Yet for
centuries the Church has sung its terrible _Dies Irae_, has clothed the
judgment seat with thunder, has put into the hands of Jesus bolts of
flame, and has applauded and enthroned in His sanctuaries such
pictorial blasphemies as Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, which
represents Jesus as an angry Hercules, and even gratifies the private
spite of the artist by overwhelming in a sea of fire one who had
offered him a personal affront.
Blasphemy indeed, and falsehood too; for the second thing we find is
that the one principle which governs the entire vision of Jesus is that
Love judges, and that it is by Love that men are tested. The men and
women of loving disposition, who have wrought many little acts of
kindness which were to them so natural and simple that they do not so
much as recollect them, find themselves mysteriously selected for
infinite rewards. The men and women of opposite disposition, in spite
of all their outward rectitude of behaviour, find themselves numbered
with the goats. A cup of cold water given to a child, a meal bestowed
upon a beggar, a garment shared with the naked--these things purchase
heaven. One who Himself had been thirsty, hungry, and naked, judges
their worth, and He judges by His own remembered need. It is love
alone that is divine, love alone that prepares the soul for divine
felicity.
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