for those who had riches to enter the kingdom of God. Seeing the amazement of his disciples, he emphasized his doctrine by adding that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter that kingdom. Hereupon his disciples, "excessively astonished," asked who then could be saved, and Jesus left a loophole for the salvation of the rich by the declaration that, impossible as it might be for men to pass a camel through a needle's eye, all things are possible with God (Mk. x. 17-27). A like animus against the wealthier classes is evinced in the story of the king who invited a number of guests to a wedding festivity. Those who had received invitations made light of them, one going to his farm, another to his merchandise, and so forth; or, according to another version, alleging their worldly affairs as excuses. Seeing that they would not come, the king bade his servants go out into the highways, and bring in whomsoever they might find; or, as Luke puts it, the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind (Mt. xxii. 1-10; Lu. xiv. 16-24).
More indiscriminately still is this averson to the rich expressed in the parable of Lazarus and Dives. Here we are not told that the great proprietor had been a bad man, or had acted with any unusual selfishness. The utmost we may infer from the language used about him is that he had not been sufficiently sensitive to the difference between his own condition and that of the beggar. But no positive unkindness is even hinted at. Nor had the beggar done anything to merit reward. He had only led one of those idle and worthless lives of dependence on others which are too common among Southern nations. Yet in the future life the beggar appears to be rewarded merely because in this life he had been badly off; and the rich man is punished merely because he had been well off (Lu. xvi. 19-25). A stronger instance of apparently irrational prejudice it would be difficult to find.
In connection with these notions about wealth there is a curious theory of social intercourse deserving to be considered. Jesus has expressed it thus: "When thou makest a supper or a dinner, do not invite thy friends, or thy brothers, or thy relations, or thy rich neighbors, lest they also should invite thee in return, and thou shouldst have a recompense. But when thou
