And he called in each one of his master's debtors. 'How much do you owe my master?' he asked the first. Sermons I. WE OWE HIM FAR MORE THAN WE CAN ESTIMATE. Who shall say how much we owe our God when we consider: 1. The intrinsic value of his gifts to us. How much are we indebted to him who gave us our being itself; who gave us our physical, mental, and spiritual capacities; who has been preserving us in existence; who has been supplying all our wants? 2. The wisdom of his gifts; their moderation, not too large and liberal for our good; the conditions under which he grants them - in such wise that all manner of virtues are developed in us by our necessary exertions to obtain them. 3. The love which inspires them. The value of a gift is always greatly enhanced by the good will which prompted its bestowal. God's gifts to us his children should be very much more highly valued by us because all that he gives to us is prompted by his Fatherly interest in us; all his kindnesses are loving-kindnesses. 4. The costliness of one supreme Gift. "He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." The costliness of that surpassing Gift is such as we have no standards to compute, no language to express. II. EACH ONE OF US HAS HIS OWN SPECIAL INDEBTEDNESS. "How much owest thou unto my Lord?" 1. One man has been long spared in sin, and has been reclaimed at last; he owes peculiar gratitude for long patience and merciful interposition at the last. 2. Another has had his rebelliousness suddenly and mightily broken down; he is under peculiar obligation for God's redeeming and transforming grace. 3. A third has been led almost from the first by the constraining influences of the home and the Church; he owes very much for the earliness and the constancy and the gentleness of the Divine visitation. Which of these three owes most to the heavenly Father, to the Divine Saviour, to the renewing Spirit? Who shall say? But we can say this, that - III. WE ALL OWE MORE THAN WE CAN HOPE TO PAY. We are all in the position of him who "owed ten thousand talents," and had not to pay (Matthew 18.). When we consider the unmeasured and practically immeasurable amount of our indebtedness to God, and also consider the feebleness of our power to respond, we conclude that there is but one way of reconciliation, and that is a generous cancelling of our great debt. We can only cast ourselves on the abounding mercy of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, and accept his forgiving love in him. For his sake he will forgive us "all that debt," will treat us as those who are absolutely free and pure: then will uprising and overflowing gratitude fill our hearts, and the future of our lives will be a holy and happy sacrifice, the offering of our filial love. - C.
There was a certain rich man. I. THE ALLOTMENTS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE ON EARTH ARE NOT ALWAYS EVENLY BASED UPON A REGISTER OF HUMAN DESERT.1. The rich man is not offered as a luminous exhibition of personal worth (see vers. 19-21). 2. On the other hand, Lazarus was a beggar, and frightfully diseased. His condition was pitiable. But it does not follow that he had been immoral, nor that he was under judgment for crime. Neither of these men represented in the parable took his moral state, or received his everlasting reward, from his earthly lot. II. THE QUESTION AS TO A MAN'S ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD TURNS ON PERMANENT CHARACTER. 1. The name which this poverty-stricken invalid bears is all that is given us at this stage in the story to indicate that he was a religious man. It is simply the ancient Eleazar put into the New Testament Lazarus — the Hebrew translated to Greek — and means "God is my help." It is plain that our Lord Jesus designed this as a sufficient description of him. As Alford shrewdly remarks, he purposed "to fill in the character of the poor man." He doubtless gave the appellation, as Bunyan bestowed the name of his hero in Pilgrim's Progress: he called his name "Christian" because he was a Christian. And this beggar here is called "God is my help," because he was a good man, living according to his light by the help of God. 2. But the other man's character is under a full exhibition. He was luxuriously self-seeking. He lavished his wealth upon himself, and fed his appetites unrestrainedly. He was inhumane. The very brutes in Perea were less brutal than Dives. The rich man was not only in his conduct heartless, but in his custom irreligious; for the Jewish law demanded consideration of the poor with a hundred reiterated precepts; these he habitually disobeyed. And in the end of the tale we have the intimation that, above everything else, Dives never paid any attention to what Moses and the prophets were thundering in his ears from the Scriptures about making preparation for another world which was lying out beyond this. We reach the conclusion that in this parable the rich man represents a worldly sinner. III. Again: WE LEARN HERE THAT DEATH IS THE INEVITABLE EVENT WHICH USHERS IN THE CERTAIN IMMORTALITY OF EACH HUMAN SOUL. 1. Both of these men died. 2. Both of these men found themselves living after they had died. IV. WHAT COMES AFTER DEATH IS TO US OF FAR MORE IMPORTANCE THAN WHAT COMES BEFORE. 1. For, first, it gathers up now into itself whatever went before, and includes all its consequences. 2. And then what comes after death introduces fresh and heavy experiences of its own. The contrast is offered of highest felicity with most extreme suffering. That other life will be quite as sensitive as this, and possibly more so. Power of suffering may be augmented. There will be recognition of friends and relatives and neighbours in that new existence. These souls all appear to know each other in those moments of terrible candour. And they understand each other, too, at last; there is great plainness of speech among them. V. THE GOSPEL INVITATION REACHES ITS LIMIT IN THIS STATE OF OUR EXISTENCE. 1. There will be no increase in the ordinary means of grace. 2. No novel form of address will be possible (vers. 30, 31). (C. S. Robinson, D. D.) The case is that of one who had great wealth, and enjoyed it, and lived handsomely, but took no thought to the poor brother outside. He had his evil things in the same hour in which the brother in the grand house had his good things; and this went on, day after day, white the two men neared another life: but when that life began, there came a change. Now, it seems clear, from the way in which the case is put, that this change, which was in fact a revolution, and brought with it a precise reversal of the states of those two men, came in a line of predetermined events. It implies the working of a law, which may have been fulfilled in countless instances already, and is destined to act and rule so long as the lots of men are unequal in this life. If this be so, it ought to make those of us uneasy, who perceive, in comparing themselves with their neighbours, that they are having their good things now. It seems a just inference from this parable, which was undoubtedly intended as a lesson and a warning for us all, that Almighty God, the Righteous and Just, although He may for the present permit the poor to suffer, has made a law in the due execution whereof there may be expected a complete upset of conditions by and by, on our passage into another life. Many years ago, in the early winter, I found myself one evening at a rich man's table, with others bidden to the feast. We had our good things. Nothing was wanting to the completeness of our entertainment in which appeared, in their order, all delicious viands, with condiments and delicacies, and whatsoever is pleasant to the eyes and good for food. There shone the precious metals, and rare porcelains and crystal, while, amidst roses and other choice flowers appeared, in rich warm hues as of the ruby and the topaz, the fruit of the vines of distant lands. As one surveyed the cheerful company under the soft brilliancy of many lights, it was a pleasant scene; in their lifetime they were receiving their good things; and not as dissolute revellers, but after the way of the highly respectable, to whom all this came as to men and women to the manner born, and living, as became their station, the life of the rich and the free. In less than an hour after leaving that scene, I found myself descending, by dim and muddy steps, the basement of a miserable house in the same city, and entering a room some feet below the level of the sidewalk. What light there was in that forlorn apartment came from a dull tallow candle; the feeble ray fell on bare walls and a bare floor, and showed no furniture but an old bedstead, without clothes or bedding, or so much as a truss of straw. On the floor sat two children, thinly clad, crouching close to an old rust-eaten stove, in which a faint redness glimmered through the choked-up ashes, the very mockery of a fire. The little ones had no food; their mother, they said, was abroad to see if she could get them a bit of something to eat, while a neighbour had given her the candle by the aid of which I made out the pitiful scene. There was the other side of the parable; the old, old story: "and likewise Lazarus evil things." Under the winter's evening, the two rooms told their separate stories to the Lord; the "good things" there, the "evil things" here; just as it has been from the beginning. Alas I the heart dies down at such contrasts. Who could look on two such pictures within the same hour, and admit that things are as they ought to be in this world? And if, at such a moment, he remembers the words of the parable, it cannot but occur to him, as was just now said, that there must be a hidden law of adjustment, whose working will be revealed in due season. He must say to himself: It cannot be that these things are to last for ever; and moreover, it cannot be that he who is indifferent to them while they last can finally go unpunished. Indifference on these points is crime; and crime must bring retribution. We have, then, in the words of our Lord in the parable a very serious intimation; and, in common daily experience, an argument of great persuasive force urging us to heed it. It is one of the gravest of questions how we are to deal with the terrible problems thus raised; problems which