SEVENTH NIGHT.
“You promised, grandmamma,” said little Emma, as she found herself once more seated by the old oaken chair, “to tell me to‐night |The Last Judgment.| about the Day of Judgment. I long to hear you speak about so solemn a subject. There is much about it I do not understand.”
“It is, my child,” replied the other, “a solemn subject. It will be a dreadful day to the wicked; but it will be a happy day to all God’s dear children—the happiest day in their lives.”
“Tell me, then, dear grandmamma, all that the Bible tells us about it. I shall promise to listen with great attention.”
|What it is.| “The Judgment,” answered the other, “is that great transaction which is to take place at the end of the world, when every man, and woman, and child, that ever lived, will be brought to trial before God’s ‘great white throne.’ A trumpet will sound over their graves. As I told you last Sabbath, the mouldering dust will come to life again, and the dead, small and great, will stand before God.”
“What a wonderful and awful thought!” exclaimed Emma; “but do you mean to say that all will be there, without any exception?”
“All!—all!” replied the aged lady, “from Adam to the last inhabitant of the world. There will be those who lived before the flood, and since the flood. Patriarchs, and Prophets, and Apostles—Jews and Gentiles—Pagans and Christians—rich and poor—young and old—learned and unlearned—kings and beggars—not one will be wanting; and more still, you and I will be there. Our eyes will look on that vast crowd.”
“And tell me,” continued Emma, deeply impressed with the thought, “who is the |The Judge.| Judge that will be seated on the throne you speak of? and what will He do?”
“If you refer, my child,” said her grandmother, “to the seventeenth chapter of Acts, thirty‐first verse, you will there read who is set apart as Judge of the world.” Emma turned up the passage in her Bible, and read as follows:—
“For He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.”
“Oh, I see now!” she exclaimed, as she closed her Bible; “it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is to be Judge. It makes me glad to think of this; for if I love and serve Him now, I will not be afraid to meet Him then. |The Throne.| But why is it said that He is to be seated on a white throne?—will it really be so?”
“I cannot tell,” replied the other, “what the outward marks of majesty will be in which He will appear, although, doubtless, these will be very great; for it is said that He will come ‘in His glory,’ and that He is to have ‘all His holy angels with Him.’ But He is spoken of as seated on a great white throne, to denote His awful purity and holiness; that He will give on that day every one his due. His mercy will not interfere with the exercise of justice and holiness, and sinners will not escape unpunished.”
“I think I now remember, dear grandmamma,” said Emma, “of reading in that same chapter in Revelation which speaks of the throne of the Judge, that He is to have |The Books.| some books lying open before Him.”
“Yes, my child, you are right; ‘the books,’ we are told, are to be ‘opened.’ What these books may be we cannot tell; but perhaps they may be the books of the Law and the Gospel—the books of Conscience, and Memory, and Privilege; and especially the Great Book of Remembrance, in which all |The Book of Remembrance.| our words, and deeds, and actions, are preserved. All that every individual has ever done will be found recorded in it. Many will wonder when they come to see how faithful the pen of God has been in writing down all;—heart sins, and tongue sins, and life sins. I fear not a few suppose that there are many trifling faults (or, as they call them, ‘little sins’) which they imagine God does not think it worth while to take notice of. They will find every one of them recorded. They may have forgotten them long ago; but they will all be brought to light again on that Great Day.”
“If this,” exclaimed Emma, “be indeed the case, who is there but must tremble at the thought of that day?”
“The wicked, my child,” continued her grandmother, “will and must be afraid to think of it. All who have not known the salvation of Jesus, and fled to His precious blood, must be covered then with confusion and shame. They will then be led to see, what they never saw before, what an evil thing sin is, and what a holy being God is. But His own people will have nothing to fear. They can say now, in the words of the beautiful hymn—
‘Bold shall I stand on that great day;
For who aught to my charge can lay,
While by Thy blood absolved I am
From sin’s tremendous guilt and shame?’
Yes, dear Emma, they will be able to look up with joy in the face of their Judge, and say, ‘It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?’”
“But what! Do you mean, grandmamma, that God does not take account of the sins of the righteous?”
“No, no, my child; every one of their sins is written down as well as those of the wicked—dreadful pages of guilt, too, that might well overwhelm them with wrath and condemnation.”
“How, then,” continued Emma, “can it be different with them from the others? How can God pass over their many sins?”
“He does not—He could not, my child,” replied the aged lady, “pass any sins over. But you may have heard of another book which |The Book of Life.| God will have before Him on that day. It is the Book of Life. There the names of all the redeemed are written. None who are written therein can be lost! It is as if the great Judge took His pen and drew it through every page of recorded sins, marking them all out with the blood of the Lamb of God.”
“But,” asked Emma, “will it not make the believer very sad and sorrowful on that day to see such an awful record of sins? It will be enough, surely, to bring floods of tears to his eyes.”
“I do not wonder at your saying so, my dear; but I think the thought of his sins will be lost in a still more wondrous and amazing one—I mean in thinking of the work of Jesus, that could take so many sins away, making them all forgiven and forgotten, and blotted out for ever.”
“Oh that my name, dear grandmamma, were safely written there! I feel as if I never could be for another hour happy or joyful until I felt sure that my name was in the Book of Life!”
“You have, my dear child, all the assurance necessary, if you are now believing in the Lord Jesus—trusting in His merits—seeking to love Him—to do what He commands—and avoid what displeases Him. Of such He says (Rev. iii. 5), ‘I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before my Father and before His angels.’”
“But tell me further,” said Emma, “how will the work of judgment proceed?”
“Jesus, my child, after the books have been opened, and the vast multitude have been brought before Him, will go on to pronounce sentence upon each. It will be a solemn scene. We read that ‘He will |The Awards.| separate the righteous from the wicked as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats.’ In this world the good and the bad, the ‘tares and the wheat,’ are mixed up together. We cannot tell the holy from the unholy; but Jesus knows them all; and on that day He will parcel all mankind into these two great classes. In one or other every human being must be placed.”
“On whom will He pronounce sentence first?” inquired Emma.
“He will address the righteous first,” said her grandmother. “It will not, indeed, be with them a day of wrath. Believers, at the time of their justification (as I explained to you on a former evening), were dismissed with the sentence of ‘not guilty’ pronounced upon them. They are brought before God’s throne, that there they may be ‘openly acknowledged’—receive a public acquittal before men and angels—and listen to that happy, happy sentence, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
“I can well imagine their joy,” said Emma; “but what next?”
“It will be a sadly different scene, my child. Let the words of Jesus himself tell you of it—you will find them in the 25th chapter of Matthew, 41st verse.”
Emma again turned to the passage, and read, “Then shall He say also to them on the left hand, Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
“After this,” continued the aged lady, “we read no more about the doings of that great day. The court is dissolved—the trial over. We see the golden gates of heaven open to receive happy saints and angels; and the miserable wicked sink down to the regions of despair! This solemn day terminates the kingdom of grace on earth. The kingdom of glory is then completed. The elect are gathered into it from the four quarters of heaven. They ‘enter into the joy of their Lord.’ But this I must reserve speaking to you about, if God spare me, till another Sabbath.”