Salvation here and hereafter. Sermons and essays

Contents

1 PAGE

II. — THE SPIRITUAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE 20

Ul.— PROFIT AND LOSS 58

I. The Rich Man And Lazarus

Lukexvi, 19-31.

Our Lord's purpose in this parable is, I think, to startle us into serious religious thought, not to set forth a particular religious doctrine. If we look for a special doctrine in it, we shall find it difficult to agree as to what the special doctrine is. It is not, of course, that rich men go to hell because they are rich, and that beggars because they are beggars go to heaven. It is not that it is sin to have property and salvation to be a pauper. For in that case, for one thing, the road to hell would, contrary to Scripture, be difficult and the way to heaven easy; it being easy for us all to come to beggary if we wish, and hard for all of us to become rich, try how we will. Neither is it that a rich man is lost if he is a bad man, while a beggar if he is a good man is saved ; for, besides that this is a lesson not worth teaching, nothing is said either as to the rich man being bad, or the beggar being good. You may say, of course, that I A the doctrine is that in the world to come distinctions are final, that between class and class there is a gulf which cannot be passed ; but then, in that case, what we should like to know is, what the classes are, and why they are so separated, and this the parable does not help us to understand.

Look for a particular religious doctrine in this parable, I say, and you will have difficulty in finding one — one about which many would agree. Its purpose I believe to be wider and greater — viz., to awaken serious thought. The curtain is the picture. The story is the doctrine. It is a flash of lightning in the night, which lightens up a familiar landscape under an unfamiliar aspect and awakens in the spectator unfamiliar feelings. It is a glimpse of the world of human life, in which reality bursts through appearance with the crash of doom, in which the tremendous possibilities that lie hid under cover of some superficial class distinctions overturn these distinctions, and by the suddenness and violence with which they do it force from us the question. Is there indeed something besides appearance and much more than appearance }

We have here neither Pharisee and publican, nor Jew and Gentile, nor any characters which might turn our minds off upon considerations of place, or time, or religious profession, or anything of that sort. We have two men, such as men everywhere are, and must be, the one rich, the other poor. What happens to these two happens to all men ; reality in their case, as in every case, outlives and surmounts appearance ; the distribution of "good things" and "evil things" which sunders them in the one sphere, leaves them, when it comes to an end, the possibilities of good and evil that belong to the other, and among these possibilities we see there are the rich man's Hades, and the beggar's Paradise. You may find an answer to the question, Who is the rich man and who is Lazarus, in other parables and other teaching of Christ ; you m^y find it too in Moses and the prophets. You will find, if you inquire, that the rich man figures often among the poor and the beggar among the rich ; but the purpose of the story concerning these two is not to teach us to make fine distinctions of character, but to bring out, as regards human life, the broad distinction between appearance and reality, and to force us to attend to that distinction — in a word, as I have said, to awaken in us religious thought.

In this view of the parable I do not need to puzzle myself about words or phrases contained in it. I certainly do not need to suppose that when the rich man speaks of being " tormented in this flame," we are to understand that Christ teaches us that there is a real lake of fire and brimstone in which living men are to burn to all eternity. I do not need to suppose this any more than to suppose that Abraham's bosom is the bosom of the patriarch Abraham. The parable is not mixed with history or doctrine ; it is parable and nothing else. The rich man asking for water across the gulf which no one could pass — Abraham replying to him across that gulf — he replying to Abraham — Abraham again replying to him — all this is grotesque if you forget that the whole story is a parable. If you forget this, Abraham's bosom and the place of torment, so contiguously placed, and having such close communications, become absurd too. Christ took the common language of his day about the invisible world, and made use of it in this parable, certainly never intending that any part of it should be quoted to substantiate this or that theory of hell or heaven, or in regard to either " to thicken proofs which do demonstrate thinly." It was the purpose of this parable, I repeat, to awaken thought, not to teach doctrine ; its language therefore is not indeed exaggerated (for exaggeration is here impossible), but it is bold, pictorial, imaginative.

