# Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 30

SERMON XXX.
ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
"Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory." — Luke xxi. 27.
Such will be that last spectacle which shall terminate the eternal revolutions which the aspect of this world is continually offering to our eyes, and which either amuse us through their novelty, or seduce us by their charms. Such will be the coming of the Son of Man, the day of his revelation, the accomplishment of his kingdom, and the complete redemption of his mystical body. Such the day of the manifestation of consciences, that day of misery and despair to one portion of men, and of peace, consolation, and ineffable delight to the other: the sweet expectation of the just, the dread of the wicked; the day which is to determine the destiny of all men.
It was the image, ever present to their minds, of that terrible day, which rendered the first believers patient under persecution, delighted under sufferance, and illustrious under injury and reproach. It is that which has since supported the faith of martyrs, animated the constancy of virgins, and smoothed to the anchorite all the horrors of a desert: it is that which still, at this day, peoples those religious solitudes erected, by the piety of our ancestors, as asylums against the contagion of the age.
​Even you, my brethren^ when the awful solemnity of that grand event hath sometimes intruded on your thoughts, have been unable to check feelings of compunction and dread. But these have been only transitory fears; more smiling and more agreeable ideas have speedily effaced them, and recalled to you your former calm. Alas! in the happy days of the church, it would have been considered as renouncing faith not to have longed for the day of the Lord. The only consolation of those first disciples of faith was in looking forward to it, and the apostles were obliged even to moderate, on that point, the holy eagerness of believers; and, at present, the church finds itself under the necessity of employing the whole terror of our ministry, in order to recall its remembrance to Christians, and the whole fruit of our discourses is confined to making it dreaded.
I mean not, however, to display to you here the whole history of that awful event. I wish to confine myself to one of its circumstances, which has always appeared to me as the most proper to make an impression on the heart: it is the manifestation of consciences.
Now, behold my whole design. On this earth the sinner never knows himself such as he is, and is only half-known to men; he lives, in general, unknown to himself, through his blindness, and to others through his dissimulation and cunning. In that grand day he will know himself, and will be known. The sinner laid open to himself, the sinner laid open to all creatures! Behold the subject upon which I have resolved to make some simple, and, I trust, edifying reflections.
Part I. — "All things are reserved for a future day," says the sage Ecclesiastes, * and no man knoweth them here below, for all things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean and to the unclean: to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner."
What idea, indeed, should we have of Providence in the government of the universe, were we to judge of its wisdom and justice only from the diverse lots which it provides on this earth for men? What! the good and the evil should be dispensed on the earth, without choice, respect, or discrimination? The just man should almost always groan under affliction and want, whilst the wicked should live surrounded with glory, pleasures, and affluence, and, after fortunes so different, and manners so dissimilar, both should alike sink into an eternal oblivion; and that just and avenging God, whom they should afterward meet, would not deign either to weigh their deeds, or to distinguish their merits? Thou, O Lord, art just, and will render to each according to his works.
This grand point of Christian faith, so consistent even with natural equity, supposed, — I say, that, in that terrible day, when, in the face of the universe, the sinner shall appear before that awful tribunal accompanied by his works, the manifestation of consciences ​will be the most horrible punishment of the unfaithful soul. A rigorous examination shall, in the first place, make him known to himself; and behold all the circumstances of that awful discussion.
I ought, in the first place, to make you observe all the titles with which he will be invested who shall examine you, and which announce all the rigour with which he shall weigh in the balance your deeds and your thoughts. It will be a rigid legislator, jealous of the sanctity of his law, and who will judge you only by it j all the softenings, all the vain interpretations, which custom or a false knowledge had invented, shall vanish; the lustre of the law will dissipate them; the resources with which they had flattered the sinner, will sink into nothing; and the incensed legislator will examine almost more rigorously the false interpretations which had changed its purity, than the manifest transgressions which had violated it. It will be a judge charged with the interest of his Fathers glory against the sinner, established to decide between God and man; and that day will be the day of his zeal for the honour of the Divinity, against those who shall not have rendered to him that honour which is his due: a Saviour, who will show you his wounds to reproach your ingratitude; all that he hath done for you will rise up against you: his blood, the price of your salvation, will loudly demand your destruction; and his despised kindnesses will be numbered among your heaviest crimes: the Searcher of hearts, to whose eyes the most hidden counsels and the most secret thoughts will all be laid open: lastly? a God of terrible majesty, before whom the heavens shall dissolve, the elements be confounded, and all nature overturned, and whose scrutiny, with all the terror of his presence, the sinner shall singly be forced to support.
Now, behold the circumstances of that awful examination. First, it will be the same for all men; and, as St. Matthew says, before him shall be gathered all nations. The difference of ages, countries, conditions, birth, and temperament, shall no longer be regarded; and as the Gospel, on which you will be judged, is the law of all times and conditions, and holds out the same rules to the prince and to the subject, to the great and to the lowly, to the anchorite and to the man immersed in the affairs of the world, to the believer who lived in the fervour of the primitive times, and to him who hath the misfortune to live in the relaxation of the present age, no distinction will be made in the manner of proceeding on the examination of the guilty; vain excuses on rank and birth, on the dangers of his station, on the manners of his age, on the weakness of temperament, will then be no longer listened to from you; and, with respect to modesty, chastity, ambition, forgiveness of injuries, renouncement of one's self, mortification of the senses, the just Judge will demand an exact account, equally from the Greek as from the Barbarian, from the poor as from the powerful, from the man of the world as from the solitary, from the prince as from the humblest subject; lastly, from the Christian of these latter times as from the first disciples of the Gospel.
