5.  The youthful student of Scripture should be reminded, first of all, that its figurative language is no less certain and truthful than its plain and literal declarations.  The figures of the Bible are employed not simply to please the imagination and excite the feelings, but to teach eternal verities.  The Lord Jesus, “the faithful and true Witness,” said:  “Heaven and earth shall pass away:  but my words shall not pass away.”  Mark 13:31.  Yet there is a class of interpreters who seem to think that if they can show in any given case that his language is figurative, its meaning is well nigh divested of all certainty and reality.  Thrice in immediate succession did he solemnly warn his hearers to cut off an offending hand or foot, and to pluck out an offending eye, rather than be cast with the whole body into hell, “into the fire that never shall be quenched:  where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”  Mark 9:43-48.  But, says one of this class of expositors, the maiming of the body is figurative language, and so is the representation of the worm that never dies.  Undoubtedly the maiming of the body is so; and how far the unquenchable fire may also be a figure for the dread reality that awaits the incorrigibly impenitent in the world to come we pretend not to know.  But in the lips of Jesus figures teach truth, not fiction.  The unhappy sinner who despises the grace of the gospel will find the reality not less terrible than the figures by which Christ has represented it.  The story of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable; but we cannot on this ground set aside the solemn lessons which it inculcates.  What these lessons are, it requires only candor and faith to receive.  They teach us that God’s suffering children go immediately, upon death, to a state of conscious blessedness; and “the men of the world, which have their portion in this life,” to a place of unmitigated suffering.  Whatever be the comprehension of the word Hades (rendered in our version by the word hell), there is an impassable gulf between Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man in torment.  The “great gulf fixed” may be a figure; but it represents an awful reality; and that reality is, that there is no transition from the one state to the other.

6.  In the allegory the higher spiritual transaction is, as we have seen, directly represented by the lower.  When we know, therefore, what the allegory represents, we have the key to its interpretation, and all its incidents fall naturally into place.  If the sphere of the allegory be the outward history of God’s people, all its incidents—­at least all its main incidents—­ought to have a significance.  If its sphere be that of inward spiritual experience, as in the Song of Solomon, more latitude must be allowed for the drapery of the story; yet here also the essential parts will each correspond to something in the higher object represented.