into a joke (focum in jocum; a pun), a torturer’s pyre into festive flames. No less would the damned rejoice if they could thus behold the Son of God, and would set at nought fire, hell, and damnation.
6. Oh! if after myriads of years they were given a chance of obtaining one thing from Christ, would they ask of Him any thing else but that which the blind man required—Lord, that I may see? Why did the damned Dives ask that Lazarus might come with a drop of water at the tip of his finger to cool his parched tongue? Why did he not rather demand a refreshing shower, or a pleasant rill of cool water to flow into his throat? It was because he desired the presence of the glorified Lazarus. By that presence all his pains would be relieved, his hell would be turned into Paradise. The longed-for Lazarus is the very Son of God, who suffered poverty at the gate of the rich, asking for a little crumb of comfort, but in vain; rejected by the Jews, the dogs of Gentiles came, and found healing in His wounds.
Now the damned desire of the Father that He should send His Son, who with the finger of God’s right hand, the Holy Spirit, might touch the stream of celestial joys, and let one drop distil into the consuming fire, to refresh the lost for one moment, to give them for one instant a glimpse of the beauty of that radiant countenance. But in vain; in vain they ask, they cry, they weep; they shall see the face of Jesus no more.
The sentence was pronounced against the children of outer darkness when God said, My face will I turn also from them. The hiding of that countenance is the source of all ills. My face will I turn from them! they
