ised as David's Son and Lord, speaking of the kingdom of heaven with authority, and not as the scribes. Those recorded in the narrative of Luke are not expounded, probably because they were spoken in the social circle to those who were personally interested in the lessons then given; the Pharisees, sitting in Moses' seat, were stewards and shepherds over the flock of Israel. It may be remarked in passing, that the plain speaking of Jesus to those assembled at the banquet of the Pharisee did not meet with much acceptance from them, while the poor outcasts, who, according to the custom of the country, waited outside to receive the fragments of the feast, listened with attention, and heard gladly that they too might hope to eat bread in the kingdom of God. The various aspects of failure in responsibility, which under the disguise of parables were then presented to their consideration, we shall now endeavour to follow through the chain included in the 15th and 16th chapters. The parable of the lost sheep, seems principally intended as a rebuke to those teachers who were so zealous of the letter of the law that they would scarcely draw a sheep out of the pit on the Sabbath day, and who at all events did not go after those who strayed from the pasture lands (the wildernesses) of Judea into the abominations of the heathen, or the uncleanness of moral degradation. They prayed and fasted and feasted with those who prayed and fasted and feasted respectably, but there was no missionary exertion to bring back the silly animal who had lost his place in society, and yet was a child of Abraham. The ninety and nine just persons who needed no bringing back, who valued their position, and kept their place, such as Zacharias, Simeon, Anna, and Elizabeth, who dwelt and fed in the wilderness upon the hope of the glory that was to be revealed, looking for a city made without hands, waiting for the consolation of Israel,-these would not satisfy the heart of the really Good Shepherd, while one sinner was missing from the fold. Yet the Scribes and Pharisees murmured because He received sinners, and ate with them, thereby making them partakers with him, the angels of God being a cloud of sympathising witnesses. (See Rev. v.) Similar to this is the next parable, which testifies to the sloth or carelessness of the housekeeper, who having lost some of the precious things of her husband, the house must be lighted and cleansed in order to the recovery of the silver coin; the master's mark is on it, it is his own; suitable means must be used for its recovery, therefore there is joy in heaven over the lost one found. Again, in the parable of the prodigal son we are shown the sinful, wilful son of Abraham who, having been entrusted with the oracles of God, with the law of Moses, and the testimony of the prophets, departs from his father's presence, and abuses and wastes the property entrusted to him for his own benefit, and ultimately becomes a beggar upon the face of the earth. Alas for privileged high-born Israel! what avail the genealogies so carefully and proudly preserved to a companion of swine, whose very touch was pollution. To this he must be brought, before he will arise and go to his father in repentance and believing hope. And now behold the manner of his father's love! Not only is his far-off coming recognised and welcomed, but his portion of dignity and honour and his title to it in sonship is remembered and proclaimed; shoutings of Grace, grace! are echoed on all sides, and all but the Pharisaic elder brother rejoice that mercy triumphs over judgment. So far of our blessed Lord's discourse was spoken in the hearing and for the encouragement of the publicans and sinners who had drawn near to him; and the recovery of the lost sheep, the restoration of the missing treasure, and the return of the sinful child secured notwithstanding the unfaithfulness and failure of the guardians of the property of God. We now proceed to consider the parables of the 16th chapter, addressed to the disciples, to whom it was given to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The parable of the unjust steward points directly to those who, sitting in Moses' seat, were not like him (Heb. ii.), faithful over the master's goods and household. To them were committed the oracles of God, and therefore, said our Lord, "Think not that I will accuse you to the Father," &c.; the law itself carefully preserved by them should be the witness against them. Having allowed the sheep to stray from the pastures, having lost the treasure committed to their care, having allowed the spendthrift son to waste his heritage; it was time that he should be no longer steward. He is unable to repair his faults, and he is too proud to acknowledge and repent of them. In this dilemma he resolves upon adding sin to sin, by drawing a false balance sheet, and by lowering the standard of God's requirements, and substituting ceremonial observances and trifling sacrifices of mint, anise, and cummin for the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and the love of God. "It is corban" took the place of the first commandment with promise, hoping by these means to find favour with men, which indeed such views were well calculated to ensure; and therefore his own lord* acknowledged his worldly wisdom, and