die, let Aban and Bahman carry me to the bosom of
joy."5 And it was a common belief among the Persians that souls
were at seasons permitted to leave purgatory and visit their
relatives on earth.6 It is evident that the narrative before us is
not a history to be literally construed, but a parable to be
carefully analyzed. The imagery and the particulars are to be laid
aside, and the central thoughts to be drawn forth. Take the words
literally, that the rich man's immaterial soul, writhing in
flames, wished the tip of a finger dipped in water to cool his
tongue, and they are ridiculous. Take them figuratively, as a type
of unknown spiritual anguish, and they are awful. Besides, had
Christ intended to teach the doctrine of a local burning hell, he
surely would have enunciated it in plain words, with solemn
iteration and explanatory amplifications, instead of merely
insinuating it incidentally, in metaphorical

4 See copious illustrations by Rosenmuller, in Luc. cap. xvi. 22,
23.
"Hic locus est partes ubi se via findit in ambas:
Dextera, qua Ditis magni sub moenia tendit;
Hac iter Elysium nobis: at lava malorum
Exercet poenas, et ad impia Tartara mittit."

5 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 408.

6 Ibid. s. 410.

terms, in a professed parable. The sense of the parable is, that
the formal distinctions of this world will have no influence in
the allotments of the future state, but will often be reversed
there; that a righteous Providence, knowing every thing here,
rules hereafter, and will dispense compensating justice to all;
that men should not wait for a herald to rise from the dead to
warn them, but should heed the instructions they already have, and
so live in the life that now is, as to avoid a miserable
condemnation, and secure a blessed acceptance, in the life that is
to come. By inculcating these truths in a striking manner, through
the aid of a parable based on the familiar poetical conceptions of
the future world and its scenery, Christ no more endorses those
conceptions than by using the Messianic phrases of the Jews he
approves the false carnal views which they joined with that
language. To interpret the parable literally, then, and suppose it
meant to teach the actual existence of a located hell of fire for
sinners after death, is to disregard the proprieties of criticism.

"Gehenna," or the equivalent phrase, "Gehenna of fire,"
unfortunately translated into our tongue by the word "hell," is to