human
(Mark xii. 27). And (2) the living souls of the departed are still conscious: their bodies are asleep in this world, but their spirits are awake in the other. For this truth we are not dependent upon the disputable meaning of the parable of Dives and Lazarus; although we can hardly suppose that that parable would ever have been spoken, unless the continued consciousness of the dead and their interest in the living were a fact. Christ's parables are never mere fables, in which nature is distorted in order to point a moral: His lessons are ever drawn from God's universe as it is. But besides the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31), there is His declaration that Abraham not only
gpt
in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, but
human
that coming
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thereat (John viii. 56). And there is His promise to the penitent thief:
human
Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise (Luke xxiii. 43). Can we believe that this promise, given at so awful a moment with such solemn assurance (
gpt
Verily I say unto thee ), would have been made, if the robber's soul, when in Paradise, would be unconscious of Christ's companionship? Could Christ then have
human
(1 Pet iii. 19), if the spirits of those who had died in the Flood were deprived of consciousness? And what can be the meaning of
gpt
crying
human
How long, O Master the holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood?