The issues of the Judgment may be summed up in a single
word--separation: "He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the
goats on the left." Stated thus broadly, the issue of the Judgment
satisfies our sense of justice. If there is to be judgment at all,
separation must be the outcome. And in that separation is vindicated one
of man's most deep-seated convictions. As right is right and wrong is
wrong, and right and wrong are not the same, so neither can their issues
be the same. "We have a robust common-sense of morality which refuses to
believe that it does not matter whether a man has lived like the Apostle
Paul or the Emperor Nero." We can never crush out the conviction that
there must be one place for St. John, who was Jesus' friend, and another
for Judas Iscariot, who was His betrayer."[58] This must be,
"Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is."
We must be sure that God has a right hand and a left, that good and evil
are distinct, and will for ever remain so, that each will go to his own
place, the place for which he is prepared, for which he has prepared
himself, or our day would be turned into night and our whole life put to
confusion.
So far, Christ's words present no difficulty. To many, however, it is a
serious perplexity to find that Christ speaks of but two classes into
which by the Judgment men are divided. There are the sheep and the
goats, the good and the bad, and there are no others. To us it seems
impossible to divide men thus. They are not, we think, good _or_ bad,
but good _and_ bad. "I can understand," some one has said, "what is to
become of the sheep, and I can understand what is to become of the
goats, but how are the alpacas to be dealt with?"[59] The alpaca, it
should be said, is an animal possessing some of the characteristics both
of the sheep and the goat, and the meaning of the question is, of
course, what is to become of that vast middle class in whose lives
sometimes good and sometimes evil seems to rule?
Now it is a remarkable fact that Scripture knows nothing of any such
middle class. Some men it calls good, others it calls evil, but it has
no middle term. Note, _e.g._, this typical contrast from the Book of
Proverbs: "The path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, that
shineth more and more unto the noon-tide of the day. The way of the
wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble." Or listen to
Peter's question: "If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the
ungodly and sinner appear?" In both instances the assumption is the
same: there, on the one hand, are the righteous; and there, on the
other, are the wicked; and beside these there are no others. The same
classification is constant throughout the teaching of Jesus. He speaks
of two gates, and two ways, and two ends. There are the guests who
accept the King's invitation and sit down in His banqueting hall, and
there are those who refuse it and remain without. In the parable of the
net full of fishes the good are gathered into vessels, but the bad are
cast away. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; then
the wheat is gathered into the barn, and the tares are cast into the
fire. The sheep are set on the right hand, and the goats on the left
hand; and there is no hint or suggestion that any other kind of
classification is necessary in order that all men may be truly and
justly dealt with.
All this may seem very arbitrary and impossible until we remember that
the classification is not ours but God's. It is not we who have to
divide men, setting one on the right hand and another on the left; that
is God's work; and it is well to remind ourselves that He invites none
of us to share His judgment-throne with Him, or, by any verdict of ours,
to anticipate the findings of the last great day. And because to us such
a division is impossible, it does not therefore follow that it should be
so to Him before whom all hearts are open and all desires known. _We_
cannot separate men thus because human character is so complex. But
complexity is a relative term; it depends on the eyes which behold it;
and our naming a thing complex may be but another way of declaring our
ignorance concerning it. We all know how a character, a life, a course
of events, which, on first view, seemed but a tangled, twisted skein, on
closer acquaintance often smooths itself out into perfect simplicity.
And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so with
human life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of God. Life is
like a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreading
branches. Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch and
foliage springs from a single root. To us the mystery is baffling in its
complexity: we have looked at the branches. To God it is simple, clear:
He sees the hidden root from which it springs. So that, to go back to
our former illustration, it is only our ignorance which compels us to
speak of "alpacas" in the moral world. To perfect knowledge they will
prove to be, as Mr. Selby says, either slightly-disguised sheep or
slightly-disguised goats.
There is a further fact also to be taken into account in considering
Christ's two-fold classification. Since it is the work of infinite
knowledge and justice it will have regard to all the facts of our life.
God looks not only at the narrow present, but back into the past, and
forward into the future. He marks the trend of the life, the bent and
bias of the soul. He chalks down no line saying, "Reach this or you are
undone for ever." He sets up no absolute standard to which if a man
attain he is a saint, or falling short of which he is a sinner. And when
He calls one man righteous and another wicked, He means very much more
than that one has done so many good deeds, and another so many evil
deeds; "righteous" and "wicked" describe what each is in himself, what
each will decisively reveal himself to be, when present tendencies have
fully worked themselves out. There are two twilights, the twilight of
evening and the twilight of morning; and therefore God's question to us
is not, how much light have we? but, which way do we face? to the night
or to the day? Not "What art thou?" but "What wilt thou?" is the supreme
question; it is the answer to this which sets some on the right hand and
some on the left.
* * * * *
Let us close as we began, remembering that it is Christ who is to be our
Judge. Therefore will the judgment be according to perfect truth. We
know how He judged men when He was here on earth--without respect of
persons, undeceived by appearances, seeing things always as they are,
calling them always by their true names. And such will His judgment be
hereafter. On the walls of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is a
group of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit before
Osiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds a
shepherd's crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales of
justice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whose
lot the deity is called to decide. The pictured symbol is a dim
foreshadowing of that perfect judgment which He who looketh not at the
outward appearance but at the heart will one day pass on all the lives
of men. And yet an apostle has dared to write of "boldness in the day of
Judgment"! Surely St. John is very bold; yet was his boldness
well-based. He remembered the saying of his own Gospel: "The Father hath
given all judgment unto the Son ... because He is the Son of Man." Yes;
He who will come to be our Judge is He who once for us men, and for our
salvation, came down from heaven, and was made man, and upon the Cross
did suffer death for our redemption. Herein is the secret of the
"boldness" of the redeemed.
"Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in that great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame."
* * * * *