and final arbiter of the destinies of mankind, is simply
not thinkable. And the more we ponder the stupendous claim which Christ
makes, the more must we feel that it is either superhuman authority
which speaks to us here or superhuman arrogance. Either Christ spoke out
of the depths of His own Divine consciousness, knowing that the Father
had committed all judgment unto the Son; or He made use of words and put
forth claims which were, and which He must have known to have been,
empty, false, and blasphemous.

Such is the significance of Christ's words in their relation to Himself.
It is, however, with their relation to ourselves that we are primarily
concerned now. Of the wholly unimaginable circumstances of that day when
the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the nations be gathered
before Him I shall not attempt to speak. As Dean Church has well
said,[57] no vision framed with the materials of our present experience
could adequately represent the truth, and, indeed, it is well that our
minds should be diverted from matters which lie wholly beyond our reach,
that they may dwell upon the solemn certainties which Christ has
revealed. Let us think, first of the fact, and secondly of the issues,
of Judgment.

I

The persistent definiteness with which the fact of judgment is affirmed
by the New Testament we have already seen. Nor is the New Testament our
only witness. The belief in a higher tribunal before which the judgments
of time are to be revised, and in many cases reversed, may be said to be
part of the creed of the race. Plato had his vision of judgment as well
as Jesus. And in the Old Testament, and especially in the Book of
Psalms, the same faith finds repeated and magnificent utterance: "Our
God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before
Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. He shall call to
the heavens above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people;" and
again, "For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge
the world with righteousness and the peoples with His truth."

Here, then, is the fact which demands a place in the thoughts of each of
us--we are all to be judged. Life is not to be folded up, like a piece
of finished work, and then laid aside and forgotten; it is to be gone
over again and examined by the hand and eyes of Perfect Wisdom and
Perfect Love. Each day we are writing, and often when the leaf is turned
that which has be