When Abraham addressed him, ver. 25, on the cause of his reprobation, we do not find that he reproached him with an uncharitable disposition, or an unfeeling heart, though that would have been the most proper of all times to have done it in. He does not say: Lazarus was hungry, and thou gavest him no meat: He was thirsty, and thou gavest him no drink, &c; but he said simply, "Son, remember that thou didst receive thy good things in thy life time," i. e. Thou hast sought thy consolation upon earth; thou hast borne no cross, mortified no passion; didst not receive the salvation God had provided for thee; thou didst not belong to the people of God upon earth, and thou canst not dwell with them in glory.

There are but few of those called Christians, who con`sider it a crime to live without Christ, because their lives are not stained with any gross transgression of the moral law of their Maker. If Christianity," says one, “only required men to live without outward sin, Paganism could furnish us with many luminous examples of this kind." But the religion of Christ not only requires a conformity in a man's conduct to all the principles of righteousness and truth; but it requires also holiness in the soul; a heart reconciled to, and wholly influenced and governed by, the spirit of purity and benevolence which dwelt in the Lord Jesus.

Having thus taken a view of the causes which led this honourable person to the place of torment, the cha racter and circumstances of Lazarus must be distinctly inquired into.

There was a certain beggar named Lazarus," ver. 20. The word rwxos, which we translate beggar, signifies a poor man; and does not mean beggar in the common acceptation of the word; i. e. one who goes about from door to door soliciting alms; such a person being termed STarns, among the Greeks.

The name of this person is mentioned, because his character was good, and his end glorious; and because it is

the purpose of God that the righteous shall be had in everFasting remembrance. Lazarus is undoubtedly a Hebrew name; and may be compounded of * la, not, and y ézer, help; intimating that he was a person destitute of all assistance. But, as it appears, he stood high in the favour of God, and though outwardly destitute of all things, yet was inwardly supported by the grace and mercy of his Maker; it is therefore, more likely that Lazarus here is a contraction for Eliezer, y, God is my help, which is not mentioned here without design, as it strongly intimates that God alone is the succour and confidence of the destitute: and that the person in the text had God for the portion of his soul, even when destitute of a morsel of bread, and his flesh and heart utterly failing. This name, therefore, was properly given to a man who was both abjectly poor, and deeply afflicted, and had no help but that which came from heaven.

Of this poor man it is said, he was laid at the rich man's gate, and he was full of sores. Whether his lack of the necessaries of life were the cause of his affliction by impoverishing the blood and other juices; or whether his poverty sprung out of his affliction by rendering him incapable of getting his bread, is not intimated in the text. His abject and helpless state is sufficiently marked. He was full of sores, so as to feel constant pain. He could not even change his posture through his utter helplessness, without the ministry of others, for (866λno,) he was laid at the gate: he had neither power to come thither himself to get relief, nor depart from it when weary of waiting. Who could have thought that a man in such an abject, afflicted state, could have been a favourite of Heaven? Could not the God, who appears to have loved him so well, have healed his sores, and raised him above want? Undoubtedly he could: but God, who knoweth all things, and knoweth particularly what is in man; and what, in all possible change of circumstances he will do, probably knew that Lazarus could not be trusted with either health

or affluence, and therefore in his abundant mercy he kept him in a poor and afflicted state. Many who are now poor, humble, and pious, were they to get into a state of affluence, would wax proud and insolent, forget God, and go at last to perdition.

He desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table, ver. 21. He had no desire to fare as well as the rich man; he wished only to satisfy himself with the fragments which were left. And there is no room to doubt but his humble desires were gratified; for there is not the smallest intimation that he was refused, though most interpreters of this passage make no scruple to assert it. I feel myself justified in drawing this conclusion for as we find, verse 24, that the rich man desired that Lazarus should be sent to cool his tongue with one drop of water; it is to me a strong intimation, that he considered him under some kind of obligation to him; for had he refused him a crumb of bread in his life time, it is not reasonable to suppose that he would have requested such a favour from him now. Indeed there is not the least evidence in the text that any part of the rich man's punishment was owing to his cruelty or hard-heartedness towards this distressed beggar.