Few men think much of anything but the outward appearance, the outward and superficial distinctions, in human life ; most men never think of anything else. Even where there is religious profession and religious talk, there is in this sense little religious thought. This in which we live is a real world in its way ; you may call it an illusion, or a cheat, or vanity, or what you will, but at any rate there are some things in it which are real enough to flesh and blood. The comforts of abundance like the rich man's, the wretchedness of poverty and disease like those of Lazarus, are, in a fashion, real. These things and the like of these are real to bodily sense, and bodily sense every one has. Compared with these, good and evil in the form of what is spiritual, are more or less unreal except to those who are spiritual, and they are few. Thus it is, that if we are like the mass of men, we are more or less earnest and engrossed in those outward things which superficially distinguish man from man — so much in earnest about them, and so much engrossed, that we forget to think how much or how little there is behind and beyond these distinctions. What man is as man gets little of our notice, because so much of it is given to what men have or want. The contrasts which strike us most are those made by wealth and poverty. The differences of which we make most account or most constant account, are differences of outward estate. By custom we regard this outward estate not as if it were only for a time, and only a part of life, but as if it were the whole and everlasting.

Happy man, we say, looking at a rich man — wretched man, we think, seeing a beggar go by. To our minds in their ordinary mood, if we are ordinary men, and even ordinary Christians, it is as if all of human life were on the surface and we saw it all, so that any change in the outward appearance must be of grave consequence, and nothing could be of consequence so grave as a great change in that. We have, perhaps, religious opinions, including views of a hereafter, and according to them we ought in our way of thinking to go much beyond the present moment and the outward shows of things. But in point of fact we do not. We seldom" know well, and often we do not consider at all, what sort of life, what sort of experience, a man has in himself, besides what he has in his means and substance. Whatever views we may have of heaven or hell, or the importance of character, they do not materially lessen our sense of the importance of distinctions of the outward estate and condition. It is as if the things that are seen were eternal. It always costs us an effort, and often a great effort, to conceive of a state of things different from the present — different in this, that those distinctions which riches and poverty, prosperity and adversity, health and disease make between men, shall be less important than they are here or shall have no place at all. Our regular and customary way, in a word, is to look at human life as if we saw it all when we see what we cannot help seeing— its outward conditions.

Now, this parable is meant to take us, as it were, by storm, and, once for all, out of this way of regarding life ; and with this view it parts circumstances and conditions, separates riches and poverty, Dives and Lazarus in another world, as they are parted and separated in our common modes of thought — only it makes the distance between them that between heaven and hell, instead of something less, to which our calculations point, and then, so to

Speak, it puts that in heaven which we put in hell, and puts that in hell which we put in heaven — it does this, it takes this startling line, in order to force us to ask. Can such things be ? is it thus things are, so different from what they seem ?

It is not then, as I believe, the purpose of this parable to teach us a doctrine or doctrines. Certainly it is not its intention to teach us that rich men because they are not poor go to hell, and that beggars because they are not rich go to heaven. Yet I venture to remark, that if we might find in it any trace of a doctrine at all, it would be doctrine as to wealth and poverty, as to those good things and those evil things by which the outward lot of men is most conspicuously diversified. "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." As I think of these words, I have to ask myself whether the law of exchange or compensation, at w^hich they not vaguely hint, to which, indeed, they give the most unequivocal expression, which constitutes the argument of the story, and the ground-work of its action — I have to ask myself, I say, w^hether this law of exchange or of compensation is only invented, so to speak, for the occasion, or whether it has any existence in fact. Is that which is so pat to the purpose of the story, so essential to its framework, altogether wide of the truth of things, so wide that as far as we follow the story wdth interest and with feeling, we diverge from truth into one of the many tracks of error. I cannot suppose it ; I cannot think that where the story explains its own course and movement, the explanation is drawn from the side of the improbable and impossible, and not from that of the credible and actual.