Vain judgments of the earth, how shall you then be confounded! ​and how little shall we then estimate nobility of blood, the glory of ancestry, the blaze of reputation, the distinction of talents, and all the pompous titles with which men endeavour, on this earth, to puff out their meanness, and to found so many vain distinctions and privileges, when we shall see, amidst that crowd of guilty, the sovereign confounded with the slave, the great with the meanest of the people, the learned promiscuously blended with the ignorant and mean, — the gods of war, these invincible and far-famed characters who had filled the universe with their name, at the side of the husbandman and the labourer! Thou alone, O my God! hast glory, power, and immortality; and, all the titles of vanity being destroyed and annihilated with the world which had invented them, each will appear before thee accompanied solely by his works!
Secondly. That examination will be universal, that is to say, it will comprehend all the different ages and circumstances of your life: the weaknesses of childhood, which have escaped your remembrance; the transports of youth, of which almost every moment has been a crime; the ambition and the anxieties of a riper age; the obstinacy and the chagrins of an old age, still perhaps voluptuous. What astonishment, when repassing over the diverse parts which you have acted on the earth, you shall find yourself every where profane, dissolute, voluptuous, without virtue, without penitence, without good works; having passed through a diversity of situations merely in order to amass a more abundant treasure of wrath; and having lived in these diverse states as if to a certainty all were to die with you!
The variety of events which succeed each other here below, and divide our life, fix our attention only on the present, and do not permit us to recollect it in the whole, or fully to see what we really are. We never regard ourselves but in that point of view in which our present situation holds us out; the last situation is always the one which leads us to judge of ourselves; a sentiment of salvation, with which God sometimes indulges us, calms us on an insensibility of many years; a day passed in exercises of piety, makes us forget a life of crimes; the declaration of our faults at the tribunal of penitence, effaces them from our remembrance, and they become to us as though they had never been: in a word, of all the different states of our conscience we never see but the present. But, in the presence of the terrible Judge, the whole will be visible at once; the history will be entirely laid open. From the very first feeling formed by your heart, even to its last sigh, all shall be collected before your eyes; all the iniquities, dispersed through the different stages of your life, will then confront you; not an action, not a desire, not a word, not a thought, will there be omitted; for, if our hairs be numbered, judge of our deeds. We shall see spring up the whole course of our years, which though as if annihilated to us, yet lived in the eyes of God; and there we shall find, not those perishable histories in which our vain actions were to be transmitted to posterity, not those flattering recitals of our military exploits, of those brilliant events which had filled so many volumes, ​and exhausted so much praise, — not those public records in which are set down the nobility of our birth, the antiquity of our origin, the fame of our ancestors, the dignities which have rendered them illustrious, the lustre which we have added to their name, and all the history, as I may say, of human illusion and weakness; that immortality so vaunted, which it promised to us, shall be buried in the ruins and in the wrecks of the universe; but there we shall see the most shocking and exact history of our heart, of our mind, of our imagination; that is to say, that internal and invisible part of our life, equally unknown to ourselves as to the rest of men.
Yes, my brethren, besides the exterior history of our manners, which will be all recalled, what will most astonish us is, the secret history of our heart, which will then be wholly laid open to our eyes; of that heart which we have never sounded, never known; of that heart which continually eluded our search, and, under specious names, disguised from us the shame of its passions; of that heart whose elevation, probity, magnanimity, disinterestedness, and natural goodness we have so much vaunted, which the public error and adulation had beheld as such, and which had occasioned our being exalted above other men. So many shameful desires, which were scarcely formed before we endeavoured to conceal them from ourselves; so many absurd projects of fortune and elevation, sweet delusions, up to which our seduced heart continually gave itself; so many secret and mean jealousies which were the invisible principle of all our conduct, yet, nevertheless, which we dissembled through pride; so many criminal dispositions which had a thousand times induced us ardently to wish that either the pleasures of the senses were eternal, or that, at least, they should remain unpunished; so many hatreds and animosities, which unknown to ourselves, had corrupted our heart; so many defiled and vicious intentions, with regard to which we were so ingenious in flattering ourselves; so many projects of iniquity to which opportunity had alone been wanting, and which we reckoned as nothing because they had never departed from our heart: in a word, that vicissitude of passions which in succession had possession of our heart: behold what shall all be displayed before our eyes. We shall see, says a holy father, come out, as from an ambuscade, numberless crimes of which we could never believe ourselves capable. We shall be shown to ourselves; we shall be made to enter into our own heart, where we had never resided: a sudden light shall clear up that abyss: that mystery of iniquity shall be revealed; and we shall see that which of all we knew least, that was ourselves.
To the examination of the evils we have committed will succeed that of the good which we have failed to do. The endless omissions of which our life has been full, and for which we had never felt even remorse, will be recalled; so many circumstances where our character engaged us to render glory to the truth, and where we have betrayed it through vile motives of interest, or mean compliances; so many opportunities of doing good, provided for us by the good​ness of God, and which we have almost always neglected; so much culpable and voluntary ignorance, in consequence of having dreaded the light, and even fled from those who could have instructed us; so many events so calculated to open our eyes, and which have served only to increase our blindness; so much good, which, through our talents or our example, we might have done, and which we have prevented by our vices; so many souls whose innocence might have been preserved by our bounty, and whom we have left to perish by refusing to abate from our profusions; so many crimes which might have been prevented in our inferiors or equals by prudent remonstrances and useful advice, and which indolence, meanness, and perhaps more culpable views, have made us suppress; so many days and moments which might have been placed to advantage for Heaven, and which we have spent in inutility and an unworthy effeminacy. And what in this is more dreadful, is that, in our own eyes, that was the most innocent part of our life, offering nothing to our remembrance, as we think, but a great void.
