THE CONSCIENCE AND FUTURE JUDGMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 178, 25 August 1876, Page 6

THE CONSCIENCE AND FUTURE JUDGMENT.

I sat alone with my conscience, In a place where Time had ceased, And we talked of my former living In the land where the yeai's increased ; And I felt I should hare to answer The question it put to me, And to face the answer andiquestion Throughout an eternity. The ghosts of forgotten actions Came floating before my sight, And things that I thought were dead things "Were alive with a terrible might. And the vision of all my past life Was an awful thing to face — Alone with my conscience sitting In that solemnly silent place. And I thought of a far-away warning, Of a soriow that was to be mine, In a land that was then in the future, Bub now is the present time. And I thought of my former thinking Of the judgment day to be, But sitting alone with my conscieace Seemed judgment enough to me. And I wondered if there was a future To this land beyond the graye — But no one gave me an answer, And no one came to save. Then I felt that the future was present, And the present would never go by, For it was but the thought of my past life Grown into eternity. Then I woke from my titnely dreaming, And the vision passed away, And I knew that the far-away warning Was a warning of yesterday. And I pray that I may not forget it, In this land before the grave, That I may not cry in the future, And no one come to save. And so I have learnt a lessou Which I ought to have known before, And which, though I learnt it dreaming, I hope to forget no more. So I sit alone with my conscience In the place where the years increase, And I try to remember the future lv the land where the time will cease. And I know of the future judgment, How dreadful so'cr it be, That to sit alone with my conscience Will be judgment enough for me. — ' London Spectator.'