held him up in this respect as an example and warning to those who should hereafter be placed in a similar position in the coming dispensation. Let us now examine into the relative value and responsibilities of the past and present dispensations; "The unrighteous mammon," as contrasted with the "true riches." The goods committed to the stewards of the law, the corn, wine, and oil, were only to be continued while the legal statutes and precepts were diligently obeyed; they were "statutes by which they could not live, but to which they had voluntarily bound themselves under a curse when they forsook the God of grace, who brought them out of Egypt. Their occupation of the land of Canaan, though it was the glory of all lands in that day could only be to each man the length of his span of years; and national sin at any time shook the righteous man's habitation to the foundation: hence the mammon of that dispensation was not true riches; while the better portion appointed for the children of light is incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away. We must not, however, confound the inheritance with the heritors; the inheritance of the Jews was good, the failure was in the nation who were of the seed of Abraham; nevertheless the kingdom of God, which is the portion of the children of God in the ages to come is represented as the true riches, glorious and eternal in the heavens. But will the name of children, or Christians, or believers, or followers be a title to this inheritance? Here is the answer. Alford's revision. No man can serve two masters, and those who try to do so are compared with one who putteth away his wife to marry another, which is adultery. This is the position of the daughter of Israel now. Let us beware that the spouse of Christ keep her garments undefiled, lest the concluding parable of the series, that of the rich man and Lazarus, be found as applicable to the present as to the justly condemned children of the kingdom. J. U. H. Correspondence. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. "All judgment is committed to the Son-at his appearing and his kingdom." DEAR SIR,-We are agreed that Scripture is its own interpreter, and that when it does not interpret for us, we cannot for ourselves. This is no where more felt than when we attempt to expound the parables of our Lord, because they cannot be understood quite literally, being parables. Nevertheless, any instruction supplied by this illustrative mode of teaching, is not, I imagine, confined to such statements, but has previously been plainly taught in undisguised precept or doctrine. It was not until after the Lord had stood forth as the Prophet of Israel, and was rejected in that character, that he, "from that time forth, began to speak to them in parables;" some of which he expounded to his disciples, and others carry the truths taught on the very face of them, from the mode and manner of their introduction, their relation to the context, or the transfer of the application from the class of persons under consideration, to a single figure as its representative. Of this latter sort are, I conceive, the parables in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of the Gospel by Luke, each and all of which appear to be little more than recapitulation of those truths which had been plainly set before them, both in Moses and the prophets, and by the Lord Jesus himself, and here gathered up and pictorially presented to our view. With these few preliminary remarks, I enter on the case of the rich man and Lazarus, in order to clear up the mistaken idea that so generally prevails of its application to a doctrine no where else taught in Scripture, that the disembodied soul of man exists in a conscious state of either happiness or misery, from the time of his death until his resurrection. I shall not enter here on the other proofs which are to be found in Scripture of the fact that, "the dead know not any thing," but merely show that this portion of Holy Writ does not stand in opposition to the other plain statements of God's Word. The chain of parables of which this forms the conclusion are addressed to the conscience and responsibility of the Jewish nation, whose unfaithfulness, as shepherds, stewards, sons, and brethren is here depicted, and made the occasion of manifesting the riches of the grace, as well as the terrors of the wrath of God, in the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed (Rom. ii. 9, 10), to the Jew first, as here. That "the rich man" personifies the Jew, is evident from the mutual recognition between Abraham and himself of the relationship of "father" and "son," and the acknowledged authority of Moses and the prophets. Whether Lazarus was a Jew, a Samaritan, or a Gentile, does not distinctly appear; but his name testified that "his help was in God," and he was the Jew's "neighbour," laid at his gate, full of sores, and anxiously craving a share of the good things, of which the rich man had enough and to spare. It does not appear, however, that they were ever communicated to him (see ver. 25), for which cause the rich man is brought into condemnation. "AFTER the death (of both parties) comes the judgment" not during their death, but when raised from it, we find them in the respective places to which their works entitled