What endless regret, then, to the unfaithful soul, to see such a list of days sacrified to inutility, to that world which is no more; while a single moment, consecrated to a God faithful to his promises, might have merited the felicity of the holy! — to see so many meannesses, so many objections for the sake of riches, and a miserable fortune which could last only for a moment; while a single self-denial, suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ, would have secured to him an immortal crown! What regret, when he now finds that not half the cares and anxieties were required for his salvation which he has undergone to accomplish his destruction; and that a single day of that long life, wholly devoted to the world, had sufficed for eternity!
To that examination will succeed, in the fourth place, that of mercies which you have abused; so many holy inspirations either rejected or only half prosecuted; so many watchful attentions of Providence to your soul rendered unavailing; so many truths, declared through our ministry, which, in many believers, have operated penitence and salvation, but have always been sterile in your heart; so many afflictions and disappointments, which the Lord had provided for you, in order to recall you to him, and of which you have always made so unworthy a use; even so many natural gifts which once were blossoms of virtue, and which you have turned into agents of vice: ah! if the unprofitable servant be cast into outer darkness for having only hidden his talent, with what indulgence can you flatter yourself, you who have received so many, and who have always employed them against the glory of that Master who had intrusted them to you?
Here, indeed, it is that the reckoning will be terrible. Jesus Christ will demand from you the price of his blood. You sometimes complain that God doth not enough for you; that he hath brought you into the world weak, and of a temperament of which you are not the master; and that he bestoweth not the necessary ​grace to enable you to resist the many opportunities which drag you away. Ah! you will then see that your whole life has been a continued abuse of his mercies; you will see that, among so many infidel nations which know him not, you have been privileged, enlightened, called to faith, nourished in the doctrine of truth and the virtue of the sacrament, incessantly supported by his inspirations and his grace; you will be shocked to see all that God hath done for you, and the little that you have done for him; and your complaints will quickly be changed into an utter confusion, destitute of every resource but in the horrors of your own despair.
Hitherto the just Judge hath examined you only on those crimes which are especially your own; but what will it be when he shall enter into a reckoning with you on the sins of others, of which you have been either the occasion or the cause, and which will, consequently, be charged to your account! What a new sink! All the souls to whom you have been a subject of scandal and ruin will be presented to you; all the souls whom your discourses, your counsels, your example, your solicitations, your immodesties, have precipitated, with yourself, into eternal destruction; all the souls whose weakness you have either seduced, or whose innocence you have corrupted, whose faith you have perverted, whose virtue you have shaken, whose freethinking you have authorized, or whose impiety you have strengthened by your persuasions, or by the example of your life. Jesus Christ, to whom they belonged, and who had purchased them with his blood, will demand them at your hands, as a dear heritage, as a precious conquest, which you have unjustly ravished from him; and if the Lord marked Cain with the sign of reprobation in demanding account from him of the blood of his brother, judge with what sign you shall be marked when you shall be brought to a reckoning for his soul.
But this is not all. Were you a public character, and high in authority, what abuses authorized! What iniquities glanced over! What duties sacrificed, either to your own interests or to the passions and interests of others! What respect of persons, in opposition to equity and conscience! What iniquitous undertakings counselled! What wars, perhaps, what confusions, what public evils, of which you have either been the author or the infamous agent! You will see that your ambition or your counsels have been as the fatal source of an infinity of miseries, of the calamities of your age, of those evils which are perpetuated, and pass from father to son: and you will be surprised to find that your iniquities have survived yourself, and that, even long after death, you were still culpable, before God, of an infinity of crimes and disorders which took place on the earth. And now it is, my brethren, that the danger of public stations shall be known, the precipices which surround the throne itself, the rocks of authority, and with what reason the Gospel denominated happy those who live in the obscurity of a private station; with what it was that religion wished to inspire us with so much horror at ambition, so much indifference toward the grandeurs of the earth, so much contempt for all ​that is exalted only in the eyes of men, and so frequently recommended to us to love only what we ought for ever to love.
But, exempted perhaps from all these vices which we have just been mentioning, and attached, for a long time past, to the duties of a Christian life, you presume that this terrible examination will either not regard you, or, at any rate, that you will appear there with more confidence than the criminal soul. Undoubtedly, my dear hearer, that will be the day of triumph and glory for the just; the day which will justify these pretended excesses of retreat, mortification, modesty, and delicacy of conscience, which had furnished to the world so many subjects of censure and profane derision. The just shall, no doubt, appear before that awful tribunal with more confidence than the sinner; but he will also appear there, and even his righteousness shall be judged: your virtues, your holy works, will be submitted to that rigorous examination. The world, which often refuses the praises due to the truest virtue, too often likewise grants them to the sole appearances of virtue: there are even so many just who deceive themselves, and who are indebted, for that name and that reputation, merely to the public error. Thus, it is not only Tyre and Sidon that I shall visit in the day of my wrath, saith the Lord; that is to say, those sinners whom their crimes seemed to confound with the unbelievers and the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon: I shall carry the light of my judgments even to Jerusalem; that is to say, I will examine, I will search into, I will fathom the motives of those holy works which seem to equal you with the most faithful of the holy Jerusalem.
