be done!"_

_So, when the last time, from His Mother's home
The Son passed out, no choir of angels came,
As long before at Bethlehem they had come,
To comfort Him upon the road of shame.
Alone He went, and stopped a little space,
As one overburdened, stopped to look again
Upon His Mother's pleading form and face,
And wept for her, that she should know this pain.
Then, silently, He faced the setting sun
And said, "Oh, Father, let Thy will be done!"_

VII

LOVE AND JUDGMENT

Just as Jesus called in the vision of the unseen world to redress the
balance of the visible world, when He said that there was more joy in
heaven over the penitent sinner than over ninety and nine just men who
needed no repentance, so in His final addresses to His followers He
again discloses the unseen world. These final addresses deal with the
tremendous problem of a future judgment. Over no problem does the
human mind hover with such breathless interest, such unfeigned alarm.
But with characteristic perversity the elements in Christ's vision of
the judgment on which men have seized most tenaciously, are precisely
those elements which are least intelligible, and least capable of
strict definition. It is around the word "eternal" and the nature of
the punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centuries
have centred. Yet the really central point of both the vision and the
teaching, is not here at all; and it is only man's habitual love of
enigma which can explain the passion with which men have opposed one
another over the interpretation of words and phrases which must always
remain enigmatic.

Let us turn to Christ's vision of the Judgment, as recorded by St.
Matthew, and what do we find? First that the same Son of Man, whose
whole life was an exposition of the law of love, is Himself the final
judge of men and nations. "_The Son of Man shall sit on the throne of
His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He
shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the
sheep from the goats_." No alien judge, observe, unacquainted with the
nature of man, but one who knows human life so thoroughly that He is
the representative man--"the Son of Man"; and although He is now the
Judge, yet He still calls Himself by the tender name of the Shepherd.
The tribunal is therefore the tribunal of love, and the court is the
court of love. He who shall judge mankind i