xpression employed by
the Jews to designate the place of the blessed beyond the grave. It
accords much better with the Lord's purpose and method to suppose that
this phrase and the term paradise, which he afterwards employed to
express the same idea, were adopted by him from the current custom, than
that they were then first introduced.

"The rich man also died and was buried." Here, for once, the rich and
the poor meet together: the beggar died, and the rich man died too. The
same event happened to both, and in both cases the same terms are
employed to record the events; but very remarkable is the difference
introduced immediately after the article of death. What came after death
in the case of Lazarus? He was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom.
What came after death in the case of this rich man? He was buried.
Perhaps as much could not have been said of Lazarus. The rich man was
carried from a sumptuous table to a sumptuous tomb; and the poor man
perhaps had not where to lay his head, when its aching had ceased at
length. It may be that his body did not find a grave. His spirit found
happy rest and holy company; and we can afford therefore to lose sight
of the dissolving dust. First and last the one had excellent earthly
accommodation, and the other had none; but conversely, he who had
neither a house when living nor a tomb when dead, walked with God while
the tabernacle stood, and went to God when it fell; whereas he who made
the earth his portion got nothing for his portion but earth.

It would be a mischievous perversion of the parable to suppose that
because the one was rich he was cast out, and because the other was poor
he was admitted into heaven: the true lesson is in one aspect the
reverse proposition: an ungodly man is in the highest sense poor in
spite of his wealth; and a godly man is in the highest sense rich, in
spite of his poverty.

We enter now, or rather have already entered, the region where the
parable must needs glide, not indeed from the literal into the
metaphorical, but from a foreground where every object is distinctly
seen to a background where the real objects cannot be seen at all, and
where, accordingly, only signals are thrown up to tell what is their
bulk and their bearing. When the line of the instruction goes through
the separating veil and expatiates in the unseen eternity, it must
become dim and indistinct to our vision. The moment that the parable in
its progress goes beyond