he day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye
shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty
years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened.
If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of
judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judgment--every day is a Dies
Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its west. Think
you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened? It waits
at the doors of your houses--it waits at the corners of your streets; we
are in the midst of judgment--the insects that we crush are our
judges--the moments we fret away are our judges--the elements that feed
us, judge, as they minister--and the pleasures that deceive us, judge, as
they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the
form of them, if indeed those lives are _Not_ as a vapor, and do _Not_
vanish away.

"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very
quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us
are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we
are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is
a mortal one--we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually
talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the
_weight_ of it--as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to
be--crucified upon. "They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the
affections and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in time of national
distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of
humanity--none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put
themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off
their footman's coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that
they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds--yes, and life, if
need be? Life!--some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as
we have made it. But "_station_ in Life,"--how many of us are ready to
quit _that_? Is it not always the great objection, where there is question
of finding something useful to do--"We cannot leave our stations in Life"?

Those of us who really cannot--that is to say, who can only maintain
themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have already
something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that they do it
honestly a