It is most true that at their death the rich man and the beggar are equal, equal so far as absolute poverty at the moment can make them so. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Naked we came into the world, naked we return to the dust. But when it is granted that the rich man and the beggar are equal at the moment of death, the fact remains that they were not equal before ; and if everything is to be accounted for, that fact must also be reckoned and explained. Is it not, then, suggested to us here, and is it not consistent with all we know, or believe, or hope of the Eternal Righteousness and Goodness to suppose that whereas good things and evil things are here unequally distributed, this inequality will hereafter be redressed, so that as far as any man has had reason to complain that his lot here was hard, he will have amends made to him hereafter; so that the beggar who has had his evil things here will be comforted hereafter ; and the rich man who has had his good things, will, by comparison with the beggar, be tormented. It must be so. Justice must be done. There is no heaven to fall, there is no righteousness which governs and is supreme, if justice is not to be done. It is true that povertyno more than wealth, beggary and sores no more than purple and fine linen, produce always one sort of character ; it does not follow that because a man is afflicted he must learn what affliction has sometimes taught — patience, and fortitude, and trust in God. Too often, as regards character, the result of poverty is as fatal as the result of luxury. Give me neither poverty nor riches, was a prayer dictated by common-sense, if not by piety. The school of extreme poverty, like the school of excessive luxury, turns out some of the worst specimens of mankind. Yet for all that, if you take a wide view of the government of this world, supposing it to be a government of goodness, you must see that it is probable, to say the least, that all privation and pain and suffering and loss to which men are subjected now will be made use of hereafter. Does God waste that wretchedness, of which the best instincts of the human heart teach us to be most painfully sparing .-* Does the Eternally Good, the Father of Christ, allow misery to swallow up in its blackest depths so many mortal lives without any intention that anything should ever come of it t I cannot suppose it. My belief is that nothing is wasted in this universe, and especially no woe of any human being. If this be your belief can you not suppose that the beggar's misery may be turned to account in the way of teaching him to know what true blessedness is, that by his poverty he may be put in the lo THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i.

way of the acquisition of the true riches? Can you not imagine that some profit might be made for Lazarus out of his experience at the rich man's gate as a preparation for that fuhiess of joy which is at God's right hand ? — is it not possible to fancy that somehow the soul which has never known anything but want and wretchedness in this life should have a way of its own in another life of taking in any blessedness which is there ? May we not say, using the most general terms we can find, that it is not only no loss for a beggar to lose his misery, but that out of a lifetime of misery like the beggar's there is this which a man can carry away with him — a certain aptitude, or talent, or genius, for the appreciation of any happiness to be met with elsewhere ?

On the other hand, it does not need to be said that, while it is no loss for the beggar to lose his poverty, it is a loss to the rich man to lose his riches. Apart altogether from any questions as to the punishment which "every sin deserves/' is it not most certain that the rich man who has had his good things here, and who by his use of them or misuse (call it what you will) makes the possession of them his good, and the loss of them his evil — is it not most certain, I say, that he must be tormented in a different state of existence from this — by comparison tormented, if only Lazarus and himself are placed on a footing of equality as regards having none of them. He who has had his good things and loses them, requires also to lose

I.] THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. u

his relish for them in order to be content with nothing or to appreciate other things. Thus while it is easy to suppose the beggar comforted by the loss of his rags, it is equally easy to suppose the rich man tormented by the loss of his purple and fine linen.

It is not necessary to make fine distinctions. All that is needful is to recognize the fact that, whereas no man can love beggary and bodily sores, a man can love purple and fine linen, and sumptuous fare, so as to have no relish or to lose all relish for other things ; to this extent a man can pamper his body so as to lose his soul. And so it may be, nay, must be, that while we can carry nothing out of this world in the shape of wealth, yet the wretch who goes out of it with the sense of lifelong misery takes with him what may be profitable to him in eternity ; while he who goes out of it with the sense that he has had his good things and has been deprived of them takes with him that which might make a hell of heaven.

If there is anything in the shape of doctrine here to be found, it is this — doctrine surely, which is worthy of the Son of Man, revealing the Father of All, making plain the impartial and eternal goodness with which this world and every world is ordered — Let the poor take comfort ; let the rich take heed. God is no respecter of persons. Behold, there are first which shall be last, and there are last which shall be first.

