The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

NOR will his objections to the Jewish conception of the locality of the dead rest altogether upon considerations of taste and desirability. To his mind the whole plan will appear to be radically defective. The very notion of confining disembodied spirits by a surrounding of earthen walls, will, if he be a disciple of the modern theory of the capabilities of such spirits, seem to be preposterous in the extreme. Has he not been taught that the souls of the departed—being of essence, and not of substance—will find no obstruction in walls of adamant or iron, much less in superincumbent strata of earth? Why, then, he will say, do they not escape through the overlying hills away from the torments of hell fire? Should it be declared that the fiat of Jehovah prevents, he will ask: "If it be the fiat which produces the restraint, then where the need of the walls of this hideous cavern?"

Once more: accepting as he has the current notion that the soul is so completely volatile that to it all space is practically annihilated, he will inquire incredulously as to the practicability of separating the righteous from the wicked by a gulf so narrow that the voice could traverse it and the eye span it. He will fail to discover that any advantage could spring from bringing into such close proximity, for so long a period, persons whose characters and conditions are so widely discordant as those of the redeemed and the lost. While he could conceive that a highly important moral lesson might be taught to the inhabitants of the universe by allowing them to witness, for a brief space of time, the execution on a stupendous scale of God's wrath upon evil-doers, he will readily perceive that were such a spectacle continued for a period of time as long as that during which hades has had an existence (if it ever existed at all) it could not fail to blunt the sensibilities, and become repugnant to the tastes of persons constructed upon the human model. He will also find it difficult to determine how it can be that immaterial souls can be caused to suffer anguish through contact with material fire. And while he can readily perceive that in the resurrection persons clothed as they will be then with substantial bodies might be punished in the lake of fire for the sins committed in this life, he will fail to see how, previous to that time, it would be possible to inflict upon them—admitting the existence and nature of souls, as claimed—anything like physical suffering, or anything more than that anguish which proceeds from remorse of conscience or utter despair.

Finally, putting aside all questioning as to the reason why the entrance to this lower region has never been discovered, and what utility there can be in gates and bars where the passers to and fro are possessed of ethereal and not corporeal organisms, he will be struck with the remarkable inadaptation, in nearly every particular, of the place to the purpose for which it was created. When he considers the condition and circumstances of Cain, who, as it is alleged, has for six thousand years been incarcerated in this gloomy prison house, suffering, not only the torments which originate in the maddening thought of blood guiltiness, but also writhing from the excruciating tortures inflicted by the fiery breath which sweeps over him, he will ask: "By what law of compensation can a murderer of this day, of equal guilt, be made, in the ages to come, to suffer as much as Cain will have suffered for the same offense at any given point of time?"

Furthermore, as he reads of the great white throne, and the dead, small and great, standing before that throne in order that each may receive the reward due to the deeds done in the body, he will inquire, Was Peter right when he said that God knew how to reserve the unjust into the day of Judgment to be punished? 1 Pet. 2:9. Or was he mistaken, since God has not only virtually judged the men in hades long since, but has for thousands of years been punishing many of them in the flames of hell? Was John right in locating the lake of fire, not in the center of the earth, but upon its surface; not within the subterranean vault where the Jews placed it but upon the external portion; supplying its fires, not from beneath, but having them descend in an awful tempest of wrath "from God out of heaven," devouring the wicked (Rev. 20:9), purifying this globe, and leaving it renewed, and beautified as never before, to be the eternal residence of the saints (2 Pet. 2:7, 13), not marred by the presence of sin or of sinners, internally or externally? Rev. 5:13.

But enough. Time and space will not allow the presentation of one-half the difficulties which would confront the man of fearless and candid thought who should attempt the task of reconciling his judgment to the endorsement of a literal hades. So numerous and so grave are these, that we believe, if weighed with a sincere desire to reach the truth, no man, if free from bias and the trammels of preconceived opinion, could hesitate for a moment in deciding that Christ never intended to teach the actual existence of such a place as hades or Abraham's bosom. But let this fact be conceded, and, of course, the personal presence therein of Dives, Lazarus, and Abraham ceases to be historically true. With the overthrew, however, of the supposed presence of these persons in the land of spirits, fall to the ground all deductions from the parable to prove that there is such a thing as the consciousness of the soul independent of the body; since, if Dives, Lazarus, and Abraham were not proven by the words of Christ to live after death, the existence of others cannot be inferred from that of these men. So far, therefore, as the parable is concerned, the question of the immortality of the soul is not materially affected thereby.

Nor is this surprising when we reflect for a moment that Christ, as we have already seen, was addressing the Pharisees, and that his object in so doing was to impart instruction of a definite kind on another point. It would have been a work of supererogation* for him to try to prove to these men the existence of hades, or of the intermediate state. These they already believed in. The time was not favorable for an attack upon these errors; but it was propitious for their correction upon a point of doctrine most pernicious in its character. That was the property question. This was the point and burden of his remarks. Even Abraham is made to illustrate this fact. In his address to Dives he did not dilate upon the importance of believing in the conscious state of the dead, but he said: "Son, remember, that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." Luke 16:25. This, you will see, as has been intimated, was the real lesson which the Pharisees needed to learn. Property, they must be taught, was not the credential of divine favor. And in what a masterly manner did the Lord indoctrinate them on this subject. How complete was his victory, and how triumphant his demonstration. Out of their own mouths, and in the use of their own tenets, he brought both conviction and silence. With one strategic movement he brought to his feet, in the presence of the admiring multitude, the pride and wisdom of those crafty men whom he had completely entangled in a net which they themselves had woven. The pages of history will be searched in vain for another instance where, in so few words, and with so little effort, the wisdom of this world was ever so completely emptied of all its proud pretentious.

In the use of no other plan of attack than that adopted by our Lord, could such complete and brilliant success have resulted. Had he employed any other style of logic than that of a parable in the form of an argumentum ad hominem, triumph would have been more tardy and less perfect. Had he, for example, scrupulously adhered to exact verity in all the accessories to the parable which he employed, regardless of the opinions of the men he was addressing, discussion might have arisen as to the propriety or taste in using such accessories, and a diversion might have been created for the moment which would have afforded the Pharisees an opportunity to throw dust into the eyes of the people by skillfully drawing attention from the main point of the parable to these imperfections inhering in its structure. To avoid this, therefore, he carefully limited himself to the use of just such characters, and the mention of just such places, as every man before him would readily admit might have an existence, although in fact they were not realities.

*supererogation: the performance of more work than duty requires.