s, the mourning
prophets,--the persecuted apostles--and the martyred disciples _do_
bear theirs. For just as it is well for you to remember what your
undying Creator is _doing_ for you--it is well for you to remember
what your dying fellow-creatures _have done_: the Creator you may at
your pleasure deny or defy--the Martyr you can only forget; deny, you
cannot. Every stone of this building is cemented with his blood, and
there is no furrow of its pillars that was not ploughed by his pain.

54. Keeping, then, these things in your heart, look back now to the
central statue of Christ, and hear His message with understanding. He
holds the Book of the Eternal Law in His left hand; with His right He
blesses,--but blesses on condition. "This do, and thou shalt live";
nay, in stricter and more piercing sense, This _be_ and thou shalt
live: to show Mercy is nothing--thy soul must be full of mercy; to be
pure in act is nothing--thou shalt be pure in heart also.

And with this further word of the unabolished law--"This if thou do
_not_, this if thou art not, thou shalt die."

55. Die (whatever Death means)--totally and irrevocably. There is no
word in thirteenth-century Theology of the pardon (in our modern
sense) of sins; and there is none of the Purgatory of them. Above that
image of Christ with us, our Friend, is set the image of Christ over
us, our Judge. For this present life--here is His helpful Presence.
After this life--there is His coming to take account of our deeds, and
of our desires in them; and the parting asunder of the Obedient from
the Disobedient, of the Loving from the Unkind, with no hope given to
the last of recall or reconciliation. I do not know what commenting or
softening doctrines were written in frightened minuscule by the
Fathers, or hinted in hesitating whispers by the prelates of the early
Church. But I know that the language of every graven stone and every
glowing window,--of things daily seen and universally understood by
the people, was absolutely and alone, this teaching of Moses from
Sinai in the beginning, and of St. John from Patmos in the end, of the
Revelation of God to Israel.

This it was, simply--sternly--and continually, for the great three
hundred years of Christianity in her strength (eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries), and over the whole breadth and depth of her
dominion, from Iona to Cyrene,--and from Calpe to Jerusalem. At what
time the doctrine of Purgatory was openly