I will trace, even to the source, the motive of that conversion which made so much noise in the world; and it shall be seen whether I find not its origin in some secret disgust, in the declension of youth and fortune, in private views of favour and preferment, rather than in the detestation of sin and love of righteousness.
I will balance those liberalities poured out on the bosom of the poor, those compassionate visits, that zeal for pious undertakings, that protection granted to my servants with complaisance, a desire of esteem, ostentation, and worldly views which have infected them: and, in my sight, they shall perhaps appear to be rather the fruits of pride than the consequences of grace and the work of my Spirit.
I will recall that train of prayer and other holy practices of which you had made a kind of habit, which no longer roused within you any feeling of faith and compunction; and you shall know whether lukewarmness, negligence, the little fruit which attended them, and the little disposition within you previous to them, have not, before me, constituted so many infidelities, for which you shall be judged without mercy.
I will search into that removal from the world and from pleasures, that singularity of conduct, that affectation of modesty and regularity; and perhaps I shall find them more the consequence of humour, temperament, and indolence, than of faith; and that, ​in a life more regular and more retired, in the opinion of men, you shall still have preserved all your self-love, your attachment to the flesh, all the niceties of sensuality; and, in a word, all the sins of the most worldly souls.
I will search, even to the bottom, that pretended zeal for my glory which made you so deeply lament over the scandals of which you were a spectator, which led you to condemn them with such confidence and pride, and to blaze out, with such warmth, against the irregularities and weaknesses of your brethren; and, perhaps, shall that zeal be no longer in my sight but a natural severity of temper, a malignity of disposition, an inclination toward censure and upbraiding, an indiscreet warmth, a vain, ostentatious zeal; far from finding you full of zeal for my glory, and for the salvation of your brethren, you shall no longer appear before me, but unjust, obstinate, malicious, and rash.
I will demand an account from you of those splendid talents which, it would appear, you employed only for my glory and for the instruction of believers; and which had drawn upon you the blessings of the just and the acclamations even of the worldly; and, perhaps, that continual attention to, and gratification of your own pride, the desire of surpassing others, and your sensibility of human applause, will prove the prominent features of your works to be only the works of man and the fruits of pride; and that I shall curse those labours which had sprung from so impure a source.
Great God! what works, upon which I had so firmly depended, shall then be found dead in thine eyes! How terrible shall be that discrimination! And, of all the actions which we have performed even for heaven, how few wilt thou acknowledge as thine, and which thou wilt deem worthy of reward!
Do not from thence conclude, my brethren, that it is then needless to labour for salvation, seeing that just Judge shall seek only the condemnation of men. Only their condemnation! My brethren, he is come solely to save them, and his mercies will far surpass even his justice. But behold the conclusion which you ought rather to draw. Those righteous souls whom you so frequently accuse of excess, of scrupulosity in the practice of the duties of a Christian life, as though they carried things too far; these souls, exposed to the light of God, shall appear lukewarm, sensual, imperfect, and perhaps criminal: and you, who live in the dangers and pleasures of the world; you, who devote to religion and your salvation only the most idle moments of your life; you, who scarcely mingle a single work of piety with an entire year of dissipation and inutility, in what situation shall you then be, my dear hearer? If those who shall have only laudable works to present shall yet be in danger of rejection, what shall be your destiny, — you, who have only a life entirely worldly to offer? If the tree full of blossoms be treated with such rigour, what shall become of the withered and barren tree? And, if the just be even with difficulty saved, — I speak not of the sinner, for he is already judged, ​but the worldly soul, who lives without either vice or virtue, how shall he dare to appear.
You, after all, say, my dear hearer, that your conscience does not reproach you with great crimes; that, if not good, neither are you bad, and that your only sin is indolence and sloth. Ah! you shall then know yourself before the tribunal of Jesus Christ. You shall see whether the testimony of your conscience, which reproached you not with crimes, and left you scarcely any thing culpable to confess, were not a terrible blindness, up to which the justice of God had always delivered you. From the dread in which you shall see the just, you shall find what ought to be your own fears, and whether the confidence in which you have always lived sprung from the peace of a good conscience, or from the false security of a worldly one.
O rny God! cries St. Augustine, could I but see at this moment the state of my soul as thou shalt lay it open to me! Could I despoil myself of those prejudices which blind me, mistrust those examples which confirm me, those customs which quiet me, those talents which dazzle me, those praises which seduce me, that rank and those titles which deceive me, and those complaisances of a sacred guide, which form all my security: could I but despoil myself of that self-love which is the source of all my errors, and behold myself alone at thy feet, in thy light; O my God! what horror would I not feel for myself! and what measures would I not take in humbling myself before thee, to prevent the public shame of that awful day, when the counsels of hearts and the secrecy of thoughts, shall be manifested! For, my brethren, not only shall the sinner be shown to himself, but he shall likewise be shown to all creatures.
Part II. — That mixture of good and wicked, inevitable on this earth, gives birth to two disorders: in the first place, through favour of that mixture, concealed vice escapes that public ignominy which is its due: virtue, not known, receives not the applause it merits. In the second place, the sinner, high in honours, frequently fills the most distinguished offices, while the good and pious man lives in humiliation, and crawls like a slave at his feet. Now, on that terrible day, a double manifestation shall be made, which will repair that twofold disorder: in the first place, the sinful will be marked out from the just by the public exposition of their conscience; in the second place, they will be discerned by a separation from them, and the difference of their stations before the throne of glory.
