Matthew 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. Such is the solemn sentence which Scripture has inscribed on the curtain which hangs clown before the judgment seat. The secrets of the tribunal are guarded, and yet a finger points which seems to say, "Beyond, in this direction, behind this veil, things are different from what you will have looked for." Suppose, that any supernatural judge should appear in the world now, and it is evident that the scene he would create would be one to startle us; we should not soon be used to it; it would look strange; it would shock and appal; and that from no other cause than simply its reductions; that it presented characters stripped bare, denuded of what was irrelevant to goodness, and only with their moral substance left. The judge would take no cognisance of a rich imagination, power of language, poetical gifts, anal the like, in themselves, as parts of goodness, any more than he would of riches and prosperity; and the moral residuum left would appear perhaps a bare result. The first look of Divine justice would strike us as injustice; it would be too pure justice for us; we should be long in reconciling ourselves to it. Justice would appear, like the painter's gaunt skeleton of emblematic meaning, to be stalking through the world, smiting with attenuation luxuriating forms of virtue. Forms, changed from what we knew, would meet us, strange unaccustomed forms, and we should have to ask them who they were: "You were flourishing but a short while ago, what has happened to you now?" And the answer, if it spoke the truth, would be — "Nothing, except that now, much which lately counted as goodness, counts as such no longer; we are tried by a new moral measure, out of which we issue different men; gifts which have figured as goodness remain as gifts, but cease to be goodness." Thus would the large sweep made of human canonisations act like blight or volcanic fire upon some rich landscape, converting the luxury of nature into a dried-up scene of bare stems and scorched vegetation. (J. B. Mozeley, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.WEB: So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen." |
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