came and licked his sores;" perhaps the dogs, always plentiful
in eastern cities, that had no master; perhaps the dogs that belonged to
the rich man, and had turned aside to lick the beggar's sores when their
master rode past on the other side, and hid from the sight of misery
within the drapery of his stately mansion. The act attributed to the
dogs accords, as is well known, with their instincts and habits. It is
soothing to the sufferer in the sensations of the moment, and healthful
in its effects. When the beggar's fortunate brother took no notice of
his distress, the dumb brutes did what they could to show their
sympathy. The stroke, though it wears all the simplicity of nature, is
in the parable due to consummate art; the kindness of the brute brings
out in deep relief the inhumanity of man.

"And it came to pass that the beggar died." Towards this point the
narrative hastens. Here on the border is the hinge on which the lesson
turns. The whole parable is constructed and spoken in order to show how
this life bears on eternity; and to make eternity, thus unveiled, bear
reciprocally on the present life. The death of Lazarus happened in the
ordinary course of things: his sufferings came to an end. Not a word of
his dust, whether it was buried, or how. Of design, and with deep
meaning, the body is left unnoticed, and the history of his soul is
continued beyond the boundary of life, as the real and uninterrupted
history of the man: in the same breath and in the same sentence that
intimates his death, we are informed that he was carried by angels into
Abraham's bosom. The dying and the entrance into the rest that remaineth
are expressed in one sentence, the two clauses connected by a copulative
conjunction: the Lord means manifestly to teach us, as he afterwards
taught the repenting malefactor on the cross, that there is no interval
to his people between departing from the body and being with Christ.

Nor did Jesus then reveal the immortality of the soul: the doctrine was
already accepted, and he assumed it in his discourse as a truth known
and acknowledged. Even the resurrection of the body was a commonplace
among the immediate disciples of Jesus during the period of his
ministry: "Thy brother shall rise again," said the Lord to Martha. "I
know that he shall rise again," she replied, "in the resurrection at the
last day:" this was a belief that she previously possessed.

Abraham's bosom, we may assume, was already an e