d in opposite
directions. Each went to his own place as certainly and as necessarily
as vapour rises up, and water flows down. The ransomed man entered the
Father's house and joined the company of the holy; the ungodly
gravitated, according to his kind, into the place of woe.

Having lifted up his eyes, "he seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his
bosom, and he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me." Deeper
and deeper into the mystery we are led at every step. While the outline
of the landscape is defined sufficiently for the purpose or affording a
landmark to direct our course, all the lesser objects are entirely
concealed by the distance. We must beware lest, in straining to get a
glimpse of the invisible, we should mistake the flitting shadows that
the unnatural effort sets afloat in the humours of our own eyes for the
veritable objects of the spiritual world.

Here I would fain arrest attention on one guiding and dominating
consideration, which may become a thread to lead us safely through the
labyrinth, saving us the trouble of working out difficult speculations,
and averting from us the danger of injuring ourselves by falls in the
dark. The Lord delivered and the evangelist recorded this parable for
the purpose of teaching, warning, directing, not spirits disembodied in
the other world, but men in the body here. "All things are for your
sakes;" the great Teacher determined all his words and acts by a regard
to the benefit of his people. Even when Lazarus died at Bethany, he said
to his followers, "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the
intent that ye might believe;" his absence led to the resurrection of
Lazarus, and that event, he foresaw, would confirm their faith. So here,
his aim is not to show how much he knows of the separate state, or to
astonish the world by the display of its secrets; it is to give men
while they are in the body those views of the separate state which will
tell most effectually in leading the wicked to repentance, and in
establishing believers in the faith.

Taking the Teacher's aim as the determinating principle in the
interpretation of his discourse, I gather that the dialogue between the
rich man and Abraham does not describe absolutely what is possible and
actually takes place in the world of spirits, as if it were addressed
to an inhabitant of that world, but gives such pictures of it, or signs
regarding it, as are intelligible to an inhabitant of this wo