could not be more urgent or more practical; which relate to both worlds at once; to the estates of men in this life, and to the estates of those same men in the life hereafter. We want light on a dark question; infidelity and anti-Christian social science fail us here; the latter amuses us with a jack-a-lantern, leading nowhere but into greater embarrassments; the former blows out what light remains, and by destroying society reduces all men everywhere to present terror and ultimate barbarism. Fortunately for the human race there are ideas as different from infidel or socialistic notions as light from darkness; ideas put forth by our blessed Lord, and kept afloat by the powerful agency of that religion which He founded and sustained. In these ideas, fully realized and widely applied, resides the only hope of relief. Let us recall them to our thoughts and see in what subtle and perhaps unsuspected way they help us all — the poor who are in misery here, and the rich who are in peril hereafter. First, then, Christianity never has attempted to eliminate the rich as a class. It is God's will that there shall always be the rich and the poor. But although the rich are permitted to be among us and to have a place in His Church, yet another thing is true. They are told that their riches are a real and a deadly peril; as if a man had in his house what might at any moment take fire or explode and destroy his life. And, more than this: the vast difference between them and the poor is one of those which seem to be unfair and unjust, in a human point of view. I mean that if you take man and man there is no reason a priori why the rich man should not be in the poor man's place and the poor man in the rich man's, and often no reason can be found in the characters of the men themselves. "Why is not that poor brother where I am and I in his place? It seems scarcely just to him now; it cannot go on for ever." If all the rich felt thus the sorrows of the poor would be at end, even for this life; and the rich would feel thus if they were penetrated with the spirit of the gospel. Even so much as there is (and blessed be God! there is much of this nobility of Christian love), has done and is doing a vast deal of good, and alleviating the misery and sorrow of the poor.(Morgan Dix, D. D.) I. THE RICH MAN IN HIS AFFLUENCE AND ENJOYMENTS.II. LAZARUS IN HIS POVERTY. 1. A beggar. 2. Homeless. 3. Afflicted in person. III. THE DEATH OF LAZARUS. 1. At his death he becomes the subject of angelic minis. tration. 2. He is conveyed in triumph to glory. IV. THE DEMISE OF THE RICH MAN. 1. His riches could not save him from death. 2. They could only secure him an imposing funeral.Lessons: 1. That piety on earth is often allied with poverty and suffering. 2. That earthly prosperity and magnificence are no proofs of the Divine favour. 3. That whatever be our condition in this world, we are travelling towards another. 4. That death is inevitable to all stations and ranks. (J. Burns, D. D.) I. WE SEE LAZARUS IN THE ABODE OF THE BLESSED. His state is one of —1. Repose, after the toils of life. 2. Dignity, after the humiliating scenes of his earthly adversity. 3. Abundance, after want. 4. Bliss, after grief and sorrow. II. WE ARE REFERRED TO DIVES AS CONSIGNED TO THE REGIONS OF THE LOST. "In torments." 1. Torments arising from the awful change he had experienced when death removed him from his wealth and luxuries on earth. 2. Torments from unallayed desires. He seeks now even for one drop of water, but in vain. 3. Torments from the bitter and despairing anguish of his doomed spirit. 4. Torments of keen self-reproach. 5. Torments from the direct infliction of the righteous wrath of God. 6. Torments from having the world of joy and glory within the range of his distracted vision. III. WE ARE REMINDED OF HIS UNAVAILING PRAYERS. 1. For the alleviation of his own agonies. 2. For additional means to save his brethren.Lessons: 1. How awful it is to die in a carnal, unregenerate state. 2. How connected are the concerns of time with the realities of eternity. "Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap." 3. How all-important is real personal piety. 4. The sufficiency of the means appointed for man's salvation. (J. Burns, D. D.) 1. Let us learn here that "one thing is needful" — the care of the soul. What can riches do without this?2. Let us learn, that, if the word of God revealed in the Scriptures, if the gospel of Jesus Christ, if the promises and the warnings written there, do not convince us, do not turn us to God — then nothing would. 3. Observe from this parable, that hell will be the portion not only of the grossly wicked, the swearer, the adulterer, the drunkard, the dishonest, the liar; for we read not, that the rich man was any of these: yet he perished. 4. What comfort may this parable give to the Christian in suffering! (E. Blencowe, M. A.) I. THE CONTRASTS.1. In their external circumstances. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 2. In their spiritual condition. (1) (2) (3) 3. In their eternal destiny. (1) (2) (3) (4) II. THE LESSONS. 1. As to Providence. (1) (2) (3) 2. As to spiritual life. (1) (2) (3) 3. As to the future state. (1) (2) (a) (b) (c) (4) (5) (D. C. Hughes, M. A.) II. A LARGE FAMILY. Six brothers. III. A FAMILY WHICH DEATH HAD VISITED. "The rich man died and was buried." Death will neither be bribed by wealth, nor wait for preparation. IV. A FAMILY, ONE OF WHICH WAS IN HELL. Secular wealth is sometimes soul-degrading. V. A FAMILY WHOSE SURVIVING BROTHERS WERE ALL ON THE ROAD TO RUIN. VI. A FAMILY WHOSE DECEASED BROTHER RECOILED AT THE IDEA OF REUNION. VII. A FAMILY WHO POSSESSED ALL THE MEANS THEY NEEDED OR WOULD EVER HAVE FOR SPIRITUAL SALVATION. (Anon.) (A. B. Bruce.) (A. B. Bruce.) 1. There is the contrast in the life of these two men. The one rich, the other a beggar. The rich man had great possessions, yet one thing he lacked, and that was the one thing needful. Lazarus, the beggar, was after all the truly rich man, "as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." 2. Next, there is a contrast in the death of these two men. 3. And there is a contrast in the after time for these two men. The rich man was buried, doubtless, with great pomp. Some of us have seen such funerals. What extravagance and display take the place of reverent resignation and quiet grief! Of the beggar's burial place we know nothing. 4. But the sharpest contrast of all is in the world beyond, from which for a moment Jesus draws back the veil. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) II. THE DECISIVE ADJUSTMENT OF THINGS THAT TAKES PLACE AT DEATH. III. THE EVERLASTING SEPARATION THAT TAKES PLACE AT DEATH BETWEEN THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED. IV. THE VIEW THAT IS TAKEN OF THIS LIFE WHEN ONCE THEY GET OUT INTO THE FUTURE. V. THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE REVELATION THAT GOD HAS GIVEN TO CONFIRM ALL THESE THINGS. (J. E. Beaumont.) 1. In this world Dives was possessed — (1) (2) (3) 2. At death his situation was in all respects reversed. (1) (2) (3) (4) II. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF LAZARUS IN THE PRESENT WORLD, AND IN THE FUTURE. 1. In this world, Lazarus was — (1) (2) 2. In the future world he was — (1) (2) (3) (T. Dwight, D. D.) 1. The parable speaks of a rich man and a poor man; and the resemblance between them may be traced, first, in the mortality of their bodies. They were both men, sinful men, and consequently dying men. No sooner is it said that "the beggar died," than it is added, "the rich man also died." And thus must end the history of us all. 2. These men resembled each other also in the immortality of their souls. The soul of the poorest amongst us is as immortal as the soul of the richest. 3. To these two points of resemblance between these men, we may add a third, not indeed absolutely expressed here, but, like the fact we have just alluded to, evidently to be inferred — accountableness to God. It was not chance which placed them where they are. They went thither from a bar of judgment. II. Let us proceed to notice, secondly, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO MEN, WITH THE GROUNDS OR REASONS OF IT. They differed in two points. 1. In their earthly portion. How great a contrast! Where shall we find its origin? It warns us against judging of men's character by men's condition. That diversity of condition, which we may wonder at but cannot alter, which has prevailed more or less in every age and nation notwithstanding every attempt to put an end to it, that diversity must be traced to the sovereign will of God. And He suffers, or rather He establishes it, because it is conducive to our welfare and His own glory.(1) It serves to show us, among other things, the poverty of the world and the all-sufficiency of God.(2) Besides, this diversity of condition, this mixture of poverty and riches on the earth, answers a further end — it proclaims to thoughtless man another world. There must be a world in which the just Governor of the universe will assert His justice, will vindicate His character, and render to the sons of men according their works, 2. The two men it speaks of differed in their eternal condition. (C. Bradley, M. A.) (G. Spring, D. D.) (John Ruskin.) 1. For the trying of men's virtue. 2. In order to the recompensing of it. From this consideration of the difference between the condition of men in this world and the other, we may infer —(1) That no man should measure his felicity or unhappiness by his lot in this world.(2) We should not set too great a value upon the blessings of this life.(3) We should not be excessively troubled if we meet with hardship and affliction here in this world, because those whom God designs for the greatest happiness hereafter may receive evil things here.(4) We should do all things with a regard to our future and eternal state. (Archbishop Tillotson.) I. That if we would take a right estimate of man, we must consider him in respect to a double state — here and hereafter — and that for these two reasons: 1. Because there is less of man here and more hereafter. 2. Because man is more valuable than this world represents him to be. I. The first of these I will make appear in three particulars, that there is less of man here and much more hereafter. 