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NOTE. The reader is requested to notice, that in the arrangement of the matter for this volume, the printer incurred a mistake, by leaving sixteen pages instead of eight, for the title page and introductory matter to the work.

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AGREEABLY to your request, I shall simply, and briefly, give you my opinion of the rich man, and the beggar. Unaccustomed to arranging my ideas on paper, I shall aim rather at perspicuity, than elegance, well contented if my elucidation .should communicate satisfaction, similar to that which abideth in my own bosom. St. Matthew asserts, chapter xiii. 34, All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them. "Parables are decidely a kind of figurative language, and should rarely, if ever, receive a literal acceptation. I should as soon consider Bathsheba a real ewe lamb, killed by the opulent possessor of flocks and herds, as believe the rich man, and the beggar, individuals distinct from parabolical description. Such my sentiments, you will conclude that I reject the commonly received ideas; that I do not strip the figurative personages, introduced by the evangelist Luke, of the metaphorical vestments in which they are clothed by the Redeemer; in one word, that I do not regard a parable, as an history. But we will proceed in our investigation. Our subject commencing in the 16th chapter of Luke, in the 19th verse of that chapter, is continued to the close, and is thus worded:

"There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.

"And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, who was laid at his gate, full of sores.

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