Who are those bright immortals near the throne, their faces partly turned toward each other as though about to sing? Oh, they are the Bethlehem chanters of the first Christmas night! Who are this other group standing so near the throne? They are the Saviour's especial bodyguard, which hovered over Him in the wilderness and administered to Him in the hour of martyrdom, and heaved away the rock of His sarcophagus, and escorted Him upward on Ascension Day, now appropriately escorting Him down. Divine glory flanked on both sides by angelic radiance.
But now lower your eye from the divine and angelic to the human. The entire human race is present. All nations, says my text. Before that time the American Republic, the English Government, the French Republic, all modern modes of government may be obliterated for something better; but all nations, whether dead or alive, will be brought up into that assembly. Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Greece and Rome as wide awake in that assembly as though they had never slumbered amid the dead nations. Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, and all the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, the twelfth century, the tenth century, the fourth century—all centuries present. Not one being that ever drew the breath of life but will be in that assembly.
No other audience a thousandth part as large. No other audience a millionth part as large. No human eye could look across it. Wing of albatross and falcon and eagle not strong enough to fly over it. A congregation, I verily believe, not assembled on any continent, because no continent would be large enough to hold it. But, as the Bible intimates, in the air. The law of gravitation unanchored, the world moved out of its place. As now sometimes on earth a great tent is spread for some great convention, so over that great audience of the judgment shall be lifted the blue canopy of the sky, and underneath it for floor the air made buoyant by the hand of Almighty God. An architecture of atmospheric galleries strong enough to hold up worlds. Surely the two arms of God's almightiness are two pillars strong enough to hold up any auditorium.
But that audience is not to remain in session long. Most audiences on earth after an hour or two adjourn. Sometimes in court-rooms an audience will tarry four or five hours, but then it adjourns. So this audience spoken of in the text will adjourn. My text says, "He will separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats."
"No," says my Universalist friend, "let them all stay together." But the text says, "He shall separate them." "No," say the kings of this world, "let men have their choice, and if they prefer monarchical institutions, let them go together, and if they prefer republican institutions, let them go together." "No," say the conventionalities of this world, "let all those who moved in what are called high circles go together, and all those who on earth moved in low circles go together. The rich together, the poor together, the wise together, the ignorant together." Ah! no. Do you not notice in that assembly the king is without his scepter, and the soldier without his uniform, and the bishop without his pontifical ring, and the millionaire without his certificates of stock, and the convict without his chain, and the beggar without his rags, and the illiterate without his bad orthography, and all of us without any distinction of earthly inequality? So I take it from that as well as from my text that the mere accident of position in this world will do nothing toward deciding the questions of that very great day.
"He will separate them as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats." The sheep, the cleanliest of creatures, here made a symbol of those who have all their sins washed away in the fountain of redeeming mercy. The goat, one of the filthiest of creatures, here a type of those who in the last judgment will be found never to have had any divine ablution. Division according to character. Not only character outside, but character inside. Character of heart, character of choice, character of allegiance, character of affection, character inside as well as character outside.
In many cases it will be a complete and immediate reversal of all earthly conditions. Some who in this world wore patched apparel will take on raiment lustrous as a summer noon. Some who occupied a palace will take a dungeon. Division regardless of all earthly caste, and some who were down will be up, and some who were up will be down. Oh, what a shattering of conventionalities! What an upheaval of all social rigidities, what a turning of the wheel of earthly condition, a thousand revolutions in a second! Division of all nations, of all ages, not by the figure 9, nor the figure 8, nor the figure 7, nor the figure 6, nor the figure 5, nor the figure 4; but by the figure 2.
Two! Two characters, two destinies, two estates, two dominions, two eternities, a tremendous, an all-comprehensive, an all-decisive, and everlasting two!
I sometimes think that the figure of the book that shall be opened allows us to forget the thing signified by the symbol. Where is the book-binder that could make a volume large enough to contain the names of all the people who have ever lived? Besides that, the calling of such a roll would take more than fifty years, more than a hundred years, and the judgment is to be consummated in less time than passes between sunrise and sunset. Ah! my friends, the leaves of that book of judgment are not made out of paper, but of memory. One leaf in every human heart. You have known persons who were near drowning, but they were afterward resuscitated, and they have told you that in the two or three minutes between the accident and the resuscitation, all their past life flashed before them—all they had ever thought, all they had ever done, all they had ever seen, in an instant came to them. The memory never loses anything. It is only a folded leaf. It is only a closed book.
Though you be an octogenarian, though you be a nonagenarian, all the thoughts and acts of your life are in your mind, whether you recall them now or not, just as Macaulay's history is in two volumes, although the volumes may be closed, and you can not see a word of them, and will not until they are opened. As in the case of the drowning man, the volume of memory was partly open, or the leaf partly unrolled; in the case of the judgment the entire book will be opened, so that everything will be displayed from preface to appendix.