage is unfixed, changing, and is, moreover, determined very much, in fact I may say determined principally by our own will. Our position in the second stage is fixed from its beginning--substantially so, at least-unchangeable to its end, and determined, solely and exclusively, by an examination

of our conduct in the first stage. That much being premised, the figure of my selection speaks in this way :-Each human soul on earth is temporarily confined in a prison called its body. In this prison it has apportioned to it certain work to do. By its conduct in the prison, its industry or want of industry, its obedience or disobedience, its doom will be eventually decided. For, on some day, hidden utterly from the prisoner himself, known probably by the Judge alone, the prisoner is to be brought up for trial. On that day Death, the Judge's warder, will come to us in our cell; will take us out thereof; will leave us before the Judge's bar, there to stand our trial and to hear that sentence pronounced which is to decide our destiny, not for fortyeight hours or for six calendar months or for years seven, fourteen, or twenty-one, but for ever and for ever, as long as there is life in our deathless souls. There is, my Brethren, a Day of Judgment for us all.

And, my Brethren, that judgment is, as we all know, both Particular and General, the one occurring instantly that a man's soul is taken from its prison of a body, the other, for various reasons, postponed till the whole family of humanity have lived and died, have passed, each his allotted period in his earthly cell, have felt each the finger of the warder Death touching him upon the shoulder and pointing to the Judgment-hall where his trial is to be. Of this general judgment on the whole collected body of the human race I shall speak at another time. This evening my remarks shall be on the particular judgment alone.

And, as the particular judgment of a saint is, as I said once before, nothing more than a mere formalityno terrors at all about it, and, from the nature of the case, no very searching inquiry-and as, whatever is to be learned from it I have, I think, put forward in substance already, therefore shall I, this evening, confine myself to speaking of the judgment of a sinner. And as, for clearness sake, it is well to particularize, and as, for unity's sake, it is well not to multiply characters without necessity, I shall take as my specimen of a sinner him whom I took before-that respectable person, namely, who died staring at a well-wrought ceiling and at some other things too very far beyond it.

We said of him, some here will perhaps remember, that he entered on the awful land beyond us, blind and naked and terror-stricken and alone. I read once in an old book an old story which serves me here. The book defends a certain cause the cause need not be specified--which had glorious defenders long ago, which has had defenders of some kind always, which will probably not fail of having defenders till the end of all. And the old book enforcing the inherent danger of treachery to the cause tells, briefly and quaintly (perhaps foolishly and fabulously too, but the illustration will serve me, all the same) what happened in the case of a traitor to it years before. One night when he was promising himself years of pleasure purchased by his blood-money-just at midnight it was--he found himself suddenly

seized by invisible hands; was gagged and blindfolded; was whirled fast away where the sounds of common humanity were heard no more; was flung violently to the ground; felt the bandages and the gags removed; opened his eyes amid the intense stillness of a gloomy shadow-stricken cave; and saw, seated on judgment-seats before him,-who ?-heroes, who, for that very cause to which he was a traitor, had spilled their blood in far-off and grander years; heroes, whose names even he had been used to pronounce with reverential awe; heroes, whose splendid figures, standing out large and solemn, though dim and shadowy, through human tradition, all noble souls had loved and honoured; heroes, who, rather than let a traitor go unpunished had got up to judge one from their angry graves! And then the old book goes on to tell how the poor wretch asks mercy, prays for pardon, promises ample reparation, fawns and whines and wriggles, but begs, at all events, if he is to be killed, to be killed at once, and to be spared the terrible torture of his Judges' intolerable eyes. That story, I say, will serve me here. It will suggest a human colouring to a sketch which it were otherwise difficult to give except in the most shadowy outline. For, the soul of our sinner who died staring at those things beyond the ceiling, has no sooner been torn from its prison by the angry arm of the warder Death, than it is seized upon by the awful officers of justice in the other world, seized upon with a savage suddenness, and, in one instant, whirled away into

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