triumphal march. And see! out there where my Saint is looking, out there whence the music comes, the Heavens are all abloom with rosy clouds; for, a great fiery cross has now appeared, and, as it moves, it kindles all round its path one large expanse of unutterable glory. And now rank after rank innumerable the angels come. But angels! who cares about them now, when yonder advance the Judge and the Chosen Twelve. And the Judge takes His central throne, and the Twelve take each his appointed throne, and the judgment sits, and the books are opened. And all my good deeds, few as the leaves in winter, and all my bad deeds, many as the buds in spring, are common property now-the whole world knows them all. And so of you, and so of all the world. Each man's biography, complete, exhaustive, written there in letters of flame; both he himself and every one else forced to read it; each man known to his neighbours, really and thoroughly, for the first time. And now, amid the agony of stillness that holds all the valley, while the Twelve Tribes of Israel are being judged, St. Patrick, calm and confident, has time to note the Judge's appearance-to look a little round about him, and to muse a little upon the wonderful changes in the fortunes of all.

And first, here on the great central throne, St. Patrick sees the Man sitting who once stood at Pilate's Bar. St. Patrick knows Him, but yet he can hardly credit his eyes and mind. The same Man, but how vastly different! No thorns on his brow to-day; but,

where a thorn crown once pressed Him, an aureole of glory, each spike-mark darting a double ray, soft and tender towards the right, fierce and fiery towards the left. And then His face! Who would think that those hard stony eyes, that fierce, fixed mouth, that iron, impassive cheek, belonged to Him who wept over Jerusalem, who went as a lamb meek to the slaughter, who even in His own great agony had tender pity for the repentant thief! The wounds of hands and feet and side are there, but it is with them as with the wounded brow-terrible tortures are they to the left side, sweet comforters to the right, but to the Man who bears them, simply so many starry ornaments of glory. And St. Patrick muses and muses, and he murmurs to himself, "I wonder how Pilate looks to-day." But his musing is cut short. The silence is broken, and the Judge it is that breaks it.

And, Brethren dear, the words He uses are very few. Turning to the left, He says with a voice hard as the voice of hell-bolts drawn across hell-doorsHe says, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting flames." Turning to the right, He says with a voice as tender and as musical as that voice of many waters that blessed St. John-He says, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you." And then of a sudden all is over. The valley is peopleless. The curtain has fallen upon the sad tragedy, the foolish farce, of earthly humanity. There is an end to

all the little human games. The destinies of men, so small and strange and mutable before, have, of a sudden, become vast, and clear, and changeless; for, in all this universe the human family is divided into two great sections, and one section is unchangeably happy, and the other section is unchangeably miserable behind hell's gates, within hell's fires for ever.

VII.

GENERAL JUDGMENT.

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher: all is vanity."ECCLESIASTES, i. 2.

LAST Wednesday evening, my Brethren, I gave you a vision of the Valley of Judgment, and of the signs to precede our assembling there. I tried to keep as much as possible to the exact points of description put down by the writers of Holy Writ, letting my own fancy work only where these writers had omitted a colour, or had but faintly described a line. And even so, rude and sketchy and inelaborate, the picture was very terrible. The wars and rumours of wars; the nations broken and battered and in dire distress; the land shuddering and quaking from very fear; the seas raging and roaring and crushing the poor ships in their horrid arms; the stars falling or fading away; the moon as black as her native night; the sun red and threatening as murdered blood; men's eyes turned up in speechless, wondering, awful horror to the heavens; the great flame-flood

Y

rushing out from the skies and hitting them right on the uplifted faces; all the earth one lake of fire-no life nor trace of life visible upon it anywhere; when the fire cools, all the earth ashes and cinders onlyand then, amid the silence and solitude of a dead, voiceless, dispeopled world, the Archangel's trumpet ringing out its Resurrection and its Judgment-call!

And then, my Brethren, after the trumpet-call, the sudden uprising of all the dead; the hurry to the Valley of Decision; the Judge's throne; the multitudinous benches ranged on the hill-side valley slopes; the right-hand benches, with their lustre of light; the left-hand benches, with their ghastly darkness, like as in the nighttime of foundry countries, made still more ghastly by the fierce spots of fire; the eyes of all turned towards the eastern heavens; sounds of music caught up thence, faint at first and far away, but growing gradually fuller and fuller, nearer and nearer, till at last they swell out into the full grandeur of a God's triumphal march; the fiery cross, the angels marshalled rank on rank, the Judge and the chosen Twelve, the Judge's taking of the throne, His look and bearing, the book of judgment with its flaming page, the judgment of the Twelve Tribes, the sudden silence following, the Judge's sentence upon all the race, the opening of heaven above, the opening of hell below; the good ascending to their everlasting happiness; the bad looking up after them, getting one glimpse of glory through heaven's opened doors, and then hurled by devils'