In order fully to comprehend all the shame and confusion with which the criminal soul shall then be covered, when shown to all creatures, and all his vices, the most secret, exposed to the light, it requires only to pay attention, first, to the number and character of the spectators who shall witness his shame; secondly, to the care he had taken to conceal his weaknesses and debaucheries from the eyes of men, while on the earth; thirdly, and lastly, to his personal qualities, which will render his confusion still more deep and overwhelming.
​Here figure to yourselves, then, my brethren, the criminal soul before the tribunal of Christ, surrounded by angels and men; the just, the sinful, his relations, his subjects, his masters, his friends, his enemies, all their eyes fixed on him, present at the terrible scrutiny which the just Judge will make into his actions, his desires, and his thoughts; forced, in spite of themselves, to assist at his judgment, and to witness the justice of the sentence which the Son of Man shall pronounce against him. All the resources which, on this earth, might soften the most humiliating confusion, shall fail, on that day, to the unfaithful soul.
First resource. On this earth, when guilty of a fault which has sunk us into contempt, the whole has turned on a certain number of witnesses confined to our nation, or to the place of our birth; we may have removed ourselves from them, in the course of time, to avoid continually reading, in their eyes, the remembrance and reproach of our past shame; we may have changed our place of dwelling, to go elsewhere among strangers, to recover a reputation which we had already lost: but on that grand day, all men assembled shall be acquainted with the secret history of your manners and of your conscience: you shall no longer have it in your power to hide yourself far from the looks of the spectators, to seek new countries, and, like Cain, to fly into the desert. Each shall be fixed immoveable in the place, marked out for him, bearing on his forehead the sentence of his condemnation and the history of his whole life, obliged to sustain the eyes of the universe and the whole shame of his weaknesses. There shall no longer, then, be any hidden spot wherein to conceal himself from the public regard; the light of God, the sole glory of the Son of Man, which fill the heavens and the earth; and in all that immensity of space around you, you will, in every part, discover from afar only watchful eyes fixed on you.
Second resource. On the earth, when our shame is even public, and when degraded in the minds of men, in consequence of some striking fault, yet there are always some friends grounded in our favour, whose esteem and society recompense us, in some measure, for the public contempt, and whose kindnesses assist us in sustaining the inveteracy of the general censure: but, on this occasion, the presence of our friends will be the object by far the most insupportable to our shame. If sinners, like ourselves, they will cast up to us our common pleasures and our example, which, perhaps, have been the first rock upon which their innocence split: if just, as they had believed us to be children of light, ah! they will reproach to us their good opinion abused and their friendship seduced. You loved the just, shall they say to us, and you hated righteousness; you protected virtue, yet, in your heart, you placed vice on the throne: in us you sought that probity, that fidelity, and that security which you found not in your worldly friends, but you sought not the Lord who formed all these virtues in our heart: ah! did not the author of all our gifts deserve to be more loved, more sought after than we!
​And behold the third resource, which shall fail, to the confusion of the criminal soul; for, should no friends be found on this earth to interest themselves in our misfortunes, there are always, at least, indifferent persons whom our faults "do not wound or excite against us: but, on that terrible day, we shall have no indifferent spectators. The just, so feeling on this earth to the calamities of their brethren, so ingenious in excusing their faults, and so ready in covering them with the veil of charity, in order, at least, to soften, if they cannot find an apparent excuse for them in the eyes of men, — the just, then despoiled, like the Son of Man, of that indulgence and pity which they had exercised toward their brethren on the earth, shall hiss at the sinner, says the prophet, — shall insult him, and shall demand his punishment from the Lord to avenge his glory; they shall enter into the zeal and interests of his justice; and becoming judges themselves, they shall mock him, says the prophet, and say, " Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength; but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness. Behold, now, that foolish man, who believed himself the only sage on the earth, and who considered the life of the just as a folly; who made to himself in the favour of the great, in the vanity of titles and dignities, in the extent of his lands and possessions, in the good opinion and applause of men, supports of dirt, which were to perish with him. Where now are your gods, your rock in whom you trusted? Let them rise up and help you, and be your protection!"
Nor shall sinners be more indulgent to his misery; they will feel for him all that horror which they shall be forced to feel for themselves; the fellowship of misfortune, which ought to unite, will be only an eternal hatred which shall divide them; only a cruel inveteracy which shall fill their hearts with nothing but sentiments of cruelty and fury against their brethren; and they will hate in others the same crimes from which all their miseries spring. In a word, the men most distant from us, the most savage nations, to whom the name of Jesus Christ hath never been announced, come then, but too late, to the knowledge of the truth, shall rise up against you, and reproach to you, that, if the miracles which God had in vain operated amongst you had been wrought before their eyes, — that if they, like you, had been enlightened by the Gospel, and sustained by the succours of faith, they would have done penance in sackcloth and ashes, and put to advantage, for their salvation, those favours which you have abused for your destruction.
Such shall be the confusion of the reprobate soul. Accursed before God, he will find himself at the same time the outcast of heaven and of earth, the shame and curse of all creatures: even the inanimate, which he had forced to be subservient to his passions, and which groaned, says St. Paul, in the expectation of deliverance from that shameful servitude, shall, in their way, rise up against him. The sun, of which he had abused the light, shall be darkened, as if it were not to shine on his crimes: the stars shall disappear, ​as if to tell him that they have too long witnessed his iniquitous passions: the earth shall crumble from under his feet, as if to eject from its bosom a monster which it could no longer bear: and the whole universe, says Solomon, shall arm against him to avenge the glory of the Lord whom he has insulted. Alas! we so dearly love to be lamented in our misfortunes: indifference alone irritates and wounds us: here not only shall all hearts be shut to our misfortunes, but all beholders shall insult our shame, and the only portion left to the sinner shall be his confusion, his despair, and his crimes. First circumstance of the confusion of the criminal soul, namely, the multitude of witnesses.
