The same is intimated in the parable of the rich man Lazarus.  The rich sinner is represented as passing, at death, into a place of torment, and confinement, and as despairing of even a momentary enlargement.  Other wise he would not have requested that Lazarus might be sent to warn his brethren who were then living on earth, but rather that he might have gone himself.  Him they would have known; and he could have given them a feeling description of the miseries which living in pleasure, regardless of the one thing needful, will draw after it.  Many advantages might have been expected from this personal appearance to his brethren, but he preferred no such petition.

His prayer that Lazarus might be sent, was probably intended to intimate that departed spirits remember their former state on earth, and the relatives and acquaintance whom they leave upon it; that they retain a concern for them; that they know that good spirits are used of God to transact matters relative to their spiritual concerns, and that those who die in their sins are kept in confinement, and not permitted to go forth; no, not to warn fellow sinners, whom they have left behind them.

This agrees with what is said by St. Peter, respecting the antediluvians.  He speaks of those as being “spirits in prison” in the apostolic age, “who were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited with them, in the days of Noah.”

It farther appears that their imprisonment is a state of darkness.  “Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness? to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”  This darkness is probably a contrast to the light enjoyed by glorified saints.  They are doubtless let into the purposes of heaven—­to them the mystery of divine providence is opened.  They see and admire the wisdom and goodness of God, in those dispensations, which while here, filled them with wonder.  But it seems that the wicked are not let into these things, but driven away in darkness, and left enveloped in it—­“None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.”

This may serve to explain a passage in Job, which might seem opposed to our construction of the text—­“His sons come to honor and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” * If we understand this of the wicked, it will harmonize with the other scriptures which have been adduced.  Though some understand the words of Job, as descriptive of a man’s state at the approach of death, at which period he is often lost and bewildered, and consequently unaffected with, any thing which may happen to his dearest connexions, for whom, in health, and while possessed of reason, he felt greatly interested.  This construction is favored by the words which follow, in which he is represented as still pained in body, as well as mind—­“But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.” +

* Job xiv. 21. + Vid.  Henry in locum.