1. In respect of his time and continuance in being. 2. In this state there is less of right judgment of things and persons. Things here go under false appearances, and persons here are under the power of lying imaginations. 3. Less of weal or woe is in this state than in the other, for men in this state do not fully reap the fruit of their own ways; they do not come to the proof of the bargain they have made. In the respects before mentioned and others that possibly might be superadded, it appears that there is less of man in this world. But I may also adjoin, by way of exception, some particulars to the contrary, for I must acknowledge that in some respects our being in this world is very considerable.I will instance in three particulars — 1. In respect of man's possibility. 2. In respect of man's opportunity. 3. In respect of man's well-grounded faith and expectation.I now come to the second reason. Why, if we would make a just estimate of man, we must consider him in respect to his double state of existence, in time and in eternity. For man is a much more valuable creature than his affairs in this world represent him to be, and this I will make appear in three particulars. Because — 1. Man is here in his state of infancy; yea, he is as it were imprisoned and encumbered with a gross, dull, and crazy body. 2. In this state man is neither as he should be, nor, if he himself well consider, as he would be. The state of man in this world doth represent him subject to the same vanity that all other creatures lie under (Job 17:14). This state represents a man as very low and mean because he is subjected to low and mean employments — fit only to converse with other creatures. This present state represents a man in a condition of beggary, dependence, and necessity (Job 1:21). This state represents a man as worn out with solicitude and care for himself, as being tormented with fear, and more to seek than any other creature. This state represents man to be in danger from him that is next him, and of his own kind; for so is the world through sin become degenerate, that one man, as it were, is become a wolf to another. Lastly, the state of man in this life represents his condition other ways than indeed it is; that is, it represents a man the object of the devil's envy, usurpation, and tyranny. He is called the "Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2). For the close of this particular I shall add a word or two of application.And — 1. If so be there is less of man here and more hereafter, if when we would take a right estimate of man we must consider him in respect of his double estate, hereafter as well as here, then those persons are guilty of the greatest madness and folly that consider themselves only in order to this life; whereas these men have souls to save or to lose, and there is another state that will commence and begin after the expiration of this. 2. My next inference from what hath been said is — that we should not be tempted in this life to do anything to the prejudice of our future state, the state of eternity; but to let things be considered according to the true worth and value, lest they find cause to repent, when it is too late, of the pleasures they took in their unlawful actions. II. The second proposition is — that the state of man in the life to come holds a proportion to his affairs in this life. 1. Let it be understood that I have no intention at all to speak one word to countenance the creature's merit with God, for that I conceive to be incompatible to the condition of the highest angel in glory properly to merit anything at the hand of God. 2. Again, when I say the state of man in the world to come holds a proportion to his affairs in this world, you must not understand it means worldly circumstances of wealth, honour, pleasure, strength, or worldly privileges. Therefore in the affirmative, two things there are belonging to men in this state which are the measures of our happiness in the future state —(1) The internal disposition and mental temper.(2) The illicit acts which follow the temper and are connatural to it. These are our acquisitions, through the grace and assistance of God, which always is to be understood as principal to all good, though it be not always expressed, for all good is of God.And for this I will give you an account that it must be so. 1. From the nature of the thing, for goodness and happiness are the same thing materially; in nature they are the same, as malignity and misery are the same in nature too. 2. From the judgment of God, and those declarations which He hath made of Himself in the Scriptures, which everywhere declare that He will render to every one according to right (Romans 2:6-8). Then let men look well to their mental dispositions, and to their moral actions. This is of a mighty use in religion to understand the true notion of moral actions. From the words of the text I shall observe briefly two things more — First. That worldly prosperity is no certain forerunner of future happiness; for this is a thing heterogenial, and is from distinct and quite other causes.The providence of God governs the world, and the laws of the kingdom of Christ are quite different things. 1. Let no man make himself a slave to that which is no part of his happiness. 2. Let him take his chief care about that which is in certain conjunction with happiness, and that is the noble generous temper of his soul, and the illicit acts of his mind. Secondly. We see from hence that men change terms, circumstances, and conditions, one with another in the world to come.For an account of this — 1. Things many times are wrong here, but they will not be wrong always. 2. The present work is to exercise virtue. This is a probation state, a state of trial, and if so, there must be freedom and liberty of action. 3. The final resolution and last stating of things is reserved to another time when no corrupt judge shall sit, but He shall come that shall judge the world in righteousness.The use I will make of this is — 1. Therefore, do not envy any one's condition; it is not safe, though glory attend upon it for a while (Psalm 37:1). 2. Satisfy thyself in thine own condition if it be good and virtuous, for then it is safe. 3. Have a right notion and judgment of the business of time, which is to prepare for the future state.I will conclude this discourse with these four inferences: 1. Then it is folly and madness for men — as frequently they do — to estimate or consider themselves wholly or chiefly by their affairs in this world, and by the good things thereof, such as are power, riches, pleasures. 2. Then it is the great concernment of our souls not at all to admit of any temptation or suggestion to do anything in this life to the prejudice of our state in eternity. 3. Then it is fairly knowable in this state, and by something thereof as a foregoing participation or sign, what our state and condition for sort and kind will be in the world to come. 4. Then faith and patience to go through the world withal, for the day draws on apace for the stating and rectifying of things, the proportioning of recompense and reward to action, and the completing and consummating what is weak and imperfect for the present. He is unreasonably ira. patient and hasty who will not stay and expect the season of the year and what that brings, but mutters and complains of injury and hard measures because he cannot have harvest in seed-time. (B. Whichcote.) I. That here was an object presented to him. II. Such an object as would move any one's pity, a man reduced to extreme misery and necessity. III. A little relief would have contented him. 1. That unmercifulness and uncharitableness to the poor is a very great sin. It contains in its very nature two black crimes.(1) Inhumanity; it is an argument of a cruel and savage disposition not to pity those that are in want and misery.(2) Besides the inhumanity of this sin, it is likewise a great impiety toward God. Unmercifulness to the poor hath this fourfold impiety in it — it is a contempt of God; an usurpation upon His right; a slighting of His providence; and a plain demonstration that we do not love God, and that all our pretences to religion are hypocritical and insincere. 2. That it is such a sin, as alone, and without any other guilt, is sufficient to ruin a man for ever. The parable lays the rich man's condemnation upon this, it was the guilt of this sin that tormented him when he was in hell. The Scripture is full of severe threatenings against this sin (Proverbs 21:13). Our eternal happiness does not so much depend upon the exercise of any one single grace or virtue, as this of charity and mercy. Faith and repentance are more general and fundamental graces, and, as it were, the parents of all the rest: but of all single virtues, the Scripture lays the greatest weight upon this of charity; and if we do truly believe the precepts of the gospel, and the promises and threatenings of it, we cannot but have a principal regard to it.I know how averse men generally are to this duty, which make them so full of excuses and objections against it. 1. They have children to provide for. This is not the case of all, and they whose case it is may do well to consider that ii will not be amiss to leave a blessing as well as an inheritance to their children. 2. They tell us they intend to do something when they die. It shows a great backwardness to the work when we defer it as long as we can. It is one of the worst compliments we can put upon God to give a thing to Him when we can keep it no longer. 3. Others say, they may come to want themselves, and it is prudence to provide against that. To this I answer —(1) I believe that no man ever came the sooner to want for his charity. David hath an express observation to the contrary (Psalm 37:25).(2) Thou mayest come to want though thou give nothing; in which case thou mayest justly look upon neglect of this duty as one of the causes of thy poverty.(3) After all our care to provide for ourselves, we must trust the providence of God; and a man can in no case so safely commit himself to God as in well-doing.But, if the truth were known, I doubt covetousness lies at the bottom of this objection: however, it is fit it should be answered.