Page 138 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

it avail then to have been a great emperor, a great general,
a marvellous inventor, the most learned of the learned? All
were as one before the judgement seat of God. He would re-
ward the good and punish the wicked. One single instant
was enough for the trial of a man’s soul. One single instant
after the body’s death, the soul had been weighed in the bal-
ance. The particular judgement was over and the soul had
passed to the abode of bliss or to the prison of purgatory or
had been hurled howling into hell.
Nor was that all. God’s justice had still to be vindicat-
ed before men: after the particular there still remained the
general judgement. The last day had come. The doomsday
was at hand. The stars of heaven were falling upon the earth
like the figs cast by the fig-tree which the wind has shaken.
The sun, the great luminary of the universe, had become
as sackcloth of hair. The moon was blood-red. The firma-
ment was as a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the
prince of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible
against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot on
the land he blew from the archangelical trumpet the brazen
death of time. The three blasts of the angel filled all the uni-
verse. Time is, time was, but time shall be no more. At the
last blast the souls of universal humanity throng towards
the valley of Jehoshaphat, rich and poor, gentle and simple,
wise and foolish, good and wicked. The soul of every human
being that has ever existed, the souls of all those who shall
yet be born, all the sons and daughters of Adam, all are as-
sembled on that supreme day. And lo, the supreme judge is
coming! No longer the lowly Lamb of God, no longer the

138 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man