The Pulpit Commentary — Luke — Volume 2 — Section 71

to his, that occasion must speedily arise when one or other will have to be slighted, despised, and disobeyed, if the other be regarded, honoured, and served. God, for instance, will command a scattering, when mammon will urge to a further keeping and gathering ; God will require spending on others, when mammon or the world will urge a spending on one's own lusts. Therefore, the two Lords having characters so different and giving commands so opposite, it will be impossible to reconcile their services: one must be despised if the other is held to; the only faithfulness to the one is to break with the other; 'ye cannot serve God and mammon.'" "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." There is t.-0 be no playing at religion. A saintly voice (Augustine) has thus interpreted the election : may the "amen" to his words arise from our souls I "0 my God, thou sweetness ineffable, make bitter for me all carnal comfort which draws me away from the love of eternal things, and in evil manner allures me to itself by the view of some present delightsome good. Let me not be overcome, O Lord, by flesh and blood. Let not the world and the brief glory thereof deceive me. Let not the -ievil and his subtle fraud supplant me. Give me strength to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to persevere. Give me, instead of all the comforts of the world, the most sweet unction of thy Holy Spirit and the love of thy blessed Name." Vers. 19--31.-The rich ma11 Oftd Lazarus. A parable so striking and solemn that, as has been said, "they must be fast asleep who are not startled by it.'' It is in several respects unique. Figure is so blended with reality, so rapidly passes into reality, that we are doubtful where and how far to separate between the form of truth and the truth itself. Indeed, it has been qustioned whether the discourse is to be regarded as a parable at all; whether it is not to be regarded as the record of facts and experiences. Alone, too, of all the pictorial sayings of Jesus, it carries thought into the region behind the veil; it gives us a glimpse into the hidden economy, He who has access to the invisible takes us whither the eye of man has never pierced. And yet it is most difficult to settle on what principle we shall interpret the mysterious conversa- tions reported, and what signification we are to attach to the words concerning the world of the dead. Let ns not strain the sentences beyond the meanings which they are fairly entitled to bear; let us aim at a calm, truthful, practical application of Christ's teaching to heart and conscience. L Consider THE RELATION OF THE PARABLE TO THE WORDS WBIOR PRECEDE, AND TO THE CIRCUllSTANCEB WHICH SURROUND, IT. The Pharisees, we are told in ver. 16, had derided the teaching as to "the mammon of unrighteousness," their opposition having been intensified by the declaration, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon.'' The reply of Christ contains an indictment with two counts, in respect of which their mammon- worship was made apparent. 1. Their self-justifying spirit before men. Their piety was so disposed as to attract the observation and win ihe applause of men. It was the covering of covetousness, because it indicated a dependence on men, a wish to make ga.ir,. of godliness. The parable which follows illustrates the same state of mind and heart under another phase of the ea.me world-worship. Certainly the portrait of the rich man resembles the Sadducee rather than the more severe and abstemious Pharisee. But extremes often meet. Pharisee and Sadducee have this in common-man and the present are more than God and the future: t.-0 look well, to stand well with society, is really the horizon of the aim and the prize of the ambition. 2. Their merely outward and l,egal righteoUBness. In their casuistry (as, e.g., about marriage, glanced ai in ver. 19) they tampered with the eternally right and good; and their essential unbelief ,was proved by the failure to see that Moses and the prophets prepared men for that kingdom of God to which John bad pointed, and into which he had called every one to -press. They w~re so imbe~d~ in their respectabilities that they felt n~ need of this kingdom, and did not receive 1t. The parable presents a man_ who, havrng Moses a~d the prophets had never awakened out of a false, carnal security, had never seen his real poverty ~nd wretchedness. And all, in the latte~ part ~f the t~le, which ~rings out bis awakenment when too late-the torments of hie consc10nce, his appeal, his cry, his pleading for his brethren-is intended to vivify the worthlessness and worse than worthlessness of the trust on which the Pharisee was built up, and to declare that, before the judgment-seat of the Eternal, Moses and the prophets would witness against him for his rejection of the Light that had come into the world. CH. xvi. 1-31.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. 73