(1) I say, that no man that is not prejudiced, either by his education or interest, can think that a creature can merit anything at the hand of God, to whom all that we can possibly do is antecedently due; much less that we can merit so great a reward as that of eternal happiness.(2) Though we deny the merit of good works, yet we firmly believe the necessity of them to eternal life. (Archbishop Tillotson.) 2. Before Him who seeth not as man seeth, the millionaire has no advantage over the mendicant. 3. The soul is the same self-conscious existence immediately after death that it was before; and death ushers some, at once, into a state of conscious enjoyment, and some into a state of conscious misery. 4. They that would not, while probationers, cry to God for mercy, will, in eternity, look in vain for mercy to either God or man. 5. Those whom God designs to save He finds it necessary to chasten, so that life's evil things may wean them from the world and fit them the better to enjoy an eternity of good things. But there are men of the world who have their portion in this life. They prefer enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season, rather than to suffer affliction with the people of God, and hence they in their lifetime receive their good things, but are tormented in the world to come. 6. While here, sinners are urged to cross the moral chasm which separates them from saints, for Christ has bridged it; but after death it becomes to them an unbridged, impassable gulf. 7. How deluded are they who suppose that converse with the dead is possible, or that the unseen world can, in that way, be partly unveiled. An inspired book was God's wise and chosen mode of acquainting us with spiritual truths, and he who has this book, yet disregards its teachings, will, in eternity, reap the bitter consequences. (T. Williston.) II. THE FUTURE STATE IS ONE INTO WHICH MEMORY ENTERS AS A FACTOR OF HAPPINESS OR MISERY. III. IN THE FUTURE STATE INTEREST IS FELT IN THOSE WHO ARE STILL IN THE BODY. IV. GOD BESTOWS UPON US HERE AND NOW ALL THE PRIVILEGES WHICH ARE NEEDFUL TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE STATE. Conclusion: 1. The seriousness and solemnity of this earthly probation. 2. The folly of those who use this life simply for their own gratification. 3. The nearness of eternity. 4. The justice of God's requirement of assent to His truth and compliance with His demands. 5. The importance of an immediate acceptance of the gospel, and immediate preparation for judgment. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.) (S. H. Tyng, D. D.) (C. H. Spurgeon.) (H. Melvill, B. D.) (S. W. Skeffington, M. A.) II. THIS CONDITION OF CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE MAY BE ONE OF INTENSE MISERY. III. CONSIDER WHAT IT WAS IN THE RICH MAN'S EARTHLY LIFE WHICH LED TO SUCH CALAMITOUS RESULTS. (Gordon Calthrop, M. A.) (Bishop Meade.) (Biblical Museum.) 1. The first consideration we should demand is, that the sufferer of the doom might feel that it was inevitable. The idea of fate sets us free from the sense of blame. 2. The second consideration which might subdue the fierceness of infernal agonies, would be that they are undeserved. It would be joy to the prisoners, could they only reflect, "We are the victims of arbitrary justice!" Spirit has not, however, passed into such regions with either of these consolations, nor found them there! Spirit never, in fearful soliloquy, spake: "Necessity wrought this chain, and malignity locked it!" Spirit never exclaimed: "Despite of myself, I was dragged hither, and here in violation of all truth and equity I am chained!"... It is the converse of these thoughts that deepens the outer darkness, that accumulates the horrors of the pit. "It need not have been." What a self-upbraiding! "Justice had none other recourse." What a self-condemnation! "Why would ye die?" is the rebuke for ever in their ear! "We indeed justly," is the confession for ever on the tongue! (R. W. Hamilton.) I. As to his circumstances. It is sufficiently indicated that he was a Jew by descent. He calls Abraham father, and Abraham, though separated from him by a great gulf, though unable to render him assistance, or comply with his request, does not refuse to recognize hire. "Abraham said unto him, Son, remember." What! a son of Abraham, and yet an outcast! Circumcised the eighth day, and yet a reprobate! A child of God's covenant, and yet a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction! II. From the position and circumstances of this rich worldling, we next proceed to consider his sentiments. He is represented as imploring Abraham to save his five brethren from the doom in which he had irretrievably involved himself, by sending them an unearthly warning of the reality of a future state of existence, and of its horrors for the ungodly. It does not seem that every spark of natural affection, exile from God and from happiness though he be, is extinguished in this man's breast. III. Let me mention a third point, still more favourable to his salvation, than the two preceding, but still quite insufficient to secure it: this is, that so far as appears from the narrative, he had not been guilty of any crime, of any gross or palpable offence whatever. He had not hurled blasphemous defiance against the Most High. My brethren, these remarks may serve to confute the fatal error of those in whose estimation the only real sins in existence are sins of commission. How many are there who congratulate themselves on the many wrong things which they have never done. What, then, was the sin, a wilful and impenitent continuance in which ensured the eternal loss of this worldling's soul? The sin, in its root (for every sin has a root, a state of mind out of which it springs and to which it is referable), was unbelief. But I must hasten on to point out the particular development of unbelief with which this narrative presents us. If a man have no realizing apprehension of a future state, still more if he entertain doubts respecting some revealed" particulars of that state, the natural consequence, the practical operation of such views, will be a living for this world. All beyond the grave is, in such a man's apprehensions, hazy, indistinct, uncertain. His aim was to enjoy himself, to lead a life of ease and self-indulgence. He secluded himself, as much as he could, from annoying sights and distressing sounds. Whenever, accidentally, misery or want met his eye, he turned away as from an object distressing to contemplate. And hence, probably, more than from any settled hardness of heart, sprang his culminating offence, his entire lack of service to God's poor. Behold then, brethren, in these words, the origin and development of that sin which, cherished to the end of his days, issued in the ruin of his soul — practical unbelief; a living unto self and for this world; an entire forgetfulness of the wants of others. Nothing flagrant, nothing vicious, nothing openly immoral, but quite enough to conduct him to that awful realm, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. My brethren, our subject admits of, or rather it challenges, a close application to our own circumstances, and that in regard both of the times on which we are fallen, and of the place in which our lot is cast. 1. A subtle disbelief of the spiritual world in general, and of a future state of existence (at least on the side of eternal punishment), is fast insinuating itself into the minds of the respectable, the educated, and thoughtful classes. Again, there is a growing, and even avowed, disbelief among the most earnest and thoughtful men of the day on the subject of eternal punishment. And here I would remark that disbelief of the future world, in any of its aspects, is very closely connected with disbelief of the unseen world which is at present around us. I shall suppose, then, the case of a man who, while orthodox in all the main articles of his religious belief, and nominally a member of the Church, has allowed his faith in things unseen and eternal to be secretly sapped. In that he resembles Dives. 2. The second point to which I shall call your attention, in applying to our own consciences the warning of the text, is the atmosphere of religious privilege, which my academical hearers specially, but those residing in the city also in good measure, habitually inhale. Yet who does not know that, where no corresponding zeal and spirituality exist in the heart, this frequency of religious ordinance and privilege acts rather as a soporific than as a stimulant, makes eternal things more hazy and less substantial than they were, when worship more rarely recurred? 3. Now, our Lord, in the parable before us, represents this development of resources as having a dangerous tendency, as contributing something material to strengthen the impenitence of the natural heart. (Dean Goulburn.) I. We find in the rich man a character devoid of Christian benevolence, or the Christian principle of benevolence; and this defect rendered all his goodness of any other sort unavailing. For that he was good in some points and in a certain sense we gather from the conclusion of the parable. And why does he select his brothers alone, from the victims of his example? It must be — it can only be — from the relentings of fraternal tenderness. The earnestness of his prayer, that they might not "also come to the place of torment," marks the still remaining sensitiveness of his natural sensibilities, and the strength of his natural affection. In the first place — how little is that sensibility and natural affection to be depended upon, which even the condemned in the place of torment may feel! What! will you build your hope of heaven on a virtue which you may share in common with the accursed inmates and inhabitants of hell? Will you plume and pride yourselves on your kindly feelings, or your goodness of heart, as a security that all is well, and that ultimately, somehow or other, you cannot but be happy, when you see much of that kindliness of feeling, and what you call goodness of heart, in the regions of everlasting woe? Learn, then, ye who are living in friendship with the world, yet still in conscious enmity against God — loving perhaps your brother, according to the flesh, with much tenderness of human affection, yet untaught to love your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour for