t there were learned physicians beside him,
and perhaps friends and relatives, though, as a rule, selfish people
have few true friends. The other died we know not where, perhaps in
the hot dusty road at the rich man's gate. There were no doctors to
minister to his wants, no kindly hands to sooth his burning brow, to
moisten his parched lips, to close his glazing eyes. But the angels of
God were about his bed, and about his path, and in their hands they
bore him up, whom no man on earth had loved or cared for. And there is
a contrast in the after time for these two men. The rich man was
buried, doubtless, with great pomp. Some of us have seen such
funerals. What extravagance and display take the place of reverent
resignation and quiet grief! Of the beggar's burial place we know
nothing. But the sharpest contrast of all is in the world beyond, from
which for a moment Jesus draws back the veil. He who had pampered his
body and neglected his soul is now in torment; he who never listened to
the whisper of his conscience, is forced to hearken to its reproaches
now; he who had great possessions is worse off than a beggar--he had
gained the whole world and lost his own soul. And worst of all, he
sees Paradise afar off, and Lazarus resting there, where he may never
come. That beggar whom he had despised and neglected, to whose wants
he had never ministered, is comforted now, and the rich man is
tormented.

Oh! awful contrast! Dives in his misery of despair looks up, and for a
moment sees--

"The Heavenly City,
Built of bright and burnished gold,
Lying in transcendent beauty,
Stored with treasures all untold.

There he saw the meadows dewy
Spread with lilies wondrous fair--
Thousand thousand were the colours
Of the waving flowers there.

There were forests ever blooming,
Like our orchards here in May;
There were gardens never fading,
Which eternally are gay."

Saddest of all fates indeed must it be to gaze on Heaven and to live in
Hell. Then Dives remembers his brethren in the world, who are living
the old life which he lived in the flesh, spending his money perhaps;
and, still selfish after death as before, he asks that the beggar may
be sent from his rest and peace to warn them. The answer comes that
they, like Dives himself, have Moses and the Prophets to teach them, if
they neglect them nothing can avail them. And so the curtain drops
over this dreadful scen