The Day of Judgment

by Joseph Hocking

But this was all over now. The end of all things had come. His doom had been pronounced. What a ghastly mockery life was—and men talked about God! He, an innocent man, was about to end his days in the most shameful way imaginable because he had been found guilty of a crime of which he knew nothing. But at least he had saved his mother. There was something in that. No shadow of shame or disgrace rested upon her name. Whether her days were many or few, nothing evil could be associated with the life of his mother. How it all flashed back to him. That night in the cell, when she had told him her story, told him that the man who had sat in judgment upon him was his father and her husband! Then came that great day in the court, when Judge Bolitho had made his confession. How still people were. The court was almost as silent as the cell in which he now lay. After all, his father could not have been a villain. It is true he had steeled his heart against him even after that confession. Had he been right? He remembered the visit of Judge Bolitho on the evening of his confession; how he had pleaded with him; how he had sought his love. It is true he would explain nothing of the mysteries which he, Paul, desired to learn. He was dumb when he had questioned him concerning the shame in which Mary's name lay. Nevertheless he had to confess in his heart that his father had tried to do his duty by him and his mother.

He recalled the words which he had spoken to the chaplain who had visited him one day. He had told this man that if his father would confess his evil deeds and seek to make atonement, he might believe in God, in Providence. It was a poor thing to say after all. God, if there was a God, must not be judged by poor little paltry standards. The God Who made all the worlds, who controlled the infinite universe, Who was behind all things, before all things, in all things, through all things—that God must have ways beyond his poor little comprehension. But was there such a Being? Or was everything the result of a blind fate, a great mysterious something which was unknown and unknowable, a force that had no feeling, no thought, no care for the creatures who crawled upon the face of this tiny world?

Then the great Future stared him in the face. Was this life the end and the end-all? Could it be that he, who could think and feel, who had such infinite hope and longings and yearnings, would die when he left the body? After all, was not Epictetus, the old Greek slave, right when he said that the body was only something which he carried around with him, and that his soul was something eternal which the world could never touch. If that were so, there must be a great spiritual realm into which he had never entered.

He thought of the opening words of the Old Testament: "In the beginning God——" It was one of the most majestic sentences in the literature of the world, sublime, almost infinite in its grandeur. Then he remembered the words of Jesus. Years had passed since he had given attention to these things, yet the memory of the words he had learnt as a boy was with him now. What a wonderful story it was! What a Life, too! The mind of Jesus had pierced the night like stars. He had torn to pieces the flimsy sophistries of the age in which He had lived, and looked into the very heart of things. What a great compassion He had for the poor, how tender He was to the sinning. Yes, He understood, He understood. And what a death He had died, too. He might have escaped death, but He had died believing that by dying He would enrich, glorify the life of the world. In a sense it was illogical, but there was a deeper logic which he eventually saw. After all, it was the death of Jesus that made Him live in the minds and hearts of untold millions during nineteen centuries. According to the standards of man, His death was unjust, and He knew it to be unjust, but He never flinched or faltered. "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do," He had said when the ignorant rabble had railed at Him. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," He had said, and then gave up the ghost. It was wonderful!

In that hour Paul Stepaside realised that he had been less than an infant crying for the light, and with no language but a cry. He had shut out the light by a poor little conceit of his own. He had dared to judge life by paltry little standards. He had dared to say what was and what was not—he! He knew less than nothing!

After all, that which had embittered him more than anything else, that which he said had robbed him of his faith—even in that he had been proved to be wrong. It was a great thing his father had done. Of course he had sinned, of course his life had been unworthy. His treatment of his mother was the act of a dastardly coward—the base betrayal, the long absence, the marrying another woman—oh! it was all poor and mean and contemptible! Nothing but a coward, ay, a villain, could have done it. And yet there was something noble in his atonement. Of course sin must be followed by suffering and by hell. He saw that plain enough. He saw, too, that not only the sinner suffered, but others suffered. Yet who was he to judge? His father—a proud man, proud of his family name, proud of the position he had obtained, one of the highest in the realm of law—had, in face of a crowd hungry for sensation, eager to fasten upon any garbage of gossip which might come in its way, confessed the truth, even although that truth had made his name the subject of gossip for millions of tongues. Yes; there was something noble in it, and Paul felt his heart soften as he thought and remembered. Whatever else it had done, it had made his own fate easier to bear.

He thought of the look on Judge Bolitho's face as he came to his cell on the day of the confession, remembered the pleading tones: "Paul, my son, I want your forgiveness, your love."

Perhaps it was because his heart was so weighed down with grief, and his life was unutterably lonely, that he cried out like one whose life was filled with a great yearning: "Father, father!"

He heard a sound at the door of the cell. The warder entered, followed by the form of a woman. His heart gave a great bound.

"Mary!" he cried.