His sake — learn to estimate the real worth, or rather worthlessness, of your much.vaunted goodness of heart. It is not a goodness that will carry you to heaven. But, in the second place, we must put the case more strongly still. We must observe that this natural sensibility and affection, when the views are thus enlarged by taking in eternity as well as time, may become itself the very source of misery and torment. It is evidently so represented in the case of this rich man. His solicitude about his brothers very much increased his own sufferings, and aggravated the agony of his own hopeless condetonation. This is a very striking and appalling view to take of the misery awarded to the impenitent and unbelieving. It shows how the very best, the most amiable and generous, feelings of the unrenewed and unregenerated soul, may become themselves the means and occasions of its sorer punishment. Experience even here on earth shows, that affection makes us partakers of the sufferings as well as the joys of our fellow-creatures and friends. His love to his brothers on earth superseded his love to his Father in heaven. And fitly therefore now, that very love is made to minister the punishment due to him for his breach of the first and great commandment. He loved his brethren independently of God. He made them partakers of his pleasures; and partakers also of his sin. Have you no fear, I ask — that in the very attachment you are now forming — in the very affection you are now indulging — in the friendship and love which every day is rendering more intense, as you lavish on its object all proofs and tokens of tenderest regard — you may be but treasuring up the very instruments of wrath against the day of wrath? Cultivate the charities of social and domestic life; but be sure that you cultivate them as in the sight of God, and in the full and steady prospect of eternity. II. We turn now to the other party in this scene, the other figure in this picture. We consider the beggar, and his claim to sympathy and relief. It is a claim which the benevolence of mere natural feeling overlooked, but which the benevolence of Christian principle insists upon having regarded. It is in this light, accordingly, that the Christian considers his fellow-men; as being either actually partakers, or capable of yet becoming partakers, of the grace and the glory of God. This is the ground of the esteem in which he holds them — this the measure of the value he assigns to them. How different is this esteem of men, on account of the worth and value of their souls, from the careless and casual sympathy of mere natural compassion, and how vastly more effectual as a motive of benevolence? The man of natural kindness and sensibility, touched with the sight of woe, and moved to pity and to tears, may utter the voice of tenderness, and stretch forth the hand of charity. But the object of his compassion has no great importance or value in his eyes. All the interest he takes in him is simply on account of his present suffering. But now, if you were to view that individual in the light in which Christianity represents him; as one of those whom the Father willeth to save, and for whose souls He gave His own Son to die; how would the intensity of your concern in Him be deepened, and how would your sense of obligation to Him be enhanced! Again, how different is this Christian view of the preciousness of every human being, from the view which mere infidel philanthropy takes! On the infidel hypothesis — what at the best, in the eye of enlightened benevolence, is the race of man? A succession of insects — creatures of a day, fluttering their few hours of shade and sunshine, and then sinking into endless night. Is it worth while to fret and toil much for such a generation? It is the gospel alone that shows the real value of man — of individual man — as having a spirit that will never die; and enforces the regard due to him from his fellow-men on the ground of his being the object of the regard of their common God. See, then, that you love him as God loves him. God is kind to the evil and to the unthankful, because He would have them to be saved. Be you kind to them also; and with the same view. Abound towards them in all good works. Melt their hearts, though hard and sullen as lead, by heaping your benefits as coals of fire upon their heads. (Dr. Candlish.) II. A good prayer for a wrong purpose. III. A good effort with no effect. (The Preacher's Analyst.) I. WHAT, THEN, IS MEMORY? LET US FIRST DEFINE THE FACULTY. Every one is aware of the fact that the knowledge which we have once acquired, the things we have seen and done, the experiences that we have had, though not always present to the mind, are nevertheless so retained, that the same things may be, and often are, recalled to our mental notice. Every one is fully conscious of such a fact in his own history. We designate this fact by the term memory. Memory is, therefore, the mind's power of preserving and knowing its own past history. It is the same in both worlds. We are, moreover, so constructed, that we cannot discredit the knowledge given by memory. I am as certain of what I distinctly remember, as I can be of anything. The absolute loss of memory would destroy the whole framework of man's mental existence, by limiting his intellectual life to the impressions of the passing moments. II. LET ME SAY THAT MEMORY OPERATES IN OBEDIENCE TO ESTABLISHED AND PERMANENT LAWS. By them we conduct the process of memory. We do it without labour, yea, by necessity, having no power not to do it. Thus we think of ourselves as intelligent, conscious, voluntary, in both worlds, in both exercising memory according to fixed laws, some of which at least rule our present life. III. I WISH TO CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO THE EXTENT OF ITS RETENTIVE AND REPRODUCTIVE POWER. In the amazing greatness of this power, as we observe it in time, we shall perhaps find the condition of at least conjecturing what it will be in eternity. It was the opinion of Lord Bacon that nothing in one's antecedent history is ever irrecoverably forgotten. Coleridge held the same view. We know, as a matter of positive experience, that the prominent and leading facts of life past are safely retained in the bosom of memory. The many instances of remarkable memory that we gather from history are an instructive commentary upon the greatness of this power. Themistocles, we am told, could call by their names the twenty thousand citizens of Athens. It is said of Cyrus, that he could repeat the name of every soldier in his army. There are also many striking and peculiar cases of resuscitated knowledge, in which apparently extinct memories are suddenly restored. Numerous instances of quickened memory, under the influence of physical causes, show what the mind may do under special and extraordinary exaltations of its activity. Persons on the brink of death by drowning are said to have unusually vivid visions of the past. If such be memory here, in this nascent state of our being — this mere infancy of our intellectual life — what may it not be, and what may it not do, when, with our other faculties, freed from a body of flesh and blood, it shall soar in progressive expansion and enlargement through the ages of a coming eternity? IV. WHAT IS TO BE THE IMPRESSION OF MEMORY UPON OUR HAPPINESS OR MISERY IN THE FUTURE WORLD? That so great a power will make an impression upon the soul, pleasant or painful, according to the character of the facts embraced in the exercise, is an inference derivable not only from the greatness of the power, but equally from the ample materials of our present experience. (S. T. Spear, D. D.) II. NOT ONLY WILL THE MEMORY EXIST IN THE FUTURE WORLD, BUT IT WILL PROBABLY POSSESS FAR GREATER ACTIVITY AND ENERGY THAN IN THE PRESENT LIFE, AND THUS BE ENABLED TO RECALL THE PAST WITH A DISTINCTNESS AND VIVIDNESS NOW WHOLLY UNKNOWN. That our knowing faculty will be vastly increased is expressly asserted in the Word of God. Why not, then, the remembering faculty, which is so intimately associated with it? III. WHAT SUBJECTS WILL PROBABLY BE MOST PROMINENT IN THE REFLECTIONS OF THE LOST SOUL. 1. They will remember the gifts of Providence, for which they requited their Maker with ingratitude and rebellion. 2. They will doubtless remember the spiritual privileges which they failed to improve. 3. Sinners will remember in eternity the evil influence which they exerted while on earth, and all the fatal consequences of it. (D. B. Coe.) 1. Remember, we will say first, God's dealings with thee. O, it is not philosophy, it is mere commonplace vulgar infidelity, which makes any of us doubt whether God has been about our path and about our journey in the time past of our life. If we have not seen Him, it is the worse for us. 2. Remember the opportunities, seized or neglected, with which God in the past has furnished and endowed you. Who can think of his school-days, and not reproach himself bitterly with neglects, now irreparable, of instructions and influences which might have altered the very complexion of his life? Who can remember his friends, and not mourn over evil done and good left undone? And when we pass from these outward gifts to such as are altogether spiritual; when we think of the Word of God, and His House, and His Ministry, and His Sacraments; then, there is a solemnity, an awfulness, even as it is heard in this life, in the charge, "Son, remember." 