And now we ask, if this state of things ought to last forever?  Is it right, is it just, that sin should enjoy in this style forever and forever, and that holiness should grieve and sorrow in this style forevermore?  Would you have the Almighty pay a bounty upon unrighteousness, and place goodness under eternal pains and penalties?  Ought not this state of things to be reversed?  When Dives comes to the end of this lifetime; when he has run his round of earthly pleasure, faring sumptuously every day, clothed in purple and fine linen, without a thought of his duties and obligations, and without any anxiety and penitence for his sins,—­when this worldly man has received all his “good things,” and is satiated and hardened by them, ought he not then to be “tormented?” Ought this guilty carnal enjoyment to be perpetuated through all eternity, under the government of a righteous and just God?  And, on the other hand, ought not the faithful disciple, who, perhaps, has possessed little or nothing of this world’s goods, who has toiled hard, in poverty, in affliction, in temptation, in tribulation, and sometimes like Abraham in the horror of a great darkness, to keep his robes white, and his soul unspotted from the world,—­when the poor and weary Lazarus comes to the end of this lifetime, ought not his 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.