I
fear I am myself among the wicked, for I found myself inevitably taking
their part, and asking for at least a little pity, some few regrets, and
not such a stern denunciatory spirit on the part of Him who had thought
us worth dying for. Around him stand grim saints, and, far beneath,
people are getting up sleepily out of their graves, not well knowing what
is about to happen; many of them, however, finding themselves clutched by
demons before they are half awake. It would be a very terrible picture
to one who should really see Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable
judge; but it seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be
represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to our religion to
believe him infinitely kinder and better towards us than we deserve. At
the last day--I presume, that is, in all future days, when we see
ourselves as we are--man's only inexorable judge will be himself, and the
punishment of his sins will be the perception of them.
In the lower corner of this great picture, at the right hand of the
spectator, is a hideous figure of a damned person, girdled about with a
serpent, the folds of which are carefully knotted between his thighs, so
as, at all events, to give no offence to decency.
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