I take the second from the care and anxiety they had taken, whilst living on the earth, to disguise and conceal themselves from the eyes of men; for, my brethren, the world is a grand theatre, on which almost every one acts a borrowed part. As we are full of passions, and as all passions have always in them something mean and despicable, our whole attention is employed in concealing their meanness, and in endeavouring to give ourselves out for what we are not: iniquity is always treacherous and deceitful. Thus, your whole life, you, above all, who listen to me, and who considered the duplicity of your character as knowledge of the world and of the court, your whole life has been only one train of dissimulation and artifice; even your sincerest and most intimate friends have only in part known you; you were beyond the reach of the world, for you changed character, sentiment, and inclination, according to circumstances and the disposition of those to whom you wished to make yourselves agreeable. Through these means you had acquired the reputation of ability and wisdom; but there shall be seen, in its native colours, a mean and treacherous soul, destitute of probity and truth, and whose principal virtue had been the concealment of its baseness and meanness.
You, likewise, unfaithful soul, whom a sex more jealous of honour had rendered still more attentive to conceal your weaknesses from the eyes of men, you were so artful in saving yourself from a discovery, you took from so far, and so surely, your measures to deceive the eyes of the husband, the vigilance of a mother, and, perhaps, the probity of a confessor: you would not have survived the accident which had therein betrayed your precautions and artifices. Vain cares! you only covered your lewdnesses, says the prophet, with a spider's web, which on that great day the Son of Man shall dissipate with a single blast of his mouth. In the presence of all assembled nations, saith the Lord, I will gather around thee all thy lovers. They shall see that eternal train of artifices, disguises, and meannesses; that shameful traffic of protestations and oaths which you made instrumental to so many different passions, and, at the same time, to lull their credulity; they shall see them, and tracing, even to the source, those criminal favours which you had bestowed on them, they shall find them not in their pretended merit, as you had wished to make them believe, but in your own infamous character, in a heart naturally lewd; you, who pique yourselves on ​having a heart so noble, so sincere, and so incapable of being touched but by merit alone. And all this shall take place before the eyes of the universe; of those friends whom an appearance of regularity had preserved to you; of your relations who were ignorant of the disgrace with which you covered them; of that husband who had so much depended on your affection and fidelity.
O my God! is there an abyss sufficiently profound in the earth in which the unfaithful soul would not then wish to hide himself? For, in the world, men never see but the outside and the scandal of our vices; and, besides, our confusion is shared and countenanced by those who are continually culpable of the same faults. But, before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, your weaknesses shall be seen in your heart; that is to say, their birth, their progress, their most private motives, and a thousand shameful and personal circumstances, which, even more than the crimes themselves shall cover you with shame: it will be a confusion in which none shall bear a share, and, consequently, will be entirely your own.
Lastly, the final circumstance, which shall render the shame of the sinner overwhelming, is his personal qualities.
You passed in the world for a faithful, sincere, and generous friend: it will be seen that you were vile, perfidious, interested, without faith, honour, probity, conscience, or character. You gave yourself out for a towering mind, above all the vulgar prejudices: and you shall unfold the most humiliating meannesses and circumstances, at which the vilest soul would almost expire with shame. In the world you were regarded as a man of integrity, and of an approved probity in the administration of your charge; that reputation had perhaps attracted fresh honours, and acquired to you the public confidence; you, nevertheless, abused the credulity of men; those pompous shows of equity concealed an unjust and servile soul, and a thousand times had your fidelity been in secret betrayed, and your conscience corrupted, by views of fortune and motives of interest; you were apparently adorned with sanctity and righteousness; you had always assumed the semblance of the just; you were believed to be the friend of God, and the faithful observer of his law; yet your heart was not upright before the Lord: under the cloak of religion you covered a defiled conscience and ignominious concealments; you walked in the way of holy things more securely to attain your purposes. Ah! on that day of revelation, you go to undeceive the whole universe; those who had seen you on the earth, astonished at your unexpected lot, shall search among the reprobate to discover the upright man; the hope of the hypocrite shall then be overthrown: you unjustly had enjoyed the esteem of men; you shall be known and God avenged. Lastly, yet shall I dare to say it, and here reveal the shame of my brethren? You were perhaps the dispenser of holy things, high in honour in the temple of God; the charge of faith, of doctrine, and of piety was intrusted to you; you appeared every day in the sanctuary, clothed in the formidable tokens of your dignity, offering up pure gifts and sacrifices without stain; you were intrusted with the ​secrecies of consciences; you sustained the weak in faith; you spoke of wisdom among the instructed; and, under all that religion hath most august or most holy, you perhaps concealed whatever the earth has most execrable. You were an impostor, a man of sin, seated in the temple of God; you instructed others, and you taught not yourself; you inspired horror against idols, and your days were only numbered by your sacrileges. Ah! the mystery of iniquity shall then be revealed; and you shall at last be known for what you have always been, — the curse of heaven and the shame of the earth.
