"Gabriel Godlike, what say you to this accusation?" exclaimed the judge.
A sardonic smile agitated the lips of the statesman, but he made no reply in words. At the same time, despite his attempt to meet the accusation with a sneer, its words rung in his very soul, and especially the closing clause, "without faith in God, without love to his race."
Gabriel's head sank slowly on his breast, and his down-drawn brows hid his eyes from the light. He was thinking of other years; of the promise of his young manhood; of the dark realities of his maturer years. The judge spoke again.
"Gabriel Godlike, you are silent. You have no reply. In your own soul and before Heaven, you know that every word of the accusation is true. You cannot deny it. Your own soul and conscience convict you."
He paused; again the mocking sneer crossed Gabriel's lips, but a crowd of emotions were busy at his heart. The judge proceeded, in a measured tone. Every word fell distinctly upon the statesman's unwilling ears:
"Gabriel Godlike, you may smile at the idea of being held accountable to God and man, for the use which you have made of your talents in the last forty years, but there will come an hour when History will pass its judgment upon you; there will come an hour when God will demand of you the intellect which he has intrusted to your care. That hour will come. Then, what will be your answer to Almighty God? 'Lord, thou didst intrust me with superior intellect, to be used for the good of my brothers of the human family; and after a life of sixty years, I can truly say, I have never once used that intellect for the elevation of mankind, and have never once failed, when appetite or ambition tempted, to squander it in the basest lusts.' What a record will this be for history; what an answer to be rendered to Almighty God!
"Gabriel Godlike! Great men are placed upon earth, as the prophets and apostles of the poor. It is their vocation to speak the wrongs which the poor suffer, but are unable to tell; it is their mission to find the deepest thought which God has implanted in the breast of the age, and to carry that thought into action, or die. What has been the thought struggling in the bosom of the last fifty years? A thought vast as the providence of God, which, whether called by the name of Social Progress, or Social Re-organization, or by whatsoever name, still looks forward to the day when social misery will be annihilated; when the civilization will no longer show itself only in the awful contrast of the few, immersed in superfluous wealth,—of the many, immersed in poverty, in crime, in despair; a day, when in truth, the gospel of the New Testament will no longer be the hollow echo of the sounding-board above the pulpit, but an every-day verity, carried with deeds along all the ways of life, and manifested in the physical comfort as well as the moral elevation of all men.
"Something like this has been the thought of the last fifty—yes, of the last hundred years. It was the secret heart of our own Revolution. It was the great truth, whose features you may read even beneath the blood-red waves of the French Revolution. And in the nineteenth century this thought has called into action legions of noble-hearted men, who have earnestly endeavored to carry it into action. It has had its confessors, its saints, its martyrs.
"Gabriel Godlike! In the course of your long career, what have you done to aid the development of this thought? Alas! alas! Look back upon your life! In all your career, not one brave blow for man—your brother—not one, not one! As a lawyer, the hired vassal of any wealthy villain, or class of villains; as a legislator, not a statesman, but always the paid special pleader of heartless monopoly and godless capital; as a man, your intellect always towers among the stars, while your moral character sinks beneath the kennel's mud! Such has been your life; such is the use to which you have bent your powers. Like the sublime egotist, Napoleon Bonaparte, you regarded the world as a world without a God, and mankind as the mere creatures of your pleasure and your sport. If the poor wretch, who, driven mad by hunger, steals a loaf of bread, is branded as a criminal, and adjudged to darkness and chains, by what name, Gabriel Godlike, shall we call you? what judgment shall we pronounce upon your head?"
The judge arose, and with his face shaded from the light, and his white hairs falling to his shoulders, he extended his hand toward the criminal.