3. Remember the blessings God has showered upon thee. (Dean Vaughan.) II. Another thing is, that MEMORY IN A FUTURE STATE WILL PROBABLY BE SO RAPID AS TO EMBRACE ALL THE PAST LIFE AT ONCE. We do not know, we have no conception of it, the extent to which our thinking, and feeling, and remembrance, are made tardy by the slow vehicle of this bodily organization in which the soul rides. As on the little retina of an eye there can be painted on a scale inconceivably minute, every tree and mountain-top in the whole wide panorama, so, in an instant, one may ran through almost a whole lifetime of mental acts. Ah, brethren, we know nothing yet about the rapidity with which we may gather before us a whole series of events; so that although we have to pass from one to another, the succession may be so swift, as to produce in our own minds the effect of all being co-existent and simultaneous. As the child, flashing about him a bit of burning stick, may seem to make a circle of flame, because the flame-point moves so quickly, so memory, though it does go from point to point, and dwells for some inconceivably minute instant on each part of the remembrance, may yet be gifted with such lightning speed, with such rapidity and awful quickness of glance, as that to the man himself the effect shall be that his whole life is spread out there before him in one instant, and that he, Godlike, sees the end and the beginning side by side. Yes; from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Once more: it seems as if, in another world, memory would not only contain the whole life, and the whole life simultaneously; but would perpetually attend or haunt us. III. A CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE. It does not lie in our power even in this world, to decide very much whether we shall remember or forget. There are memories that will start up before us, whether we are willing or not. Like the leprosy in the Israelite's house, the foul spot works its way out through all the plaster and the paint; and the house is foul because it is there. I remember an old castle where they tell us of foul murder committed in a vaulted chamber with a narrow window, by torchlight one night; and there, they say; there are the streaks and stains of blood on the black oak floor; and they have planed, and scrubbed, and planed again, and thought they were gone — but there they always are, and continually up comes the dull, reddish-black stain, as if oozing itself out through the boards to witness to the bloody crime again! The superstitious fable is a type of the way in which a foul thing, a sinful and bitter memory — gets engrained into a man's heart. He tries to banish it, and gets rid of it for a while. He goes back again, and the spots are there, and will be there for ever; and the only way to get rid of them is to destroy the soul in which they are. Memory is not all within the power of the will on earth; and probably, memory in another world is still more involuntary and still more constant. A memory, brethren, that will have its own way; what a field for sorrow and lamentation that is, when God says at last, "Now go — go apart; take thy life with thee; read it over; see what thou hast done with it!" One old Roman tyrant had a punishment in which he bound the dead body of the murdered to the living body of the murderer, and left them there scaffolded. And when that voice comes, " Son, remember I" to the living soul of the godless, unbelieving, impenitent man, there is bound to him the murdered past, the dead past, his own life; and, in Milton's awful and profound words,Which way I fly is hell — myself am hell!There is only one other modification of this awful faculty that I would remind you of; and that is — IV. That in a future life MEMORY WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH A PERFECTLY ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE CONSEQUENCES, AND A PERFECTLY SENSITIVE CONSCIENCE AS TO THE CRIMINALITY OF THE PAST. You will have cause and consequence put down before you, meeting each other at last. There will be no room then to say, "I wonder how such and such a thing will work out," "I wonder how such a thing can have come upon me"; but every one will have his whole life to look back upon, and will see the childish sin that was the parent of the full-grown vice, and the everlasting sorrow that came out of that little and apparently transitory root. The conscience, which here becomes hardened by contact with sin, and enfeebled because unheeded, will then be restored to its early sensitiveness and power, as if the labourer's horny palm were to be endowed again with the softness of the infant's little hand. It is not difficult to see how that is an instrument of torture. It is more difficult to see how such a memory can be a source of gladness, and yet it can. Calvary is on this side, and that is enough! Certainly it is one of the most blessed things about "the faith that is in Christ Jesus," that it makes a man remember his own sinfulness with penitence, not with pain — that it makes the memory of past transgressions full of solemn joy, because the memory of past transgressions but brings to mind the depth and rushing fulness of that river of love which has swept them all away as far as the east is from the west. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) 1. In the first place, the worldly man derives a more intense physical enjoyment from this world's goods than does the child of God. He possesses more of them, and gives himself up to them without self-restraint. Not many rich and not many noble are called. In the past history of mankind the great possessions and the great incomes, as a general rule, have not been in the hands of humble and penitent men. In the great centres of trade and commerce — in Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, London — it is the world, and not the people of God, who have had the purse, and have borne what is put therein. So far as this merely physical existence is concerned, the wicked man has the advantage. 2. In the second place, the worldly man derives more enjoyment from sin, and suffers less from it, in this life, than does the child of God. The really renewed man cannot enjoy sin. His sin is a sorrow, a constant sorrow, to him. He feels its pressure and burden all his days, and cries, "O wretched man, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And not only does the natural man enjoy sin, but, in this life, he is much less troubled than is the spiritual man with reflections and self-reproaches on account of sin.This is another of the "good things" which Dives receives, for which he must be "tormented"; and this is another of the "evil things" which Lazarus receives, for which he must be "comforted." 1. In view of this subject, as thus discussed, we remark, in the first place, that no man can have his "good things" — in other words, his chief pleasure — in both worlds. There is no alchemy that can amalgamate substances that refuse to mix. No man has ever yet succeeded, no man ever will succeed, in securing both the pleasures of sin and the pleasures of holiness — in living the life of Dives, and then going to the bosom of Abraham. 2. And this leads to the second remark, that every man must make his choice whether he will have his "good things" now, or hereafter. Every man is making his choice. The heart is now set either upon God, or upon the world. 3. Hence we remark, in the third place, that it is the duty and the wisdom of every man to let this world go, and seek his "good things" hereafter. Our Lord commands every man to sit down like the steward in the parable, and make an estimate. He enjoins it upon every man to reckon up the advantages upon each side, and see for himself which is superior. (W. G. T. Shedd, D. D.) 1. Memory shall there recall the events of time as seen in the perspective of eternity. In the crowd and hurry of the present, things bulk before us disproportionately. We need to be at a distance from them before we can estimate them rightly. That is one reason why the past is seen always more correctly when it is past, than it was when it was present; and why it is, that in taking a review of anything, we observe more clearly where we have failed, or in what we have been to blame, than we did at the. time when we were engaged in it. You may despise now the blessings which you enjoy, but when they have gone from you to return nevermore, you shall see them in their proper brightness, and upbraid yourselves for your madness in letting them go unimproved. 2. But another thing calculated to intensify the power of memory as an instrument in the retribution of the future life, is the fact that there it shall be quickened in its exercise, and we shall not be able to forget anything. Things of which we are now oblivious shall there be brought back with lurid distinctness to our remembrance, and actions long buried beneath the sands of time shall, like the ruins of Pompeii, be dug up again into the light, and stand before us as they were at first. Among ancient manuscripts which modern research has brought to light, there are some, called by learned men palimpsests, in which it has been discovered that what was originally a gospel or an epistle, or other book of Holy Scripture, had been written over by a medieval scribe with the effusions of a profane poet; but now, by the application of some chemical substance, the original sacred record has been produced, and is used as an authority in settling the reading of disputed passages. So the pages of memory are palimpsests. 3. Another thing which will intensify the power of memory as an element in future retribution is the fact that, in the case of the lost, conscience shall be rectified and give just utterances regarding the events reviewed. As he now is, the sinner can look back with mirth on come hour of frantic dissipation, or some deed of shame; but then conscience will compel him to contemplate such things with the agony of remorse. As he now is, he can congratulate himself on having done a clever thing when he has overreached his neighbour; but then he will lose sight of the cleverness of the act in the guilt by which it was characterized. As he now is, he can gloss over his excesses by speaking of himself, in the specious and entirely deceptive phraseology of the world, as "fast," or "a little wild," or "sowing his wild oats," or the like; but then conscience will insist on calling things by their right names, and each act of wickedness will stand out before him as rebellion against God. Thus, with conscience rectified and memory quickened, it is not difficult to account for the agony of the lost, while at the same time the retributive consequences of sin in the future life are seen to be not the effects of some arbitrary and capricious sentence, but the natural and necessary results of violating the law which was written at first upon our moral constitution.APPLICATION: 1. Look at these things in their bearing on the privileges which at present we so lightly esteem. Every blessing disregarded now will there be recalled by memory, and transformed by conscience into an upbraiding reprover and a horrible tormentor. 