304. What Is Meant by the "Impassable Gulf"?

The "impassable gulf," in Luke 16:26, is a figure employed by the Saviour in describing the eternal separation of the good and the evil in the future life. In his parables and discourses, in order to impress upon the minds of his hearers the central objects of the lessons, he invested them with such natural and harmonious surroundings as the subject and the occasion demanded; and to interpret such surroundings literally would be as futile as to translate literally any of the multitudinous passages, full of similar imagery, that abound in Oriental oratory.