lypse: “I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne”![1] O my dear brethren, what will then become of the point of honor and of precedence in rank? what of nobility and high lineage? what of high stations and positions? what of titles and honorable distinctions? Will there be perhaps a dispute as to who shall come first out of the grave, as to who shall precede and who shall yield to others? Will any respect be shown to one who comes forth from a grand mausoleum more than to one who arises out of a lowly church-yard? Shall we hear people say: I am a king, a prince, a count, a noble, a gentleman, a servant, a peasant, a beggar? I am a person of distinction; I am one of the lower orders—things that now excite such foolish comment in the world? Oh, truly there will be an end of all that; for then all shall be equal; one shall be as high as the other, and the only rank shall be that of holiness and justice. And how aggrieved the great man must then feel when he sees not only that he is paid no mark of respect by his former servant, but that the latter, or the beggar, or the shepherd, whom he formerly hardly deigned to cast an eye on, is now placed above him, and he is forced to give way, nay, that he must now actually lie at the feet of those whom he formerly persecuted, oppressed, and treated like dogs. Then shall the prophecy of Isaias be fulfilled: “The children of them that afflicted Thee shall come bowing down to Thee, and all that slandered Thee shall worship the steps of Thy feet.”[2] See there the rich glutton at the feet of the poor, ragged Lazarus, to whom during life he did not even deign to give the crumbs that fell from his table; Herod at the feet of St. John the Baptist, whom he decapitated; the emperor Nero prostrate before the poor fishermen, Peter and Paul, whom he had bound in chains; the emperor Diocletian bowing down before St. Sebastian, whom he had caused to be pierced with arrows; Rictius Varus at the feet of the citizens of Treves, in whose blood he had washed his hands; a judge prostrate before the poor widow or desolate orphan whose rights he had not upheld because they were of lowly condition. Oh, what a change that will be, and what confusion it shall cause in many minds! Could anything more humiliating be imagined for a proud, haughty man?
And they And they You must not think, my dear brethren, that on that day peo-
