VISION OF THE JUDGMENT-SEAT.
55
The Being this whom, knowing not, we serve,
Whom the whole world by different names adores;
He hears our clamours from empyreal heights,
And this huge mass of error pitying views,
These senseless images, which ignorance
Makes piously of wisdom infinite."
Whom the whole world by different names adores;
He hears our clamours from empyreal heights,
And this huge mass of error pitying views,
These senseless images, which ignorance
Makes piously of wisdom infinite."
"Death, the frightful daughter of Time, brings before him the inhabitants of our sorrowful world;" and, as they appear, the different priesthoods of the earth look in vain for the beings they had deemed divine. Everything being in a moment made clear to them, the dead hear in silence the eternal judgments. Henry dares not approach the throne whence are delivered the sentences "which so many of us presumptuous mortals try in vain to anticipate;" but nevertheless he cannot refrain from reasoning on what he sees:—;
"'What is,'" said Henry, speaking to himself,
'The law supreme by God for mortals made?
Does He condemn them that they shut their eyes
To knowledge which Himself has made obscure?
Does He, an unjust Master, judge their acts
By code of Christians which they never knew?
No; He who made us means to save us all;
On all sides He instructs us, speaks to us,
Graving on every heart a natural law
Alone unchangeable and ever pure.
Doubtless by this law are the heathen judged;
They, too, are Christians if their hearts be right.'"
'The law supreme by God for mortals made?
Does He condemn them that they shut their eyes
To knowledge which Himself has made obscure?
Does He, an unjust Master, judge their acts
By code of Christians which they never knew?
No; He who made us means to save us all;
On all sides He instructs us, speaks to us,
Graving on every heart a natural law
Alone unchangeable and ever pure.
Doubtless by this law are the heathen judged;
They, too, are Christians if their hearts be right.'"
This questioning receives from the throne itself, in accents of thunder, a reply which
"All the immortal choir is hushed to hear,
And every star repeats it in his course."
And every star repeats it in his course."
Henry (so the voice says) is to beware of surrendering