them (I speak not of faith or profession, but of fruit): the beggar at the great supper leaning on Abraham's bosom, and the rich man in outer darkness without a drop of water to cool his tongue. That these are no figures we learn from Matt. viii. 11, 12, where it is distinctly stated that "many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down (anaklithesontai),-recline as at table (compare John xiii. 23 and xxi. 20),— with Abraham, &c., while the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." In Luke xiii. 28, &c., it is said they shall see this. So did the rich man "afar off;' so did the covetous Balaam bear testimony to his own part, and the money-loving Judas also will be found in his own place. Compare Luke xiv. 12, &c., with this, which is direct precept on the subject. Another proof that this judgment is exercised in resurrection, is that while no instrumental agency is employed when the spirit (or, more properly, breath) returns to God who gave it, the angels are sent forth with the sound of a great trumpet, to gather the elect at the coming of the Son of Man. (Matt. xxiv. 31, and in Matt. xiii. 49, 50 also.) We see their terrible commission at the end of the age (see Matt. xxv.), " for, behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and the proud and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, and shall leave them neither root nor branch," &c. These latter judgments are on men who had not died, while Luke speaks of those in the same resurrection as Daniel (xii. 2), to the shame and contempt of the age; but the principle of both judgments is the same. Hence the warning in the Epistle of James (specially v. 1, &c.); hence the warning to the Laodicean Church, &c.; but, as Jews, the testimony of Moses and the prophets is "that which shall judge them at the last day." Deut. xv. 7-12, Lev. xxiii. 22, and xxv. 35, &c., and several parallel passages in the Psalms and prophets, are the warnings against this particular sin and its consequences, which will be manifested in the latter day with tenfold evil. It is not unlikely that the "great gulf" may be formed by the earthquake at the coming of the Lord. (See Zech. xiv. Revelation, &c.) I have no doubt that HADES (aidios) here is the same as the unseen place of outer darkness, and probably is the land of Idumea. A right understanding of 1 Cor. xv. 23, would clear up several difficulties connected with this matter, namely, that at the coming of the Lord Jesus, when all his accredited servants shall rise from the dead, there will be distinct bands or com panies of them (perhaps ten, see Luke xix. 13). Of these we recognise several: (Dan. xii. 1, 2, and 13) Jews really; 2nd. Saints of this dispensation (1 Thess. iv. 20); and 3rd. The martyrs under antichrist (Rev. vii. 9); The vanquishers (Rev. xiv.), who had been sealed (vii. 4); The two witnesses (Rev. xi. 11, 18). Some little time elapsing between each resurrection until (in Rev. xx. 4) the whole of the first resurrection is completed, and the rest of the dead live not again until after one thousand years are finished. The Jews rise as a body: they have always been dealt with publicly as a body (they are not the Church of the firstborn, and even in resurrection they form no part of it), except those who are of the election of grace at this time. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. 66 Things to come" shall not be able to separate us; but to the Jew there is condemnation in resurrection according to Dan. xii. &c. The evil of the Jews in the latter day, as testified against by James in his epistle to the ten tribes, who are waiting for the coming of their Lord, is proof that those who will not hear Moses, will not hear Christ. dren of the kingdom are cast out; their present position is that of a dark place, while their judgment as rejecters of the Son of God will be a "much sorer punishment" than that of those who despised the law of Moses. Yet we know that this their misery shall not always continue (Isa. xl. 1); and, blessed be God, we know also that the God of the Jew is the God of the Gentile, and that though heaviness endureth for a night, joy cometh in the morning. J. U. H. OUR LORD'S WORDS TO THE THIEF ON THE CROSS. DEAR SIR,-May I be allowed to make one or two remarks upon a paper in the RAINBOW for May, on the subject of our Lord's words on the cross. I will preface my remarks by observing that on three points I most thoroughly agree with the writer of that paper. In the first place, I have for years maintained, at the cost several times of causing considerable offence, the truth, as I believe it, that whatever may be the condition of the spirits of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, they are not in what is popularly understood by heaven, i.e., they are not in glory with God; but that their entrance upon full glory depends on their resurrection and on the coming of Christ in his kingdom. I also fully concur in the view advocated that Christ on his cross, in making the promise which he did, was claiming his prerogative as a King; and I am also looking to a time when the face of the earth will be renewed. But I confess that I cannot concur with the axiom laid down that our view of Christ's promise must be entirely bounded by the view which the dying man was able to |