s He who judges Peter and
the woman who was a sinner, He of whose tenderness and sympathy we have
assurance in a hundred acts of mercy, pity, and magnanimity. Yet for
centuries the Church has sung its terrible _Dies Irae_, has clothed the
judgment seat with thunder, has put into the hands of Jesus bolts of
flame, and has applauded and enthroned in His sanctuaries such
pictorial blasphemies as Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, which
represents Jesus as an angry Hercules, and even gratifies the private
spite of the artist by overwhelming in a sea of fire one who had
offered him a personal affront.

Blasphemy indeed, and falsehood too; for the second thing we find is
that the one principle which governs the entire vision of Jesus is that
Love judges, and that it is by Love that men are tested. The men and
women of loving disposition, who have wrought many little acts of
kindness which were to them so natural and simple that they do not so
much as recollect them, find themselves mysteriously selected for
infinite rewards. The men and women of opposite disposition, in spite
of all their outward rectitude of behaviour, find themselves numbered
with the goats. A cup of cold water given to a child, a meal bestowed
upon a beggar, a garment shared with the naked--these things purchase
heaven. One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judges
their worth, and He judges by His own remembered need. It is love
alone that is divine, love alone that prepares the soul for divine
felicity. With a beautiful unconsciousness of any merit, the people
who have lived lovingly plead ignorance of their own lovely acts and
tempers; but they have been witnessed by the hierarchies of heaven, the
morning stars have sung of them, they have made glad the heart of God;
and the reward of these humble servitors of love now is that having
added to the joy of God, henceforth they shall share that joy forever.

Never was there vision at once so exquisite and so surprising. It is
like a child's dream of heaven and judgment, so untouched is it by the
conventions of the world, so innocent, so daring, so tenderly imagined,
and so impossibly probable. Alas, that most of us are too wise to
understand it, and too worldly to receive it. Yet in nothing that
Jesus uttered is there clearer evidence of deliberation. And it is of
a piece with all He taught; so much so indeed that without it, His
teaching would be incomplete.

Truly, we may say, t