But I repeat once more, that the purpose of this parable is greater and wider than to teach us some one rehgious lesson. It is to awaken us once for all to serious, to religious thought. If there is reality, if heaven and hell belong to it, what is it } The parable puts us on asking this. And when we ask the question we have not far to go for an answer. It is the good and the evil, not of the outward condition and estate, but the good and the evil of disposition and character with which are boLind up for men the issues of life and death, the possibilities of that good which we call heaven, and that evil which we call hell. All experience and, not alone, all Scripture, teaches us this. A beggar, in virtue of his character, may be enviable ; a rich man, in spite of his purple and fine linen, may be an object of pity. Do you wish to sound the deepest depths of misery t do you wish to scale the topmost heights of blessedness } You cannot do either by the way of beggary or the way of luxury, but you can do it by the love of evil or the love of goodness. It is not a revelation of things beyond our ken, outside of our experience, but a revelation of things that were and are and ever shall be, the most certain and most real of all things, which is made by any religion worth the name. It is a fact which transcends all facts as well in its certainty as in its importance, and not a doctrine or a theory resting upon doubtful authority, or limited observation, that the good of this life and all life is goodness, and the misery of this life and all life is sin. We are human ; therefore our life turns in its larger movements and its greater issues, not upon meat and drink and clothing, but upon right and wrong, upon truth and falsehood, upon selfishness and kindness, upon passion indulged and passion regulated, — not upon the needs of the body, but upon the wants of the soul. Search the world, and you will not find one corner of it containing one man where the law has not been and is not, that the soul that sinneth it shall die, and the soul that loves good it shall eat and be satisfied. Talk to us of heaven and hell, as this parable does, and bid us ask what these things may be, and we are driven, turn where we will, to one conclusion. These things mean good and evil, righteousness and iniquity, salvation from selfishness and sin, the condemnation of vice and hardness of heart.

We forget this in our common worldly ways and thoughts. However we may feel the certainty and truth of it when we set ourselves deliberately to think of it, we forget it in our everyday life. We look with envy upon the rich ; we shrink with horror from the beggar's unsavoury doom. We do not, to the same extent, or so instinctively, envy the good man and shudder at the man of mean and impure spirit. The temporary and superficial distinctions in human life are what occupy our minds. How much keener than other feelings the regret in many of our minds that the lot of the many is to be poor. How few are there who do not feel as if the best of worlds would be

14 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [l.

one in which the lot of the many would be to be rich.

But if we only took to heart, in any measure, what this parable teaches ; if the tremendous possibilities it shadows forth were in any degree present to us as facts ; if we were disposed, that is to say, to serious religious thought, how different would be our views of things and our experience of the world. We should not envy the rich man more than we envy the good man ; we should not despise and pity the poor man more than we pity or despise the mean or selfish man. We should not feel as if life were lost or gained according as our lot is that of the many poor or the few rich. With the sense that heaven and hell are behind the outward appearance in every man's life, we should be concerned about meat and drink and clothing as for to-day, and about other things — righteousness, truth, goodness — as for ever. We should bear poverty with cheerfulness as thinking it God's opportunity and ours, and we should use wealth as thinking it not our own but His.

Thus if we but tasted the powers of the world to come as this parable might teach us to do ; if religious thought were but awakened in us as this parable might awaken it ; if we only looked at things as this parable would have us look at them, not in the outward appearance, but in the eternal reality, what a step we should take in the direction of that highest blessedness called heaven, and away from that deepest misery called hell ! The effect of this would not be that we should be prompted to make a hell of this world in order to make a heaven of the next ; its effect would not be that we should have to go about bemoaning ourselves and asking how we are to escape the wrath to come, by what sort of belief or assurance that Ave believe something, are we to make sure of beino; taken at last to Abraham's bosom. If we but tasted the powers of the world to come as they are to be tasted here, felt that these powers are the awful powers of good and evil with which we have had to do every moment of our lives — with which, whether we will or no, we have more to do than with anything else ; and if thus our supreme concern were to cleave to that which is good, and to depart from that which is evil, we should enjoy salvation, and not merely expect it ; we should be in heaven, instead of only hoping to escape from hell.

