89. Sifting Time
Sifting Time
MEMORY A WITNESS.—At the Judgment, the human soul, willing or unwilling, will take the witness-stand. Memory will identify every deed done in the body. The drowning recall everything. Lines written with invisible ink become legible when exposed to light. Earthly life will be read again, not a line or word erased.
DRAWING THE NETS.—The world is not unfitly compared to a fishing-net, and the end of the world to the drawing up of the nets. While the nets are down, there is nothing said to be caught; for the nets may break, and the fish escape. But at the end of the world, when the nets are drawn up, it will then evidently appear what every man hath caught; and then those that have fished for riches and power over their brethren, for the honors and preferments of this world, may say with Peter, “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” But those that have here fished for peace, and for the honor of God, may say, “Lord, at Thy word we have let down our nets, and have caught abundantly; we have fished for godliness, and have gotten life eternal.”
BRUTUS’ STERN JUSTICE.—How rigid was the justice of Brutus, the Elder, who, in spite of all the love of a father, passed sentence of death upon his own sons, for conspiring against the liberty of their country! While the youths stand trembling and weeping before him, hoping that their tears would be the most powerful defence with a father; while the senate whisper for the moderation of the punishment, and that they might escape with banishment; while the multitude trembles and expects the decision with horror,—the inexorable Brutus rises, in all the stern majesty of justice, and, turning to the executioners, says to them, “To you I deliver them.” In this sentence he persisted, notwithstanding the weeping intercession of the multitude, and the cries of the young men, calling upon their father by the most endearing names. They were seized, stripped, bound, and their heads then cut off; Brutus looking on the bloody spectacle with unaltered countenance.
FATAL DIVIDING PATH.—Many years aero there were bloody times in France. So many were killed that in some places the streets ran with blood. In one village the soldiers bade all the people come out of their houses and stand on the green, that they might look at them and decide who were to be shot and who were to be saved. A path ran across the green; and as the soldiers decided what to do with each, they put those who were to be saved on the right side of the path, and those they meant to kill were sent to the left. When all were thus parted the soldiers made those on the left side stand in rows, ten abreast; and loading their guns, stood a little way off from their unhappy victims, and fired till all were killed. A day is coming when we shall all be parted on two sides by God.
FEARFUL COMPANY.—If you were to spend a whole life and never be separated from the vile and loathsome a single instant, what a gloom would it spread over your mind! Hell is the place where there are many such—where all the inhabitants are such: “Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie,” whatever is abominable. Without the fire, the worm, the blackness and darkness of Hell, there is Hell enough in that presentation of it that it is the common sewer of all that is depraved; the one common eddy where everything polluted is together.