Benozzo Gozzoli; Magi Chapel (detail)

“WE know, each one of us, that our lives are bound up with the lives of others in a most wonderful way, and that the actual result and outcome of all is, in each case, linked by a thousand ties with the lives of those across whom we have come in our path through this world. So that it may be said that God has arranged each single life of all His millions of children, not for itself alone, but with endless and countless relations and influences produced on others or received from others, and all this is an exercise of His wisdom most beautiful, most perfect, and most worthy of study and thankfulness. And the history of the whole race is the history of each single soul combined and connected with that of all other souls. Here is a marvel and a wonder far surpassing anything that can be found in the material universe, because souls are free, and the elements are not free. All this is to be revealed to us at the Last Day, hence we may truly say that we are in a certain sense to judge, not only one another, as we shall do when the whole of the secrets of each single heart are made manifest to all; not only angels, for, as St. Paul says, we shall then know not merely the whole history of men like ourselves, but that also of the other spiritual beings who are so like us in nature — nay even the works and doings of God Himself will be made manifest to us for His glory and for our instruction, to furnish us with matter for eternal praise of Him in His dealings with His creatures, and for the perfect justification of Him before the eyes of the whole world.”

— Henry James Coleridge, The Return of the King: Discourses on the Latter Days, 1894 (p. 283)

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