“The parables may not be made first sources of doctrine. Doctrines otherwise and already grounded, may be illustrated, or indeed further confirmed by them, but it is not allowable to constitute doctrine first by their aid. They may be the outer ornamental fringe, but not the main texture of the proof. For from the literal to the figurative, from the clearer to the more obscure, has ever been recognized as the law of Scripture interpretation. This rule, however, has been _often forgotten_, and controversialists, looking round for arguments with which to sustain some _weak position_, one for which they can find no other support in Scripture, often invent for themselves supports in these.” But some persist that this is not a parable, but a literal narrative; and not to seem captious, we will consider it in this light. If this is veritable history, all the particulars must be taken literally. Then the wicked, tormented in the flames of hell, are within sight and speaking distance of the saved in Heaven. In other words, Heaven is but the shore of hell, and on that shore the redeemed can sit and watch the damned in their fearful contortions of agony for which there is no name, and listen to their entreaties for relief and their shrieks of fathomless despair, to an extent, it would seem, sufficient to satisfy the fiercest vengeance and the most implacable revenge. If this be so, our friends must certainly abandon the argument they build on Rev. 6:9, 10, where they have it that the souls of the martyrs, disembodied and conscious, cry to God to visit vengeance upon their persecutors. If they were where they could look over into the fiery gulf, and behold their persecutors vainly battling with its flaming billows, or if not already there, destined in a few short years to be plunged therein, let no one say of the holy martyrs that they would, under such circumstances, cry impatiently to God to hasten or intensify his vengeance. The arguments based on the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, and Rev. 6:9, 10, must, one or the other of them, be given up; for they devour each other. Let the advocates of the popular theory look to this.