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And the dogs came and licked his sores. Though this circumstance still more strongly marks his abject state, and shows that he was really diseased, and that his sores were exposed; yet it is certainly intended to prove that he had some alleviation of his affliction. Among the an. cients the tongue of the dog, applied to obstinate ulcers, was considered a sovereign help and therefore the heathens painted their medical god Esculapius, as being always accompanied with a goat and a dog, the latter to lick the ulcers, and the former to wash them with her milk. Mercy is mingled with all our afflictions and distresses. However destitute we may now be, we might have been still worse. It is ever in the power of God, by the addition or deduction of apparently trifling circum

stances, to increase or alleviate our sufferings and calamities, by almost innumerable degrees. Wretched as this man's state was, he was kept alive till his work was done, and his soul completely prepared for the kingdom of God; though he had only the crumbs for his food, and the dogs for his physicians.

1

In process of time Lazarus is relieved from his afflictions. It came to pass that the beggar died, verse 22. It is in the order of God's gracious providence that poverty and affliction destroy their own influence by sapping the foundation of life. He who suffers most, has, in general, the shortest time to suffer in; for the more exquisite the sufferings, and the more extensive the privations of corporeal necessaries, the sooner life must ebb out; and consequently to a truly pious man in such circumstances, the road to the kingdom of heaven is considerably shortened. A hurried passage into the glory of God can hurt no man. Death and life occur in the same instant. When the work of death was finished, eternal life began: for it is added, He was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. What an astonishing change both in place and circumstances! But a moment before, he was an ulcerated beggar, lying at the rich man's gate! And now healed of all his diseases, and shut out for ever from the possibility of suffering, he is safely and immutably fixed in the regions of blessedness. The phrase, Abraham's bosom, is an allusion to the custom at Jewish feasts, when three persons reclining on their left elbows on a couch, the person whose head came near the breast of the other, was said to lie in his bosom. So it is said of the beloved disciple, John xiii, 25. He who occupied the next place at such entertainments to the master of the house, was the person who was nearest of kin, or highest in esteem. The Hebrews conceived paradise to be a place of spiritual delights, where the blessed enjoyed a continual feast. They represented Abraham as head of the nation, at the top of the table, and all the children of his faith as recli

ning with him (according to the eastern manner,) at the same table; some nearer, and others farther off, according to their different degrees of holiness, &c. Lazarus, as his most beloved son, is here placed next to him; to intimate, that being fully conformed to the image of God, he is raised in the regions of the blessed, to the highest degrees of honour and favour. That by the bosom of AbraAbraham, or sitting at table

ham,

של

pin chik shel

חיק

with him, the ancient Jews understood the future state of the blessed, is sufficiently proved in a variety of quotations made from the Rabbins, by Lightfoot, on this passage: and our Lord not only refers to, but countenances this opinion in the following words: "Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down (avanλondovrai, literally, shall sit down at table,) with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven," Matt. viii, 11. Our Lord adds, that he was carried by angels to this place. This also was an opinion uniformly believed by the Jews. Angels were supposed to attend the separation of the souls and bodies of the just, and carry them straight into the paradise of God: by speaking as he does here, our Lord appears to confirm the opinion and St. Paul assures us, that the angels are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto them that shall be heirs of salvation, Heb. i, 14; and the ministration that he principally refers to, is, that of conducting the blessed into that state of final salvation of which they were become heirs, by having been made children of God, Gal. iii, 6, 7, though it includes that of ministering to them by the order of God, on different occasions during life.

II. We are now come to consider in what the punishment of this rich man consisted.

Before punishment can take place, death must separate the body and soul. Sin cannot be adequately punished in this life. Such punishment would destroy the body,-human nature in its present state could not endure it. The soul, in its separate state, can; because it