Then there is a visible parable, showing a marketplace in some wicked capital, neither Babylon, Tyre, nor Nineveh, but all of them in essential character.  First come spectacles of rejoicing, cruelty, and waste.  Then from Heaven descend flood and fire, brimstone and lightning.  It is like the judgment of the Cities of the Plain.  Just before the overthrow, the line is projected upon the screen:  “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.”  Then the heavenly host becomes gradually visible upon the air, marching toward the audience, almost crossing the footlights, and blowing their solemn trumpets.  With this picture the line is given us to read:  “Our God is marching on.”  This host appears in the photoplay as often as the refrain sweeps into the poem.  The celestial company, its imperceptible emergence, its spiritual power when in the ascendant, is a thing never to be forgotten, a tableau that proves the motion picture a great religious instrument.

Then comes a procession indeed.  It is as though the audience were standing at the side of the throne at Doomsday looking down the hill of Zion toward the little earth.  There is a line of those who are to be judged, leaders from the beginning of history, barbarians with their crude weapons, classic characters, Caesar and his rivals for fame; mediaeval figures including Dante meditating; later figures, Richelieu, Napoleon.  Many people march toward the strange glorifying eye of the camera, growing larger than men, filling the entire field of vision, disappearing when they are almost upon us.  The audience weighs the worth of their work to the world as the men themselves with downcast eyes seem to be doing also.  The most thrilling figure is Tolstoi in his peasant smock, coming after the bitter egotists and conquerors. (The impersonation is by Edward Thomas.) I shall never forget that presence marching up to the throne invisible with bowed head.  This procession is to illustrate the line:  “He is sifting out the hearts of men before his Judgment Seat.”  Later Lincoln is pictured on the steps of the White House.  It is a quaint tableau, in the spirit of the old-fashioned Rogers group.  Yet it is masterful for all that.  Lincoln is taking the chains from a cowering slave.  This tableau is to illustrate the line:  “Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel.”  Now it is the end of the series of visions.  It is morning in Mrs. Howe’s room.  She rises.  She is filled with wonder to find the poem on her table.

Written to the rousing glory-tune of John Brown’s Body the song goes over the North like wildfire.  The far-off home of the widow is shown.  She and the boy read the famous chant in the morning news column.  She takes the old sword from the wall.  She gives it to her son and sends him to enlist with her blessing.  In the next picture Lincoln and Mrs. Howe are looking out of the window where was once the idle recruiting tent.  A new army is pouring by, singing the words that have rallied the nation.  Ritualistic birth and death have been discussed.  This film might be said to illustrate ritualistic birth, death, and resurrection.