No one can suppose that Rachel literally wept at the murder of her children nearly 2000 years after her death, nor that the slaughtered Egyptians put their swords under their heads as they were lying in sheol, and conversed together in the nether parts of the earth, some being comforted, and others ashamed; nor that the kings overthrown by the king of Babylon rose up from their sepulchral thrones in mock solemnity, and taunted him with becoming weak as they.
But these were all figures to set forth great and salutary truths. May not our Lord then, for once, be permitted for a like purpose to use a like figure, so largely employed by the prophets, and so well known to his hearers, by personifying persons in hades to perform actions which were not there literally to occur? We have certainly as good reason to suppose that Rachel, the Egyptians, and the king of Babylon, were real personages, and their descent into sheol and the accompanying circumstance as related by the prophets, veritable history, as to suppose that Dives was a real character, and his torment in hades, and his conversation with Abraham, a real transaction.
Those who held in their hands the Old-Testament scriptures were perfectly familiar with such figures. There the “trees of the field” converse and “clap their hands,” the “floods” lift up their “voice,” the hills and mountains “sing,” stones from the wall “cry out,” and beams “answer,” the blood of Abel finds a “voice,” and “cries out from the ground,” and dead men rejoice over the fall of their rivals, slain by the sword. In a volume abounding with such figures, cannot for once a rich man, representing a class of living persons, be endowed in hades with life and speech? must this one figure of personification be singled out from all others, as a rigidly literal narrative, and be made to sustain the weight of the most terrific doctrine of which the mind of man can conceive?
Sufficient evidence has been produced to show that this is a parable. And now we invite the attention of the reader to the testimony of two eminent authors respecting the use which should be made of parables.
Dr. Clarke (note on Matt. 5:26) says:--
“Let it be remembered that by the consent of all (except the basely interested), no metaphor is ever to be produced in proof of a doctrine. In the things that concern our eternal salvation, we need the most pointed and express evidence on which to establish the faith of our souls.”
And Trench, in his work on parables, lays down this very important rule:--
“The parables may not be made first sources of doctrine. Doctrines otherwise and already grounded, may be illustrated, or indeed further confirmed by them, but it is not allowable to constitute doctrine first by their aid. They may be the outer ornamental fringe, but not the main texture of the proof. For from the literal to the figurative, from the clearer to the more obscure, has ever been recognized as the law of Scripture interpretation. This rule, however, has been often forgotten, and controversialists, looking round for arguments with which to sustain some weak position, one for which they can find no other support in Scripture, often invent for themselves supports in these.”
But some persist that this is not a parable, but a literal narrative; and not to seem captious, we will consider it in this light. If this is veritable history, all the particulars must be taken literally. Then the wicked, tormented in the flames of hell, are within sight and speaking distance of the saved in Heaven. In other words, Heaven is but the shore of hell, and on that shore the redeemed can sit and watch the damned in their fearful contortions of agony for which there is no name, and listen to their entreaties for relief and their shrieks of fathomless despair, to an extent, it would seem, sufficient to satisfy the fiercest vengeance and the most implacable revenge. If this be so, our friends must certainly abandon the argument they build on Rev. 6:9, 10, where they have it that the souls of the martyrs, disembodied and conscious, cry to God to visit vengeance upon their persecutors. If they were where they could look over into the fiery gulf, and behold their persecutors vainly battling with its flaming billows, or if not already there, destined in a few short years to be plunged therein, let no one say of the holy martyrs that they would, under such circumstances, cry impatiently to God to hasten or intensify his vengeance. The arguments based on the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, and Rev. 6:9, 10, must, one or the other of them, be given up; for they devour each other. Let the advocates of the popular theory look to this.
The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. Let it be noted that the persons themselves, as a whole, are spoken of, not any of their essential elements, or immaterial appendages. Nothing is said of the soul of either the rich man or Lazarus. As we are now considering this as a literal transaction, a question vital to the argument is, When do the angels bear those who have died, as persons (for there is nothing anywhere said about the angels’ carrying their souls), into Abraham’s bosom, or the state of the blessed? Such scriptures as Matt. 24:30, 31; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, answer this question very explicitly: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” When? At the second advent of the Son of man in majesty and glory; for then it is that the voice of the archangel, ringing through the long galleries of hades, shall wake the righteous dead from their silent slumbers, and angels bear them upward on wings of light, to be forever with the Lord.