truth, but sometimes recall it to our minds; it is quite certain that we shall have to give an account of our whole lives to the Lord of heaven and earth, and yet you dare to amuse and enjoy yourself with the vain children of the world! And you, my tongue, dare to utter injurious words against this great Lord! And you, my mind, do not hesitate to pollute yourself with foul thoughts, and to take a wilful pleasure in sinful desires! Ah, think of this and weigh it well: we must render an account one day to the Lord of heaven and earth! O my God, what shall I do? “What shall I do?” exclaimed the steward in the Gospel, when his lord called him to account. “To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed;” I will make friends for myself, “that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.”[1] Ah, that resolution shall come too late for me on the day of judgment, for then there shall be no time left to amend my faults. Therefore I will do it now since I still have time! I will blot out my wicked works by true repentance, and this very day I will begin to multiply my good works by serving God zealously, so that when the Judge shall ask me concerning the former I may be able to say to Him: I have already atoned to Thee and paid Thee for them; and that with regard to the latter I may say with truth: I have done them as well as I knew how, and now I expect my reward. My dear brethren, if the mere question put to the accused on the day of judgment shall be so difficult to answer even for the just, how will the sinner be able to bear the shame and confusion that shall fall to his lot? For how and where shall this examination take place? Before the whole world. Oh, what a disgrace! as we shall see in the
Second Part.
The sinner shall hear his crimes called out before the whol world. Now, my dear brethren, I bring you in thought into an amphitheatre infinitely greater and vaster than any that the Romans and heathens ever saw here in Treves. Imagine that you see above in the clouds Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead, seated on a throne of awful majesty, surrounded by countless armies of angels, as the Prophet foretold: “Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him.”[2] Beside Him stands
