"Where have you been, my brother?
For I missed you from the street?" " I have been away for a night and a day
At the great God's judgment-seat."
"And what did you find, my brother, When your judging there was done?"
"Weeds in my garden, dust in my doors, And my roses dead in the sun : 1 J. B. Liglitfoot. * Pascal, Thoughts. s Dora Sigerson Shorter.
154 OUR THREE JUDGES
"And the lesson I brought back with me, Like silence, from above — - On the Judgment-Throne there is room alone For the Lord whose name is Love."1
(2) All men know themselves to be, in some respects, better than they are supposed to be. But do we not also know ourselves to be worse ? What do we say — not with the tongue with which we would speak to another, but with that voice with which the soul speaks to itself ? Have we never said to ourselves, " If people only knew me as I know myself, they would scorn me; if my friend knew me as I really am, he would be my friend no more " ? Away back in our life, are there not hours about which we neither could, would, nor should speak ? Is there ever a day that there do not pass through our mind thoughts of pettiness and vanity, movements of covetousness, envy and pride, perhaps dark doubts and blasphemies ? Have we no secret habits and sinful inclinations and desires which dare not see the light ?
^J Great were the wrath and consternation of the pirates when they saw their dilemma; for, having no provisions, they must either starve or seek succour at the fort. They chose the latter course, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing in the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either side. " Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the defence ; " but if Laudonniere does not hang us all, I will never call him an honest man." 2
TJ You constantly hear a great many people saying I am very bad, and perhaps you have been yourself disposed lately to think me very good. I am neither the one nor the other. I am very self-indulgent, very proud, very obstinate, and very resentful ; on the other side, I am very upright — nearly as just as I suppose it is possible for man to be in this world — exceedingly fond of making people happy, and devotedly reverent to all true mental or moral power. I never betrayed a trust — never wilfully did an unkind thing — and never, in little or large matters, depreciated another that I might raise myself. I believe I once had affections
1 L. Maclean Watt.
' Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, i. 76.
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 155
as warm as most people ; but partly from evil chance, and partly from foolish misplacing of them, they have got tumbled down and broken to pieces. It is a very great, in the long-run the greatest, misfortune of my life that, on the whole, my relations, cousins and so forth, are persons with whom I can have no sympathy, and that circumstances have always somehow or another kept me out of the way of the people of whom I could have made friends. So that I have no friendships, and no loves.
Now you know the best and worst of me; and you may rely upon it it is the truth. If you hear people say I am utterly hard and cold, depend upon it it is untrue. Though I have no friendships and no loves, I cannot read the epitaph of the Spartans at Thermopylae with a steady voice to the end ; and there is an old glove in one of my drawers that has lain there these eighteen years, which is worth something to me yet. If, on the other hand, you ever feel disposed to think me particularly good, you will be just as wrong as most people are on the other side. My pleasures are in seeing, thinking, reading, and making people happy (if I can, consistently with my own comfort). And I take these pleasures. And I suppose, if my pleasures were in smoking, betting, dicing, and giving pain, I should take those pleasures. It seems to me that one man is made one way, and one another — the measure of effort and self-denial can never be known, except by each conscience to itself. Mine is small enough.1
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas ! I know ; Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil my eyes for shame, And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.2
III.
Christ's Judgment of Us.
The final judgment to which St. Paul appealed was his Master's. " He that judgeth me is the Lord " ; in other words, I am His steward, and to Him am I ultimately responsible. I do not come to you for your approval to sustain me in my work ;