yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in
charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man
rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the
one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the
unsanctified beggar at his gate.

And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring--the soul-hungry, whether
he be a millionaire or a poor clerk--the determined seeker whose eye is
single and whose whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more
creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases
to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich
in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor
Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day
after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the
abundance of his faith, would never miss.

Christianity has suffered much from our failure to give the Saviour due
credit for subtlety. So far as money--mere wealth--is a soul-factor at
all, it must be held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's
chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the refinements of
culture and the elegances of modern luxury and good taste, important
though these are to the spirit's growth. The true value of wealth to the
soul--a value difficult to over-estimate--is that it provides
opportunity for, and encourages the cultivation of, that virtue which is
"the greatest of all these"; that virtue which "suffereth long and is
kind; which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up"--Charity, in
short. While not denying the simple joys of penury, nor forgetting the
Saviour's promises to the poor and meek and lowly, it is still easy to
understand that charity is less likely to be a vigorous soul-growth in a
poor man than in a rich. The poor man may possess it as a germ, a seed;
but the rich man is, through superior prowess in the struggle for
existence, in a position to cultivate this virtue; and who will say that
he has not cultivated it? Certainly no one acquainted with the efforts
of our wealthy men to uplift the worthy poor. A certain modern
sentimentality demands that poverty be abolished--ignoring those
pregnant words of Jesus--"the poor ye have _always_ with
you"--forgetting, indeed, that human society is composed of unequal
parts, even as the human body; that equality exists among the social
members only in