TALMAGE ON THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.
By Chas L. Boyd
In a discourse on Luke 16:19-25, Mr. Talmage says concerning the burial of Lazarus, “They dig a hole, drop him in, and cover him up.” “That is not Lazarus that they buried. It was only his sores. Yonder goes Lazarus, an angel on his right, an angel on the left, carrying him up the steep of heaven,—talking, praising, rejoicing. Good old Abraham stands at the gate, and throws his arms around the new-comer.” Of the burial of Dives he says, “Dives is not buried there. That which is buried is only the shell in which he lived. Dives is down yonder in a deeper grave. He who had all the wine he could drink, asks for a plainer beverage. He wants water. He does not ask for a cupful, or a teaspoonful, but ‘just one drop,’ and he cannot get it. He looks up, and sees Lazarus, the very man he set the dogs on, and wants him to put his finger in water, and let him lick it off.” “You see this parable takes in the distant future, and speaks as though the resurrection were passed, and the body of Lazarus had already joined his spirit; and so I treat it.” Then why treat it as referring to the immediate present? Why try to make that which proves a future reward, prove a present conscious existence? Is this the best support for the chief corner-stone of Spiritualism? Again Mr. Talmage says, “Lazarus was carried up to the bosom of Abraham, one of the glorious old patriarchs. I suppose Abraham happened to meet him at the gate. And so after death, we will be greeted into glory. Our departed friends will be at the door. They have been waiting for our coming. Your father is there. Your mother is there. They have been dead these five, ten, or twenty years, and have been waiting within the veil. Some day they see a cohort leaving Heaven, and they say, ‘Whither bound?’ and the answer is, ‘To bring up a soul from earth.’ ‘What98soul?’ And a family circle in Heaven find it is one of their own number that is to be brought up, and they come out to watch, as on the beach we now watch for the sail of a ship that is to bring our friends home.” “I see the mother and her child meeting at the foot of the throne after some years’ absence. The child died twenty years ago, but is a child yet. I think the little ones who die, will remain children through all eternity.” If, as Mr. Talmage tells us, “the parable takes in the distant future, and speaks as though the resurrection were passed,” does it also prove such a doctrine as this? No wonder spiritualism thrives, when the learned D.Ds. sow the seed of which it is the legitimate fruit. Now he descends to the place where he left Lazarus, and says, “I believe there is an eternal hell, and this is my evidence. ‘I am tormented in this flame.’ Would not a man of common sense not prejudiced in the case, take this to be fire? literal fire? an all-sweeping fire? an eternal fire? All the engines of the nineteenth century have turned their hose toward putting out this fire; but still it burns on, and will burn forever.” As I see the word of God thus perverted, the language of Eld. J. Blain, Baptist minister, presses itself into my mind: “It is a notorious fact that in our theological works a nondescript dictionary is made, with definitions as follows: ‘To be dead,’ means to be more conscious. ‘To die,’ is to live on in woe. ‘To lose life,’ is to preserve a miserable existence. ‘Life’ means happiness. ‘To burn up,’ is to make a living salamander. ‘To destroy,’ is to preserve whole. ‘To devour,’ ‘perish,’ &c., mean to make indestructible and immortal. ‘Not to be,’ to be without end.”