lifting itself up into the blue, it feels within it the pressure of long confined forces, gets its direction, and then moves swiftly out into the free and open air. But this period of trying to adjust itself to its new conditions, of passing from one state to another, is one of great pain.

The experiment of free government which we are making in America is a more difficult thing than the conduct of government in Europe. There society is fixed and formal; things go by the laws of precedent and custom; things have been as they are for so many hundred years that life in the midst of those fixed and formal conditions becomes an external, automatic thing. But here, in a government of the people, for the people, by the people, each of us is a legislator, each of us is a possible executive of the law. Thus our experiment is liable to those variations, to those errors and mistakes which free life always experiences when it undertakes to live by thought and principle instead of by form and by rule.

The difference between Catholicism and Protestantism lies largely in this; that in one a man depends upon the voice of the church, and in the other he listens to the voice of the soul. Catholicism, old, wise, full of precedent and beautiful ceremony and form, requires a certain automatic obedience which is simple. Protestantism throws one in upon the soul itself to listen and to obey. Conduct is complex and is accompanied always with eccentricities of action and with erratic thinking. In the one you have the dependence upon an external voice and an external conscience; in the other, you have the free soul assuming obligations, and, obeying them, growing stronger. Therefore liberty and reform always · follow along the lines of the protestant movement, while content with things as they are, pity, comfort, the amelioration of conditions, but rarely the reform of them, follows along the line of the catholic movement.

In 1835 to 1840, when the movement of which Emerson was the seer and Theodore Parker was the preacher, was set up in New England, men on every side were intoxicated by the new principles of life which were suddenly revealed to them. It was as if they were "drunk with new wine." To look within, to study from within, to act from within, produced the strangest varieties of thought and eccentricities of conduct. But the sane mind of Emerson, seeing the truth and acting upon it, held itself level without variation in the midst of all these clamors and cries about him, emerging from it always strong, always true, always faithful.

The point I wish to make is this: We are not to think that in assuming a religion of self-respect, in going into the soul for our voices, our visions and our commandments, we are, therefore, absolving ourselves from obligations and evading responsibilities. On the contrary, I have to say that this habit, if it is once set up, this privilege, if we so recognize it, carries with it yet heavier responsibilities and finer obligations. It necessitates a more attent listening to the voices of the spirit, and a quick and instant obedience to the revelations which are made within.

I propose to show this to you from this word of Paul's: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." Nothing is more profitable than to take an old and smoothly worn text, which common consent has received at a certain value, and to show the heart of truth that lies in it; the wonderful God-truth which we have so often misapprehended. We must all be made manifest, every secret thought and motive, before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body; not a punishment for the things done, not a reward for the things done,

but we must receive the things themselves that are done there. Now, most of our thinking upon the results of our actions is this, that a certain course of action will be rewarded and another course of action will be punished. Let us see. Suppose a man commits murder out of passion. The natural consequence of that is a certain state of mind which makes possible another murder. A habit of uncontrolled passion is the result of passionate murder. A man is liable to do it again. That is the consequence of his action-not a punishment, but a natural consequence. The punishment, the natural punishment that goes along with theft, is a state of mind in which one no longer recognizes the distinction between mine and thine. The power of moral distinction is lost, and a sense of obligation to observe the rights of property is lost. A man that steals is receiving the things done in his body. A state or condition of nature is set up in him by which he does that thing again, and keeps doing it until he is checked. On the contrary, the result of all right action is power to do another right action, the state or condition of mind out of which right action proceeds; what we may call the cultivation or development of the moral nature in that man. Thus we re

ceive the things done in the body-not as punishments or as rewards, but as consequences that flow out of the nature of the acts, and its reaction upon the mind that produces them, "according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

The word, the judgment seat of Christ, calls up to your mind a certain idea. At once, you mentally picture, something like that which is portrayed in that great picture of Michael Angelo's in the Sistine Chapel. of Rome. There the Christ sits in judgment; all kinds and conditions of people meet before him; the charge is made, the books are open, the record of a man's life

is seen. He is then sent out into punishment or into reward. In that terrible picture of Michael Angelo's, painted by a master of art, but by a man whose mind was so clouded by disappointment that he could not see the truth about the matter, Christ sits like Jupiter Tonans upon a cloud, so fierce of visage, so denunciatory of voice, that his mother pleads with him in pity for pardon for those whom he is now sentencing. The figure in our minds has come to us through long years of reception on the part of the Christian church. I wish now to examine it in the light of this text, and in the light of a better thought. The word itself, “judgment seat," is the old Roman word "bema." Whenever the army made a camp, in the midst of the Pretorian guards the general, the consul, or commanding officer, set up a judgment seat, or bema, where he listened to and decided upon all causes that were brought before him. That is, he tried to do justice, according to Roman ideas of justice, and to disentangle the vexed questions which were presented for his consideration. In the old basilicas of Rome the bema, or judgment seat, was placed where some officer properly appointed should listen to various causes. Now, Rome has given to the world its social organization. The contribution which the Roman mind has made to civilization, has been our present idea of government by law. Among oriental peoples, government was by caprice and by favor. The judge, or cadi, sat in the market place and heard every case, and then decided in favor of or against the man. He made a swift personal judgment. No oriental peoples have had a body of social law by which a man might be judged, and in accordance with which he might be sentenced or rewarded. But Roman law set up in the world the judgment seat-the court of justice. Rome's laws were written upon its tables. The poorest man might appeal to Cæsar for justice.

Paul could say, "I appeal to Cæsar's judgment seat," and the whole force of the world could not break the power of that appeal. Wherever the Roman army went, there went Roman justice, the Roman lawyer, and the Roman law. The Pandects of Justinian underlie our present law, as the great granite foundations underlie our earth. Rome introduced justice into the conquered provinces. Cicero could make his terrible complaint against Verres. Clodius, a prince, could be brought to the judgment seat and condemned. No man so great but what he must appear before that judgment seat, if the humblest man that he had defrauded or oppressed brought a charge against him. That was the magnificent contribution of Rome to this world; our modern idea of government by law of justice.

Paul knew this. He himself had had occasion to appeal to Cæsar; he knew the justice with which Roman law was administered. And so he uses it as an illustration: "We must all appear before the court of justice, the judgment seat of Christ." We all must give an account of the things done in the body, and receive the consequences of these acts. He used it as an illustration, understand. He wanted to make them see that we were spiritually accountable for every thought and word. And this thought of moral accountability is one of the greatest things we can conceive of. Emanuel Kant, the great philosopher, said, "There are two things that fill me with awe-the stars that move without haste and without rest, and the sense of moral accountability that is in man. The lesson, then, that Paul wishes to teach is this-the accountability of the soul for its action and for its thought to the great Master, Christ.

Now, an illustration is not the truth itself, but it is an attempt to explain the truth. If we lose sight of this and lift an illustration up as if it were an awful