man is rich,
it is with the greatest difficulty that he can be saved; for 'it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich
man to enter into the Kingdom of God' (Mark x. 25). This is startling
now, but it was not less strange and startling to the disciples who
'were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can
be saved?' But the needle's eye has not grown any larger since then,
and the camels certainly have not grown smaller! All true Christians
then must desire to relieve the rich man of his excess for his own
sake, since the inequality that ruins the body of Lazarus ruins the
soul of Dives; and Dives is the more miserable of the two, because the
soul is more precious than the body."[316]

The abolition of private property requires also the abolition of the
right of inheritance, as otherwise capital might again be accumulated
in the hands of the thrifty and the enterprising. Therefore the
manifesto of Marx and Engels already demands the "abolition of all
right of inheritance."[317] Other Socialists say that this right
should not be abolished. "Socialists used to insist upon the abolition
of the right of inheritance and bequest. But if what I gain by my own
labour is rightfully my property--and the Co-operative Commonwealth
will, as we have seen, declare it to be so--it will be inexpedient in
that Commonwealth to destroy any of the essential qualities of
propertyship; and I can hardly call that my property which I may not
give to whom I please at my death. No man in a Co-operative
Commonwealth could acquire so much more wealth than his fellows as to
make him dangerous to them."[318] "Socialists do not object to
property; they are not opposed to private property. They are therefore
not opposed to inheritance. The right to acquire and hold involves the
right to dispose by will or by gift. We only object to such a use of
property as enables classes for generation after generation to live on
the proceeds of other people's labour without doing any useful service
to society."[319] This very diplomatic sentence may be explained in a
variety of ways. Probably it means that holders of property of large
size could summarily be deprived of their possessions by order of the
Government, as has been indicated by that writer in another passage
(see page 97). Such a power would make the right to hold and to
bequeath property a farce. Property could be held then only on the
same terms on