Is not this a parable, then, worthy of Him whom we call the Light of the world 1 This undoctrinal view of the universe, how full it is of the great doctrine of the Gospel that God is our Father! Here He is no taskmaster, reaping where He has not sowed, and gathering where He has not strawed, demanding from all men alike that which He has made it impossible for most to give. Here He is that universal and eternal Father who, alike when He gives and when He withholds, in His distribution of good things and of evil things, remembers justice and does not forget to

THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [i.

be kind ; asks only from those who have, requires much only from those to whom much is given, and of them to whom little has been given requires little, and even that little only where their good requires it.

On any view of this parable the reference to Moses and the prophets with which it ends must be significant ; but in this view its significance is obvious. In favour of reality, the counterpart of appearance, with which religious thought and religious belief, properly so called, has to do, no miraculous witness needs to be adduced. Moses and the prophets, the great and good whose memories we revere, who, being dead, in virtue of their greatness yet speak, are ample witness to it since no witness whatever is required. If we feel, if our own experience teaches us, that life is good or evil according as it is well or ill lived,- that there is good in righteousness, and the last extremity of evil in all falsehood and iniquity, Moses and the prophets, our religious pioneers and guides, will then teach us much which it is profitable for us to learn, in order that we may follow in their footsteps, and live lives like theirs. But if we feel nothing of this, if in all our experience nothing of this has been brought home to us, neither should we be persuaded though one rose from the dead. All the apparitions, divine or diabolic, that could be imagined could never serve to convince a human soul that truth and goodness are other or better than falsehood and iniquity, or that any of these things belong to reahty, much less that they are reality, compared with which all else is but appearance. A ghost might be an authority among ghosts, an unexceptionable or a powerful witness in their affairs; but no ghost could furnish any new testimony or any testimony whatever to that reality with which men have to do as long as they are in the body and are not without souls. It is not something strange and miraculous that we have to think or believe if we are to be religious in our thought and in our belief — something for which we must have supernatural witness : it is that great fact of all human experience to which Moses and the prophets, and Christ himself bear constant testimony, that goodness is life and evil is death.

Last of all, I cannot but remark, that we turn away from the rich man of this parable with a feeling of pity. There was some humanity left in him by his selfish and sensual life. He was anxious that his five brethren should not come into this place of torment. The parables of our Lord, the Scriptures in general, do not give us those pictures of human beings converted into fiends which abound in religious literature. Among the accepted notions as to the place of perdition, one of the most unquestioned is that there good is not, not even as a recollection, but that evil is good. You cannot take that meaning out of this parable. Rich man as he was, the rich man of this parable was very ignorant, as ignorant and unthinking and

B

1 8 THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. [r.

unidea'd as the mass of men, rich and poor, everywhere are. He belonged to the great majority, the children of the night ; he was one of that great host of spiritual infants and imbeciles with whom all that is beyond the sphere of sense, all that concerns religion, is unreal, out of the course of nature, not born with the man, but created by arbitrary commandments, and to whom, therefore, the best or only witness to religious truth is a miracle, a portent, something which is neither matter nor spirit, neither dead nor alive, neither of earth nor of heaven, a ghost, one risen from the dead. But still, beggarly as was his soul, he was not without a heart. He was earnest with Abraham about his five brethren. Now, for my part, if I were going to argue anything upon this ground, I should not argue that sinners in the next world are past all hope and all feeling of what is good, but rather that even the prayer of a lost soul must find some response with God. Will any one tell me that a man can be represented as praying in the place of torment that his brethren may not be allowed to come into it, and that God, who is the Father of all men, can be supposed to have so much less humanity than a man as not to heed whether the suppliant himself is to remain for ever in that place 1 Will you make men out more humane than God t Will you represent^men as concerned about their kinsmen lest they should go to hell, and then will you represent Him as not caring if as many as are once there stay there?