Behold, my brethren, all the confusion with which the criminal soul shall be overwhelmed. And it will not be a transitory confusion. In the world we have only the first shame of a fault to undergo: the noise of it gradually dies away; new adventures at last take place of ours; and the remembrance of our disgrace fades away, and disappears with the rumour which had published it. But, at the great day, shame shall eternally remain upon the criminal soul; there shall no longer be any fresh events to obliterate his crimes and his confusion; nothing shall more change: all shall be fixed and eternal: that which he shall have appeared before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, that will he for ever appear: even the nature of his torments shall incessantly publish the nature of his crimes; and his shame shall every day be renewed in his punishment. My brethren, reflections here are needless; and, if some remains of faith still exist within you, it is for you to sound your own consciences, and, from this moment to adopt such measures, as may enable you to sustain the manifestation of that great day.
But, after having shown to you the public confusion with which the sinner shall be covered, why may I not expose to you here what shall be the glory and the consolation of the truly just man, when the secrecies of his conscience shall be laid open to the universe; when the whole mystery of his heart shall be unfolded; of that heart, of which all the loveliness concealed from the eyes of men was known only to God; of that heart in which he had always supposed stains and defilements, and of which his humility had concealed from himself all the holiness and innocency: of that heart in which God alone had always dwelt, and which he had taken pleasure in adorning and enriching with his gifts and grace! What new wonders shall that divine sanctuary, hitherto so impenetrable, then offer to the eyes of the beholders, when the veil shall be removed from it! What fervent desires! What secret victories! What heroical sacrifices! What pure prayers! What tender lamentations! What faith! What grandeur! What elevation above all those vain objects which form all the desires and hopes of men! Then it shall indeed be seen, that nothing was so great, or so worthy of admiration in the world, as a truly just man; as those souls who were considered as useless, because they were so to our passions; and whose obscure and retired life was so much despised. It shall be seen that the heart of the faithful soul possessed more lustre and grandeur than all those great events which take place ​on the earth, was alone worthy of being written down in the eternal books, and offers to the eyes of God a sight more worthy of angels and men than all the victories and conquests which here below fill the vanity of histories, to which pompous monuments are erected in order to eternize their remembrance, and which, then, shall no longer be considered but as puerile squabbles, or the fruit of pride and the human passions. — First disorder repaired on that great day: vice concealed here below from public shame, and virtue from the applauses it merits.
The second disorder which the mixture of the good and of the bad gives birth to in the world, is the inequality of conditions, and the unjust exchange of their lots. It is with the present age as with the image of which Daniel explained the mystery: the just, like the clay which we trample under our feet, or, like iron hardened in the fire of tribulation, in general occupy, here below, only the meanest and most contemptible stations; while, on the contrary, the sinful and the worldly, typified by the gold and silver, vain objects of their passions, almost always find themselves placed at the head of affairs, and in the most eminent places. Now, this is a disorder; and, although the good be thereby exercised, and the wicked hardened; although this confusion of good and evil enter into the order of Providence, and that, by ways and means impenetrable to man, God makes use of them to lead the just and the sinner to his purposes; yet it is necessary that the Son of Man gather together all things, and that it shall at last be discerned between the righteous and the wicked; between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. Now, behold the grand spectacle of that last day: order shall be re-established; the good separated from the wicked: the sheep set on his right hand, and the goats on the left.
Separation, first, altogether new. It will not be demanded from you, in order to determine what rank you ought to hold in this awful scene, what were your names, your birth, your titles, or your dignities; these were but a vapour, which had no reality but in the public illusion; you will be examined only to prove whether you be an unclean animal or an innocent sheep: the prince shall not be separated from the subject: the noble from the peasant; the poor from the powerful; the conqueror from the vanquished: but the chaff from the good grain; the vessels of honour from the vessels of shame; the goats from the sheep.
The Son of Man shall be seen from on high, casting his regards over all the mingled nations and people assembled at his feet; recalling, in that view, the history of the universe, that is to say, of the passions or of the virtues of men; he shall be seen gathering together his chosen from the four quarters; choosing them from among every tongue, every station, and every nation; reuniting the children of Israel dispersed through the universe; unfolding the secret history of a holy and new people; bringing forth to view heroes of faith till then unknown in the world: no more distinguishing ages by the victories of conquerors, by the establishment ​or the fall of empires, by the politeness or the barbarity of the times, by the great characters who have blazed in every age; but by the diverse triumphs of grace, by the hidden victories of the just over their passions, by ^the establishment of his reign in a heart, by the heroical fortitude of a persecuted believer. You shall see him change the face of all things, create a new heaven and a new earth, and reduce that infinite variety of people, titles, conditions, and dignities, to a people holy and a people reprobate, to the goats and the sheep.
Separation, secondly, cruel. The father shall be separated from his child; friend from friend; brother from brother: the one shall be taken, the other left. Death, which deprives us of the dearest friends, and whose loss occasions to us so many sighs and tears, leaves us, at least, a consolation in the hope of being one day reunited to them. Here, the separation is eternal; no hope of reunion shall more exist; we shall no more have relatives, father, child, friend; no other ties than everlasting flames, which shall for ever unite us to the reprobate.
Separation, thirdly, ignominious. We are so touchy on a preference, when neglected, or left blended with the crowd on any splendid occasion; we are so peevish, and so irritated, when, in the distribution of favours, we see novices carrying off the palm and the principal offices; our services forgotten, and those whom we had always seen far below us, now exalted and placed over our heads. But, on that grand day, it is that preference shall be accompanied with circumstances the most humiliating and the most galling to the criminal soul. In that universal silence, in that dreadful expectation, in which each one shall be for the decision of his destiny, you shall see the Son of Man advancing in the heavens, with crowns in one hand, and the rod of wrath in the other, to carry off, from your side, a just soul whose innocence you, perhaps, had blackened by rash discourses, or whose virtues you had insulted by impious pleasantries; a believer who was, perhaps, born your subject; a Lazarus, who in vain, perhaps, had importuned you with the recital of his wants and poverty; a rival whom you had always beheld with an eye of scorn, and upon whose ruins your intrigues and artifices had perhaps exalted you. You shall see the Son of Man place a crown of immortality on his head, seat him at his right hand, while you, like the proud Haman, rejected, humbled, and degraded, shall no longer, have before your eyes but the preparation of your punishment.
