Like their author, they are picturesque, original, and animated; a strange mixture of keen observation, of profound learning, and of simple credulity; filled with warm laudation of his friends, and passionate denunciation of his foes. Like his, their errors have long since been corrected, their information superseded, their love and hate alike extinguished. If I have succeeded in restoring to our remembrance and sympathy for a few moments a warm-hearted and impulsive man, whose bold and open character we cannot choose but love, and for whose bitter disappointment we cannot choose but feel, my object is accomplished. PARAGRAPHS ON THE PARABLES. III. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. 3. ITS PREVISIONS. THE appearance of the Revised Version of the New Testament offers special advantages for the study of this part of my subject, and induces me to again take up a task which had been too long laid aside. I mentioned before that this is the only symbolic narrative given by the Lord Jesus, which passes the bounds of the visible world, and offers any description of the great Hereafter. But, in doing this, it should be carefully noted, that the mode of description was exactly suited to the notions prevalent among His first hearers, and that, whatever lessons were conveyed, they were built upon their own theological conceptions as a house upon its foundations. And here the interesting, the important question will arise, how far was this parable a product of the mental condition of the times; or how far was it a new departure, sweeping up into the broad heaven of spiritual philosophy, as an eagle sails up from its native rock. In order to understand the scenery of this relation we should know what were the Jewish ideas on this subject, at the period in which it was given. The common notion was that over the flat plain of the earth was the firmament, a kind of arch, hollowed or beaten out, in which the sun and moon regularly moved, and in which the stars were set like jewels. Beneath these the clouds moved to and fro, but the blue firmament itself was opaque, that men could not see beyond it. Above this firmament were the heavens, seven in number, one above the other, and over all reigned Jehovah, who was regarded as holding there a magnificent court, where a number of celestial beings called Sons of God formed His everlasting guard and retinue. The Jews had also brought back from Babylonish captivity an elaborate theory as to the nether world. At some distance below the earth was, according to this theory, the place of the departed dead, divided into two regions, one below the other. The upper one was a place of comparative happiness, prepared for the descendants of Abraham, called the Garden of Eden or Paradise, and sometimes "Abraham's bosom." The lower one was the place of the wicked or the heathen, a scene of discomfort and comparative anguish, called "Hades," "the pit," and sometimes "the prison house." Beneath Hades, the place of the departed dead, was the place called in Hebrew, "Gehenna," or hell, by the application of the name of that valley ("Gin Hinnom "), in which human sacrifices were formerly offered to Moloch, and where, afterwards, fires were continually burning, and where everything refuse and abominable was cast. This Gehenna or hell was also divided into seven regions, one below the other, each of which was distinguished by a different kind of punishment, reserved for the children of darkness and disobedience. As to what bodies the dead inhabited in this region, nothing appears to have been known. The Jews at that period however seem to have had vague notions of an insubstantial phantom, being seen after death, apart from the natural body. This was the idea respecting the Saviour which struck the disciples with terror, when they beheld Him walking on the Sea of Galilee. The words are now given in the Revised Version, "they were troubled saying, 'It is an apparition,' and they cried out for fear."* In examining the mode in which the Lord made use of Jewish conceptions in His teaching, we are bound to note the remark of Professor Jowett, in reference to the manner in which He employed the Hebrew Scriptures. He says (in the work entitled "Essays and Reviews") "there is scarcely any reference to the Old Testament in the whole of the Gospels, and none in the Epistles, in which the meaning is not quickened or spiritualised." He continues that the Saviour " lift the old words into a new and higher power." If such was the case in reference to the Sacred Writings it is fair to ask whether the same treatment marked the apparent adoption of the religious beliefs of the Jews? came to The moral purpose of the parable we have already seen to be distinctly in advance of the age, and the people to whom it was first given. † And as the first point of difference between this account of the departed and the common Jewish belief, the persons mentioned are not described as mere apparitions or insubstantial phantoms, but as perfect human beings. in the full possession of their faculties and powers. The principle of identity is there, for the rich man recognises Lazarus, and the recognition is mutual. Father Abraham is also introduced as an active spiritual being, swift to detect character, and to pronounce the issues of judgement. It may be said that the patriarch appears here in a merely representative capacity, but in order to remove any doubt as to the real active life of the father of the faithful in a spiritual state of existence the Lord said to the Jews, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." The same fact was even more distinctly stated in the words in which He put the Sadducees to silence.