design and tendency of which is to set before our eyes the wrath revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness; and it is admirably calculated to awaken the most careless and secure to a sense of their spiritual condition. In the beginning of the parable, (ver. 19.) it is said, "There was a "certain rich man, who was clothed in "purple and fine linen, and fared sump"tuously every day :""And there was “a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who "was laid at his gate full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs "which fell from the rich man's ta"ble."

66

Now, this may be considered not so much as the history of any particular occurrence, as a matter of fact, which is every day verified, viz. that the wicked are often allowed to prosper in the world, to live in great pomp and splendour, and partake of every delicacy, while, on the other hand, the faithful servants of God are not unfrequently reduced to the extreme of poverty and affliction. We do not find that the rich man is here condemned for his riches; nor is it once in

sinuated that he had acquired them by means of fraud or oppression. Neither is it said that he abused or maltreated the poor man, that he forbade him to lie at his gate, or did him the smallest injury. It is however hinted, that he took no compassion on the distress of Lazarus; that though he beheld a real and moving object of charity, yet his heart remained hard and unrelenting, and that like an unfaithful steward of his Lord's goods, he neglected to minister to the necessities of a poor and afflicted fellow creature. The sin which beset this rich man is by no means uncommon in the world. He seems to have enjoyed a sensual prosperity, to have been so intoxicated by the joys and pleasures of life, as to have forgot that God, on whom his all depended, the comfort of his poor er brethren, and the concerns of his own immortal soul.

The condition of the rich man and Lazarus was not more different, in the course of life, than their case and circumstances were at and after death. For, at the 23d verse, we are informed, that

"the beggar died, and was carried by

angels into Abraham's bosom : the rich "man also died and was buried."-Death is the common lot of the rich and the poor, of the righteous and the wicked; and however dissimilar their state in this world may be, yet there they meet together, and both lie down in the dust, "alike unknowing and unknown." But there was this material difference between the persons here spoken of, that the soul of Lazarus, poor and despised as he was on earth, was immediately, on its separation from the body, taken charge of by angels, those blessed "spirits who "minister to the heirs of salvation.". We are not told what became of his body,whether it received a decent interment or not; but his soul, the nobler part of his frame, was conducted to the bosom of faithful Abraham, i. e. to his native dwelling, the spiritual land of Israel, the regions of bliss and immortality.

"The rich man also died and was bu"ried." Like the great and opulent ones of the earth, he no doubt received a pompous funeral, was attended to his

grave by a train of mourners, and had a stately monument erected over it to perpetuate his name and memory. But it is unnecessary to indulge fancy and conjecture. The next certain information concerning him, after the account of his death and funeral, is, that " in hell he "lifted up his eyes, being in torment.”

As the souls of the faithful, when the sorrows of life are at an end, do immediately pass into glory, so the ungodly and the wicked, unfit for the pure enjoyments of heaven, are forthwith turned into hell, that dreadful place of torment, where joy and hope are for ever excluded, and where all is darkness, sorrow, and despair. Let me therefore solicit your candid attention, while, in the farther prosecution of this subject, I endeavour, by the light of Scripture,

First, To give you a short, though necessarily an imperfect representation of Hell, or the final misery of the wicked. And,

Secondly, To make a practical improvement of the subject, for your instruction and direction, who are still in the land of the living and the place of hope.

First, then, Let us shortly consider the final misery of the wicked.

It may be proper to premise, that the representation of the different states of the rich man and the beggar, in the other world, is managed in a figurative manner. We need not therefore be surprised, that a separate spirit should be here described as having eyes and a tongue, and as being tormented in flames. These are strong pathetic images, used to unfold the extreme miseries of a ruined soul, by means of the most excruciating pain and torture with which we are acquainted. They are not to be taken in a literal sense, any more than that of Lazarus being in the bosom of Abraham; or than the conversation which passed between Abraham and the rich man, in a subsequent part of this parable.

That the misery of the wicked commences, and is felt immediately after death, appears from the rich man's being in Hell or Hades, which properly signifies the state of separate spirits. He "also died and was buried," and immediately we find him" in Hell lifting up "his eyes in torments." Now, this Hell,