greatest Creditor. Arise, ye laborers and servants, who earned your bread by the sweat of your brow! come before the great Head of the family! Arise, ye married people, ye young men and maidens; behold the Bridegroom cometh, and is waiting for you! Arise, ye rich, ye poor, noble, and lowly! But away with such names, they have no longer any meaning, for then we shall be all alike. Arise, ye dead; that is the only common title we shall all have. Come, hasten to judgment!
This summons shall be surprising. Now I wish, my dear brethren, to place before your mental vision a spectacle of terror and surprising change. Quick, ye angels! Heavenly messengers, blow the trumpets! Sun, bedarkened! Moon, hide thy light! Stars, fall down from heaven! Skies, send down the fiery rain! Everything on earth must be burnt up and reduced to ashes! Now, angels, sound the call: Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment! Behold, says St. Paul, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet,”[1] the graves shall all be opened, the mouldering bones shall come together, each soul shall enter into its body, “the dead shall rise again incorruptible.”[2] The dead shall come forth living. What an awful spectacle! In earthly judgments the accused is warned some time beforehand, and a certain day is fixed for the hearing of his case, so that he may be able to prepare for it. But here all is to happen in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, without any forewarning; when the summons comes the accused must appear. In earthly tribunals the accused is allowed to bring his advocate with him, to speak for him and plead his cause as best he may; here each one shall have to appear alone and speak for himself, and answer the questions put to him. Kings and emperors! bring not your crowns and your purple with you to this place, and let no ministers or satellites accompany you! Here one man is as good as another, as far as respect for persons is concerned. The peasant is as good as his prince, the beggar as good as the rich man, the ignorant clown as respectable as the learned philosopher, until the Judge sends His angels to make the proper separation between them all. “He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep,” that is the just, “on His right hand, but the goats,” that is the wicked, “on His left.”[3]
