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"Then

mon, which may serve as an admirable comment on this part of the Parable. "shall the righteous man stand in great bold66 ness before the face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours. "When they see it, they shall be troubled "with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at "the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for. And they

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repenting and groaning for anguish of spi"rit shall say within themselves, This was

he, whom we had sometimes in derision, "and a proverb of reproach: we fools ac"counted his life madness, and his end to "be without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is

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among the saints!-What hath pride pro"fited us? or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow-But the righteous live for evermore; their reward "also is with the Lord, and the care of them "is with the Most High."

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The Parable then goes on to state another fearful consideration on this subject, that the condition of the wicked after Death will be thenceforth unalterably determined. When the Rich Man entreated Abraham to send Lazarus to his relief, the Patriarch, after ad

verting to the striking reverse which had taken place in their conditions, adds, “ And "besides all this, between us and you there "is a great gulph fixed; so that they which "would pass from hence to you, can not; "neither can they pass to us that would "come from thence." What becomes, then, of the Popish dream of Purgatory, of Masses for the dead, or of the supernumerary Merits of departed Saints to be transferred to others for their release from the pains of Eternal Death? Vain and presumptuous speculations! Even in the intermediate state here described, no intercourse may take place between the righteous and the wicked, so as to afford the latter any possibility of retrieving what they have lost. It is a state, though not final, yet of certain anticipation of that which will be final: a state of joyful or fearful expectation of that summons, when “all "that are in the graves shall hear the voice "of the Son of Man, and shall come forth;

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they that have done good, unto the resur"rection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

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The subsequent request of the Rich Man in the Parable, that Lazarus might be sent from the dead to warn his brethren who were still on earth, "lest they also should

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come into that place of torment," leads to a further admonition of universal importance. "Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses "and the Prophets; let them hear them. "And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if "one went unto them from the dead, they "will repent. And he said unto him, If they "hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither "will they be persuaded, though one rose "from the dead.”

The Rich Man is here addressed by Abraham as a Jewish believer; as one who professed, at least, to be a disciple of Moses and the Prophets. No sincere believer under that Dispensation could be ignorant of his obligations to a life of holiness and virtue, or of the eternal recompense of his deeds, whether good or evil. However burthensome might be the Ritual of the Mosaic Law, and however multiplied its external ordinances, the Jews were expressly taught by their divinelyinspired Teachers, that these would be utterly unavailing, unless accompanied with the inward dispositions of righteousness and purity which alone could render them acceptable in the sight of God. The animated exhortations of the Prophets to "turn from their iniquities," and to "make their ways and their doings good;" the magnificent pro

mises and encouragements to such as would hearken to their instructions, and the heavy denunciations against the heedless and disobedient--were in themselves sufficient, (exclusive of that general knowledge of a future state which was imparted from the beginning by Divine Revelation,) to make them look forward to another and more perfect state of being, in which all these expectations were to be fulfilled.

We need not stronger evidence to prove that a Future State of Rewards and Punishments was sufficiently revealed under the Jewish Dispensation, than this reference, which our Lord puts into the mouth of Abraham to Moses and the Prophets; and especially the emphatical declaration, that “if

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they believed not Moses and the Prophets, "neither would they be persuaded, though "one rose from the Dead." The fact appears to be, that although it was not the purpose of the Mosaic Dispensation to make an express Revelation of that Doctrine, yet it clearly recognised the Doctrine as already made known. It is every where presupposed in the writings of Moses and the Prophets, and is often noticed incidentally as an Article of Faith then generally received. The Patriarchs before the Jews universally acted

upon it and from them the Jews having thus been instructed in it from the beginning, no further Revelation of it to them was necessary.

The Parable too, in this particular, may be considered as glancing at the perverseness of the Jews in resisting the evidence of those special miracles which our Lord wrought in confirmation of this very doctrine; such as restoring to life the Widow's Son, and Jairus's Daughter; and raising Lazarus from the dead, after he had lain four days in the grave. Still more keenly also did this reproof point, by anticipation, to their subsequent want of Faith, when even the marvellous work of his own Resurrection proved insufficient to overcome their blindness and hardness of heart.

To the case of the Jews, then, whom our Lord specially addressed, this Parable, in all its circumstances, most forcibly applied. But with scarcely less force does it still apply to the case of every individual whose disbelief or disregard of the Doctrine it inculcates exposes them to a similar condemnation. Nay, if such were the obligations incurred under the Mosaical, how much stronger must they be under the Christian Dispensation! If the disciple of MOSES and the PROPHETS was in