s trials and sorrows to
cease? ought he not then to be "comforted" in the bosom of Abraham, in
the paradise of God? There is that within us all, which answers, Yea, and
Amen. Such a balancing of the scales is assented to, and demanded by the
moral convictions. Hence, in the parable, Dives himself is represented as
acquiescing in the eternal judgment. He does not complain of injustice.
It is true, that at first he asks for a drop of water,--for some slight
mitigation of his punishment. This is the instinctive request of any
sufferer. But when his attention is directed to the right and the wrong
of the case; when Abraham reminds him of the principles of justice by
which his destiny has been decided; when he tells him that having taken
his choice of pleasure in the world which he has left, he cannot now have
pleasure in the world to which he has come; the wretched man makes no
reply. There is nothing to be said. He feels that the procedure is just.
He is then silent upon the subject of his own tortures, and only begs
that his five brethren, whose lifetime is not yet run out, to whom there
is still a space left for repentance, may be warned from his own lips not
to do as he has done,--not to choose pleasure on earth as their chief
good; not to take their "good things" in this life. Dives, the man in
hell, is a witness to the justice of eternal punishment.

1. In view of this subject, as thus discussed, we remark in the first
place, that no man can have his "good things," in other words, his chief
pleasure, in _both_ worlds. God and this world are in antagonism. "For
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John i. 15,
16). It is the height of folly, therefore, to suppose that a man can make
earthly enjoyment his chief end while he is upon earth, and then pass to
heaven when he dies. Just so far as he holds on upon the "good things" of
this life, he relaxes his grasp upon the "good things" of the next. No
man is capacious enough to hold both worlds in his embrace. He cannot
serve God and Mammon. Look at this as a _matter of fact_. Do not take it
as a theory of the preacher. It is as plain and certain that you cannot
lay up your treasure in heaven while you are laying it up upon earth,
as it is that your material bodies cannot occupy two portions of space at
one and