2. Again, let us apply the principles which have been before our minds this morning to the opportunities of doing good to others which we have allowed to go by us unimproved. Behold here, how the conscience of this man gives sting to his memory as he recalls the resources which were at his command, and sees how much he might have done with them for the promotion of the welfare and happiness of his fellow-men. Never before had he seen his responsibility for them as he sees it now, and now that he does see it in its true light he is not able to act according to its directions, so that the perception of it only magnifies and intensifies his agony. But is there no voice of warning in all this to us? (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) 1. Their natural powers and faculties will not only be continued, but vastly strengthened and enlarged. 2. They will not meet with the same obstructions to mental exercises that they meet with here in their present state of probation. Here their cares, their troubles, their employments and various amusements, dissipate their thoughts and obstruct reflection. But there such objects will be entirely removed from their reach and pursuit. 3. God will continually exhibit before their view such things as will excite the most painful reflections and anticipations. He will set their sins in order before them, in their nature, magnitude, and peculiar aggravations, so that they cannot obliterate them from their minds. He will exhibit all his great, amiable, and terrible attributes of power, holiness, justice, and sovereignty before them, and give them a constant and realizing sense of His awful presence and displeasure. He will give them no rest and no hope. Let us now — II. TAKE A SERIOUS VIEW OF THEIR BITTER REFLECTIONS IN THE REGIONS OF DESPAIR. 1. They will realize what they are. Rational and immortal beings, which can never cease to exist nor to suffer. 2. They will realize where they are. In hell. 3. The damned will reflect whence they came to that place of torment. They will reflect upon the land of light and the precious advantages they there enjoyed, before they were confined to the regions of darkness. 4. They will reflect upon all that was done for them, to prevent them from falling into the pit of perdition. 5. They will realize that they destroyed themselves, which will be a source of bitter and perpetual reflections. 6. They will reflect upon what they had done, not only to destroy themselves, but others. 7. They will reflect upon what good they might have done, while they lived in the world. 8. It will pain them to think how they once despised and reproached godliness, and all who lived holy and godly byes. 9. Their clear view of the happiness of heaven will be a source of tormenting reflections. 10. Finally, they will reflect not only upon what they have been, and might have been, but upon what they are, and always will be. They will reflect that being filthy, they shall be filthy still; that being unholy, they shall be unholy still; and that being miserable, they shall be miserable still.Application: 1. If the state of the damned has been properly described, then it is of great importance that ministers should preach plainly upon the subject, and if possible, make their hearers realize the danger of going to hell. 2. If the miseries of the damned be such as have been described, then it deeply concerns sinners to take heed how they hear the gospel. 3. If the miseries of the damned be such as have been described, then we see why the Scripture represents this world as so dangerous to sinners. 4. If the miseries of the damned arise from bitter reflections, then all sinners, in their present state, are fit for destruction. They have just such views, and feelings, and reflections in kind, as the damned have. 5. If the miseries of the damned, and the character of sinners, be such as have been described, then there is reason to fear that some sinners are very near to the pit of perdition. They are in the broad road which has led many such persons as they are to the place where there is no light, and no hope. The symptoms of eternal death are upon them, though they know it not. (N. Emmons, D. D.) I. THE POSSESSIONS HE HAD IN THIS: "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." Yes, all shall be recollected: the gains in business that this lost soul in perdition secured when he was an inhabitant of our world; his patrimonial possessions, his accumulations of wealth, his splendid mansions, his gay equipage, his sumptuous living, his retinue of servants, everything that constituted his gaiety and his grandeur, and all his pomp and circumstance. But what advantage will it be to have a voice perpetually saying to him throughout eternity, "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things"? Oh, the sting of that past tense — "thou hadst! II. LOST SOULS WILL REMEMBER THEIR WORLDLY PLEASURES. The poet has said, and every man's experience sustains the propriety and truth of the expression, Of joys departed never to return, oh how painful the remembrance." Think of the votary of this world's pleasure, think of the man of fashion, think of the woman given up to little else than earthly delights, suddenly arrested in their career, and carried into eternity, away from all their pleasures, to a land where no sounds of mirth, no voice of song, no note of music, ever break upon the ear. III. THE LOST SOUL WILL REMEMBER IN ETERNITY HIS SINS. The great multitude forget theirs now as soon as they are committed; and any man that sets him. Bell down to the task of counting the number of his transgressions, will find he is engaged in as hopeless a work as numbering the stars that burst on his view on a clear winter's night. The lurid flashes of perdition will throw light on this subject, and for ever settle the question, that sin is an infinite evil; and then all excuses will be silenced. IV. THE LOST SOUL WILL RECOLLECT IN ETERNITY ITS MEANS OF GRACE, ITS OPPORTUNITIES OF SALVATION, ITS ADVANTAGES FOR OBTAINING ETERNAL LIFE. V. THE LOST SOUL IN ETERNITY, WILL REMEMBER ITS IMPRESSIONS, CONVICTIONS, PURPOSES, AND RESOLUTIONS, ON EARTH. Sometimes it is painful to you now to think of this, and you are ready to say, "Oh, that I had never heard that sermon; oh, that I had never had those impressions; oh, that those convictions had never taken hold of my heart! I cannot enjoy my sins as I once did; I am half spoiled for the world, though I am not a member of the Church." Yes, and you know, that often the scene of festivity, in which others experience no interruption, is marred for you. Then think, young man, think what will be the case in eternity, when a voice shall say, "Son, remember thy impressions; remember thy convictions." (J. A. James.) 1. Consciousness lies at the foundation of all responsible life, and soon merges into the fuller day of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is the knowledge which self attains when it says "I," and recognizes that "I" is distinct from anything else in the universe; and involves three things — the knowledge of "myself," of something not "myself," and of the relations arising between what is "myself" and what is not "myself." 2. In order to make these relations explicit, we need a faculty to tell us that we existed yesterday, and what other faculty is this but memory? But unless we make memory to subsist in two parts, as a capacity to retain and an energy to recall, we shall not explain its workings, or be able to see in what way it is deathless. 3. The principles by which active memory works among the treasures of passive memory to recall things new and old, are called the primary and the secondary laws of association. Ideas and actions have relation to time, and connect with each other like links in a chain. Sometimes we perceive the connection between the ideas which memory recalls, at other times we do not; and yet there is some connection, just as when a row of balls is struck at one end, the force is transmitted through them, and the ball at the other end takes up the motion and the journey of the impinging ball. 4. But if memory is thus complete and deathless — as without doubt it is — some one may ask, "How is it possible for any to go from an imperfect life, with its imperishable record, and derive any pleasure from its contemplation?" I answer: "In the life of heaven love will predominate, and by the laws of association it will bring forth from the storehouse only such reminiscences as are pure and holy." Conclusion: In view of all this, how wise and necessary for our future happiness to fill the present life and its passing moments with kind words, upright thoughts, and useful actions. And, on the other hand, will not the memory of an evil life, if unchecked by grace and unrestrained by holy love, constitute a source of keenest misery? Will not a deathless memory work upon the quickened conscience, and gnaw like a worm that never dieth, or burn like a fire that is never quenched? (L. O. Thompson.) 1. A first fact is the wonderful power of recollection which some men are known to possess. Sir Walter Scott repeated a song of eighty-eight verses which he had never heard but once, and that, too, three years before. Woodfall, the stenographer, could report entire debates a week after they had been delivered in the House of Commons, and this without any help from writing. But instances like these need not be multiplied. In old age the scenes of childhood and youth reappear with startling clearness, and ofttimes the sins of youth are recalled by a terrified conscience. 