  The issues of the Judgment may be summed up in a single word--separation: "He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." Stated thus broadly, the issue of the Judgment satisfies our sense of justice. If there is to be judgment at all, separation must be the outcome. And in that separation is vindicated one of man's most deep-seated convictions. As right is right and wrong is wrong, and right and wrong are not the same, so neither can their issues be the same. "We have a robust common-sense of morality which refuses to believe that it does not matter whether a man has lived like the Apostle Paul or the Emperor Nero." We can never crush out the conviction that there must be one place for St. John, who was Jesus' friend, and another for Judas Iscariot, who was His betrayer."[58] This must be,
We must be sure that God has a right hand and a left, that good and evil are distinct, and will for ever remain so, that each will go to his own place, the place for which he is prepared, for which he has prepared himself, or our day would be turned into night and our whole life put to confusion. So far, Christ's words present no difficulty. To many, however, it is a serious perplexity to find that Christ speaks of but two classes into which by the Judgment men are divided. There are the sheep and the goats, the good and the bad, and there are no others. To us it seems impossible to divide men thus. They are not, we think, good or bad, but good and bad. "I can understand," some one has said, "what is to become of the sheep, and I can understand what is to become of the goats, but how are the alpacas to be dealt with?"[59] The alpaca, it should be said, is an animal possessing some of the characteristics both of the sheep and the goat, and the meaning of the question is, of course, what is to become of that vast middle class in whose lives sometimes good and sometimes evil seems to rule? Now it is a remarkable fact that Scripture knows nothing of any such middle class. Some men it calls good, others it calls evil, but it has no middle term. Note, e.g., this typical contrast from the Book of Proverbs: "The path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the noon-tide of the day. The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble." Or listen to Peter's question: "If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?" In both instances the assumption is the same: there, on the one hand, are the righteous; and there, on the other, are the wicked; and beside these there are no others. The same classification is constant throughout the teaching of Jesus. He speaks of two gates, and two ways, and two ends. There are the guests who accept the King's invitation and sit down in His banqueting hall, and there are those who refuse it and remain without. In the parable of the net full of fishes the good are gathered into vessels, but the bad are cast away. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; then the wheat is gathered into the barn, and the tares are cast into the fire. The sheep are set on the right hand, and the goats on the left hand; and there is no hint or suggestion that any other kind of classification is necessary in order that all men may be truly and justly dealt with. All this may seem very arbitrary and impossible until we remember that the classification is not ours but God's. It is not we who have to divide men, setting one on the right hand and another on the left; that is God's work; and it is well to remind ourselves that He invites none of us to share His judgment-throne with Him, or, by any verdict of ours, to anticipate the findings of the last great day. And because to us such a division is impossible, it does not therefore follow that it should be so to Him before whom all hearts are open and all desires known. We cannot separate men thus because human character is so complex. But complexity is a relative term; it depends on the eyes which behold it; and our naming a thing complex may be but another way of declaring our ignorance concerning it. We all know how a character, a life, a course of events, which, on first view, seemed but a tangled, twisted skein, on closer acquaintance often smooths itself out into perfect simplicity. And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so with human life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of God. Life is like a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreading branches. Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch and foliage springs from a single root. To us the mystery is baffling in its complexity: we have looked at the branches. To God it is simple, clear: He sees the hidden root from which it springs. So that, to go back to our former illustration, it is only our ignorance which compels us to speak of "alpacas" in the moral world. To perfect knowledge they will prove to be, as Mr. Selby says, either slightly-disguised sheep or slightly-disguised goats. There is a further fact also to be taken into account in considering Christ's two-fold classification. Since it is the work of infinite knowledge and justice it will have regard to all the facts of our life. God looks not only at the narrow present, but back into the past, and forward into the future. He marks the trend of the life, the bent and bias of the soul. He chalks down no line saying, "Reach this or you are undone for ever." He sets up no absolute standard to which if a man attain he is a saint, or falling short of which he is a sinner. And when He calls one man righteous and another wicked, He means very much more than that one has done so many good deeds, and another so many evil deeds; "righteous" and "wicked" describe what each is in himself, what each will decisively reveal himself to be, when present tendencies have fully worked themselves out. There are two twilights, the twilight of evening and the twilight of morning; and therefore God's question to us is not, how much light have we? but, which way do we face? to the night or to the day? Not "What art thou?" but "What wilt thou?" is the supreme question; it is the answer to this which sets some on the right hand and some on the left. Let us close as we began, remembering that it is Christ who is to be our Judge. Therefore will the judgment be according to perfect truth. We know how He judged men when He was here on earth--without respect of persons, undeceived by appearances, seeing things always as they are, calling them always by their true names. And such will His judgment be hereafter. On the walls of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is a group of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit before Osiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds a shepherd's crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales of justice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whose lot the deity is called to decide. The pictured symbol is a dim foreshadowing of that perfect judgment which He who looketh not at the outward appearance but at the heart will one day pass on all the lives of men. And yet an apostle has dared to write of "boldness in the day of Judgment"! Surely St. John is very bold; yet was his boldness well-based. He remembered the saying of his own Gospel: "The Father hath given all judgment unto the Son ... because He is the Son of Man." Yes; He who will come to be our Judge is He who once for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made man, and upon the Cross did suffer death for our redemption. Herein is the secret of the "boldness" of the redeemed.
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