"When the thunder-peal comes, it will be too late to warn. The lightning will have come first, shrivelling the earth like a heap of dry grass, and heaven like a roll of old parchments, leaving you alone with your Judge; all the world there, and each one as much alone with Him as if no one else were there, seen through, searched through, scorched through with one gleam of the eyes that are as a flame of fire.
"Before you the Judge, behind you the flames. The Judge so terrible that the wicked will rush backward from Him into the fire rather than meet those eyes again, those eyes which are as a flame of fire searching and burning through and through.
"And what do they search? You, for sin. What will they burn? You, with your sin, if you will not give up the sin."
And then he laid bare sin after sin—avarice, evil-speaking, wrongs wrought, wrongs unforgiven, injustice, envy, unmercifulness, pride, selfishness in all its disguises—until heart after heart felt itself seen through and laid bare.
Then turning and pointing to the great Crucifix above them he said,—
"Not one of you, not one of us but has helped to weave that crown, to drive in those nails, to pierce that heart.
"Repent, for He is at hand.
"'Apparebit repentina.' Suddenly and so soon."
And then suddenly the penetrating voice ceased, and there was a great hush, broken now and then by a sob, as, high above them, catching the last rays of the wintry sun, the sacred bowed Head, and the outstretched hands, rose lifted up on high.
And when the hush began to break up again into separate movement, and the voice which had bound the multitude into unity had ceased for some minutes, and one and another turned their eyes again towards the pulpit, it was empty.