2. A second fact is seen in the flood of memories which sudden danger brings to consciousness — the chief events of life, and, among these, things entirely forgotten. This is the experience of persons rescued from drowning or violent death. Admiral Beaufort states that during the moments of submergence every incident of his life seemed to glance across his recollection, not in mere outline, but the whole picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature. (L. O. Thompson.) Great sinners have even prayed for madness as a blessing, because they knew that memory would perish with the mind, of which it is a part. But nature was ever saying to them, "Son, remember." The intoxicating cup owes not a little of its fascination to its power of drowning hateful memories. Lord Byron says —"I plunged amid mankind. Forgetfulness I sought in all, save where 'tis to be found, And that I have to learn."Oh, give me the art of oblivion, cried Themistocles. A man once offered to teach a philosopher the art of memory for five talents. "I will give you ten talents," was the reply, "if you will teach me the art of forgetting." Very touching is the old-world fable that between earth and the happy plains of Elysium — the classical heaven — the river Lethe flows, and that whoever tastes its waters forgets all his past. The heathens knew that there could be no happiness hereafter unless somehow memory let go its hold of past sins. Gentle sleep owes its healing power to this, that it helps us to forget. Oh, to bury our dead past as men bury their dead out of their sight; for one sin vividly remembered has sometimes power to make the whole life bitter. "Forgetfulness," it has been said, "is the daughter of time," but our parable shows that she is not always the daughter of eternity, as forgetting is impossible to the unpardoned. (J. Wells.) "Don't write there," said a little newspaper boy to a dandified youth, whom in the waiting-room of a railway station he saw about to scratch something with his diamond ring on a mirror that was hanging on the wall. "Don't write there!" "Why not?" "Because you can't rub it out!" So would I have you, my unconverted hearer, to be careful what you write, in your words and actions, on the tablets of your memory. You can't rub it out! and as you think of that surely you will agree with me that "the time past of your lives may suffice to have wrought the will of the Gentiles."(W. M. Taylor, D. D.) It is the teaching of modern science that no force is lost in the universe. It may be changed into other forces, but its equivalent is perpetuated. Heat becomes motion, and motion stopped becomes heat. Hence any change in the universe must affect every part of the universe. The jar of the present moment shakes the world, and, Proctor says, all worlds. By your voice you set in motion currents of air which meet on the other side of the globe. No man can speak blasphemy or foulness even in privacy without having the whole universe for an audience. We are moved upon by physical influences, born ages ago, in the remotest domain of space. In like manner the forces which originate in this world affect all worlds. Nothing is lost in the hard domain of matter. Is it likely that anything is lost in the sensitive realm of mind? Let us not think that the mental history of our life is to be lost. Great libraries have been lost and scholars have wept, but the book of the human soul has not yet been destroyed, and all its obscure passages will yet be illumined. All that is needed is a sensation strong enough to bring the past to life. The judgment bar of Christ will make us remember. What a terrible retribution would be the giving of a lost soul to the contemplation of himself! With what anguish would he look on his own vanquished years! "Sad memory weaves no veil to hide the past." Hour after hour, year after year, the past life is unfolded, and in the midst of that past he beholds the form of Jesus and seems to hear His words of sorrow and of doom: — "All thy life long have I stretched forth My hands to thee, and thou wouldest not."A great gulf. I. In trying solemnly to speak upon this matter, I shall commence with this — THERE IS NO PASSAGE FROM HEAVEN TO HELL — "They which would pass from hence to you, cannot." Glorified saints cannot visit the prison-house of lost sinners. They did both grow together until the time of the harvest; it is not necessary, now that harvest has come, that they should lie together any longer. It were inconsistent with the perfect joy and the beatific state of the righteous, with its perfect calm and purity, that sin should be admitted into their midst, or that they should be permitted to find companionships in the abodes of evil. Those who are nearest and dearest must be divided from you, if you perish in your sins.II. As we cannot go from heaven to hell, so the text assures us, "NEITHER CAN THEY COME TO US THAT WOULD COME FROM THENCE." The sinner cannot come to heaven for a multitude of reasons. Among the rest, these: 1. First, his own character forbids it. 2. Moreover, not only does the man's character shut him out, but also the sinner's doom. What was it? "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." If it is everlasting, how can they enter heaven? 3. Moreover, sinner, thou canst not go out of the prison-house because God's character and God's word are against thee. Shall God ever cease to be just? III. But now, once again to change the subject for a few minutes, I have to notice in the third place, that while no persons can pass that bridgeless chasm, so NO THINGS CAN. Nothing can come from hell to heaven. Rejoice ye saints in light, triumph in your God for this — no temptation of Satan can ever vex you when once you are landed on the golden strand; you are beyond bowshot of the arch-enemy; he may howl and bite his iron hands, but his howlings cannot terrify and his bitings cannot disturb. IV. Again, we change the strain for a fourth point, and this a terrible one. As nothing can come from hell to heaven, so nothing heavenly can ever come to hell. There are rivers of life at God's right hand — those streams can never leap in blessed cataracts to the lost. Not a drop of heavenly water can ever cross that chasm. 1. See then, sinner, heaven is rest, perfect rest — but there is no rest in hell; unceasing tempest. 2. Heaven, too, is a place of joy; there happy fingers sweep celestial chords; there joyous spirits sing hosannahs day without night; but there is no joy in hell. 3. Heaven is the place of sweet communion with God. 4. There is no communion with God in hell. (C. H. Spurgeon.) There is in a forest in Germany a place they call the "deer-leap," two crags about eighteen yards apart, between them a fearful chasm. This is called the "deer-leap," because once a hunter was on the track of a deer; it came to one of these crags; there was no escape for it from the pursuit of the hunter, and in utter despair it gathered itself up, and in the death agony attempted to jump across. Of course it fell, and was dashed on the rocks far beneath. Here is a path to heaven. It is plain, it is safe, Jesus marks it out for every man to walk in. But here is a man who says, "I won't walk in that path; I will take my own way." He comes on until he confronts the chasm that divides his soul from heaven. Now his last hour has come, and he resolves that he will leap that chasm, from the heights of earth to the heights of heaven. Stand back, now, and give him full swing, for no soul ever did that successfully. Let him try. Jump! Jump! He misses the mark, and he goes down, depth below depth, "destroyed without remedy." Men! angels! devils! what shall we call that place of awful catastrophe? Let it be known for ever as "the sinner's death-leap."(De W. Talmage, D. D.) I. DYING DOES NOT SUSPEND CONSCIOUSNESS. The Bible knows nothing of "dormant souls." Death takes down the scaffolding, but not the edifice.II. DYING DOES NOT EFFACE REMEMBRANCE OF THE LIVING. Thought speeds back to earth and earthly friends. Those on earth may forget the spirit world, but those in that world forget not earth. III. DYING DOES NOT CHANGE CHARACTER. A physical change cannot affect moral quality. IV. DYING BRINGS CONDITION AND CHARACTER INTO ACCORD. These two men, whose outward condition was so unlike, were equally different in character. When death came, each went to his own place, one to be "comforted," because the germinant seeds of peace and love were in his own heart; the other to be "tormented," because the devouring flames of unbelief and selfishness were in his own bosom. V. DYING RENDERS THE CONDITION RESULTING FROM CHARACTER PERMANENT. Man may hope theft although he die impenitent, he will in the future life find some path to heaven. But the Bible points to none. The rich man had new light, but it did not make him penitent. It did not humble him for his sin. It did not banish his unbelief. It did not expel his selfishness. It did not fill his heart with love. It helped him to see, what perhaps he had before disbelieved, that life on earth is the only time to prepare for life beyond the grave. The only way to heaven is by coming into harmony with God. (P. B. Davis.) People Jesus, Job, John, LazarusPlaces Road to JerusalemTopics Amount, Calling, Debt, Debtors, Lord's, Master, Master's, Owe, Owest, Saying, Sending, Summoned, SummoningOutline 1. The parable of the unjust steward.14. Jesus reproves the hypocrisy of the covetous Pharisees. 19. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar. Dictionary of Bible Themes Luke 16:1-7 5556 stewardship 7552 Pharisees, attitudes to Christ 8841 unfaithfulness, to people Library The Unjust StewardEversley, 1866. NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Luke xvi. 8. "And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely." None of our Lord's parables has been as difficult to explain as this one. Learned and pious men have confessed freely, in all ages, that there is much in the parable which they cannot understand; and I am bound to confess the same. The puzzle is, plainly, why our Lord should SEEM to bid us to copy the conduct of a bad man and a cheat. For this is the usual interpretation. … Charles Kingsley—All Saints' Day and Other Sermons September 8 Morning February 9 Morning February 7. "Faithful in that which is Least" (Luke xvi. 10). The Gains of the Faithful Steward Memory in Another World The Follies of the Wise Two Kinds of Riches Dives and Lazarus Vain Hopes. On the Words of the Gospel, Luke xvi. 9, "Make to Yourselves Friends by Means of the Mammon of Unrighteousness," Etc. The Good Steward The Rich Man and Lazarus The Use of Money A Preacher from the Dead The Sunday-School Teacher --A Steward Rendering Our Account. The Contrast. Great Surprises. Petty Dishonesty. The Unrighteous Mammon First Part of the Book. The Unjust Steward - Dives and Lazarus - Jewish Agricultural Notes - Prices of Produce - Writing and Legal Documents - Purple and Fine Linen - The Prudent Steward. 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