Yes, my brethren, every galling and overwhelming circumstance shall attend that preference. A savage converted to faith shall be ranked among the sheep, while a Christian inheritor of the promises shall be left among the goats. The layman shall ascend, like the eagle over his prey, while the minister of Jesus Christ shall grovel on the earth, covered with shame and reproach. The man of the world shall pass to the right hand, while the recluse passes to the left. The wise, the learned, the critic of the age, shall be driven to the side of the unclean; and the idiot, who knew not ​how to answer even the common salutations, shall be placed on a throne of glory and light. Rabab, a sinful woman, shall mount up to the heavenly Sion along with the true Israelites; while the sister of Moses, and the spouse of Jesus Christ, shall be driven from the camp and the tents of Israel, and shall appear covered with a shameful leprosy. Thou art determined, O my God! that nothing shall be wanting toward the despair of the criminal soul. It is not sufficient that he shall be overwhelmed under the weight of his own misery; thou shalt create for him a new punishment in the felicity of the just, who, preferred to him, shall be seen conducted by angels into the bosom of immortality.
What change of scene, my brethren, in the universe! It is then that, all scandals being plucked out from the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the just wholly separated from the sinful, they shall form a holy nation, a chosen race, and the church of the first born, whose names were written down in heaven. It is then that the commerce of the wicked, inevitable on this earth, shall no longer occasion their faith to lament, or their innocence to tremble. It is then that their lot, no longer connected with the unfaithful or the hypocrite, shall no more constrain them to be witnesses of their crimes, and sometimes even the involuntary agents of their passions. It is then that all the bonds of society, of authority, or dependence, which attached them on this earth to the impious and to the worldly, being broken asunder, they shall no longer say with the prophet, " Lord, why lengthenest thou out here our banishment and our sojourning? How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither for the wickedness of them that dwell therein?" Lastly, then it is that their tears shall be changed into joy, and their sighs into thanksgivings; they shall pass to the right hand as the sheep, while the rest shall be reserved for the goats and the impious.
The disposition of the universe thus laid out; all nations of the earth thus divided; each one fixed in the place allotted to him; surprise, terror, despair, and confusion marked in the countenance of one part; on that of the other, joy, serenity, and confidence: the eyes of the just raised on high toward the Son of Man, from whom they await their deliverance; those of the impious frightfully fixed on the earth, and almost piercing the abyss with their looks, as if already to mark out the place which is destined for them: the King of glory, says the Gospel, placed in the middle of two nations, shall come forward: and, turning toward those who who shall be at his right hand, with an aspect full of sweetness and majesty, and sufficient of itself to console them for all their past sufferings, he will say to them, " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The sinful had always considered you as the outcast, and the most useless portion of the earth; let them now learn that the world itself existed only for you, that all was created for you, and all hath finished from the moment that your number was completed. Quit, then, an earth were you had always been travellers ​and strangers; follow me into the immortal ways of my glory and felicity, as you have followed me in those of my humiliation and sufferings. Your toils have endured but for an instant; the happiness you go to enjoy shall be without end."
Then, turning to the left hand, vengeance and fury in his eyes, here and there casting the most dreadful looks, like avenging thunderbolts, on that crowd of guilty; with a voice, says a prophet, which shall burst upon the bowels of the abyss to swallow them up, he shall say, not as upon the cross, * Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," but, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. You were the chosen of the earth, you are the accursed of my Father; your pleasures have been fleeting and transitory, your anguish shall be eternal." The just, then, mounting with the Son of Man, shall begin to sing this heavenly song, Thou art rich in mercy, Lord, and thou hast crowned thy gifts in recompensing our good actions. Then shall the impious curse the Author of their being and the fatal day which brought them forth; or, rather, they shall enter into wrath against themselves, as the authors of their misery and destruction. The abyss shall open; the heavens shall bow down; the reprobate, says the Gospel, shall go into everlasting punishment, and the just into life eternal. Behold a lot which shall change no more.
After a relation so awful, and so proper to make an impression on the most hardened hearts, I cannot conclude, without addressing to you the same words which Moses formerly addressed to the Israelites after having laid before them the dreadful threatenings, and the soothing promises, contained in the Book of the Law: " Children of Israel, behold I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: a blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day; and a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside, out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods which ye have not known."
Behold, my brethren, what I say to you in concluding a subject so terrible. It now belongs to you to choose and to declare yourselves: the right hand and the left are before you, the promises and the threatenings, the blessings and the curses. Your destiny turns on this awful alternative: you either shall be on the side of Satan and his angels, or you shall be chosen with Jesus Christ and his saints. Here there is no middle way; I have pointed out the path which leads us to life, and that which leads to perdition. In which of these two do you now walk? And on which side do you believe that you should find yourselves, were you, at this moment, to appear before the awful tribunal? We die as we have lived: tremble lest your destiny of this day be your everlasting destiny. Quit, and from this moment, the ways of the sinful; begin now to live like the just, if you wish, on that last day, to be placed at the right hand, and to mount, along with them, into the abode of a blessed immortality.