§ "That the dead are raised even Moses showed in the place concerning the Bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him." "The Gospel narratives all furnish testimony to the same effect. When the spiritual sight of the three chosen disciples was opened on the mount to behold the transfigured Saviour, we read that¶ "there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory." ** In order to ascertain whether this important departure from Jewish tradition was understood and accepted by His immediate disciples we shall do well to examine their writings. For if such was the case it gives force to the character of the teaching as being distinctive and clear. To refer then to John the Revelator, he says (ch. vi., 9) "I saw underneath the altar* the souls of them that had been slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held, and they cried with a great voice and there was given them to, each one a white robe." These souls were not mere phantoms or abstractions, but actual human beings. So the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, now generally believed to be Peter, speaks of the christian coming to "the heavenly Jerusalem," "and to the spirits of just men made perfect." The Apostle Paul, who received his education in Christianity from early converts, places his opinion on record most distinctly. "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." This doctrine, although not implicitly followed by Judaising Christians, who were always falling back into naturalism and tradition, was held by all the greatest and most spiritual-minded of the Fathers. Even Tertullian, not always a model in the latter respect, in his treatise (de Animâ) asserts that the soul is in a bodily form (c. 8, 9), that it is visible to the eye of spirit, although invisible to the eye of sense (c. 6). He also says (c. 58) “When united to the body the soul does not sleep, much less when separate from the body. No! The righteous judgements of God begin to take effect in this intermediate state. The souls of the good receive a foretaste of the happiness, and the souls of the wicked of the misery which will be assigned them as their everlasting portion at the day of final retribution." The greater Origen also wrote as follows on this subject:-"Our soul, which in its own nature is incorporeal and invisible, in whatever corporeal place it existeth, doth always stand in need of a body, suitable to the nature of that place respectively; which body it sometimes beareth, having put off that which before was necessary, but is now superfluous for the following state, and sometimes again putting on something to what before it had, now standing in need of some better clothing to fit it for those more pure, ethereal, and heavenly places." As the Lord taught that man after death was a conscious, substantial, spiritual being, we are prepared to read in the parable "that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom." (v. 22). There is no cessation of life; the transition is rapid. The rich man also died and was buried (buried in his selfish delights). "And," (with hardly a perceptible pause in the current of his being) "in Hades he lift up his eyes." This immediate change of state is an exact agreement with the language of the Saviour to the malefactor who was hanged with Him. "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." That the beggar was carried away by the angels, is the result of his being after death a real spiritual being. For the angels were spiritual i.e., under heaven. + Ch. xii., 23. 1 Corinthians, xv., 44. beings. The Sadducees indeed, according to Josephus regarded angels as mere phantoms, or transitory appearances of the Deity. This was natural to them, as the Jewish free-thinkers of that period. They derived it from the Persian idea of a ghost or shade. But when the Lord, speaking of little children, said "Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven," * he was clearly not merely adopting a Persian tradition, but stating a spiritual reality. So the apostles understood this teaching, for as the writer of the epistle to the Hewbrews exclaims (chap. i., 14) "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation ?" The beggar was carried "into Abraham's bosom." This was not a place underground, although the Jewish phraseology is employed, for no orthodox Jew expected the angels or sons of God to convey him thither after the death of his natural body. The language of the apostles also forbids such a supposition. Paul, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, finds it necessary to vindicate his position to his converts. There were some in the church who said His letters are weighty and strong; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account." He states his claims to be listened to as an Apostle, and coming to "visions and revelations of the Lord" he says, making an indirect allusion to himself, “I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not; or whether out of the body I know not,) God knoweth." "Such a one caught up even to the third heaven."§ Then to show more clearly the great distinction between heaven and the upper portion of the Intermediate State, Paul further says (ver. 4) I knew such a man * how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." While, therefore, “Paradise" or "Abraham's bosom" was not heaven, neither was it an abode of voiceless phantoms underground. When the Lord said to the Jewish malefactor, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," He suited His language to the Jewish conception, but He intended neither more nor less than He said. Some people have imagined that this was a promise of eternal happiness in heaven. The distinction given by the Apostle Paul between "Heaven" and "Paradise" should undeceive them. But, in fact, the malefactor did not ask for such a thing as heaven. We read in the two other synoptic Gospels ¶ that both the robbers crucified with the Saviour reproached Him. But in that case one of them had misgivings and afterwards checked the other. || Then turning, he said, "Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.' He asked for a reward in that earthly kingdom of Messiah which the Jews expected, and which he *Matthew xviii., 10. This Epistle was written about the year A.D. 57, and this would carry us back to the year A.D. 43, about which time it appears that Paul had a vision, while praying in the temple at Jerusalem. (Acts xxii, 17-21). Matthew xxvii., 44. Mark xv., 32. |