Christian saints -- India -- Romances; Gautama Buddha -- Legends -- Adaptations; Princes -- India -- Romances
"Such joys and such bliss shall the righteous obtain, but they that
have denied the only true God and not known their Maker and Creator,
but have worshipped foul devils, and rendered homage to dumb idols, and
loved the pleasures of this vain world, and, like swine, wallowed in
the mire of sinful lusts, and made their lives a headquarters for all
wickedness, shall stand naked and laid bare, downright ashamed and
downcast, pitiable in appearance and in fact, set forth for a reproach
to all creation. All their life in word, deed and thought shall come
before their faces. Then, after this bitter disgrace and unbearable
reproach, shall they be sentenced to the unquenchable and light-less
fire of Gehenna, unto the outer darkness, the gnashing of teeth and the
venomous worm. This is their portion, this their lot, in the which
they shall dwell together in punishment for endless ages, because they
rejected the good things offered them in promise, and, for the sake of
the pleasure of sin for a season, made choice of eternal punishment.
For these reasons--to obtain that unspeakable bliss, to enjoy that
ineffable glory, to equal the Angels in splendour, and to stand with
boldness before the good and most sweetest Lord, to escape those bitter
and unending punishments and that galling shame--time after time, were
it not worth men's while to sacrifice their riches and bodies, nay,
even their very lives? Who is so cowardly, who so foolish, as not to
endure a thousand temporal deaths, to escape eternal and everlasting
death, and to inherit life, blissful and imperishable, and to shine in
the light of the blessed and life-giving Trinity?"
XXVI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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