Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/127

Rh to the bread for which we labor. All your great intelligence is weak before our simple faith. Your millions have no more value than our poor possessions.

154. During all ages we have had the rich and the poor, but no one could see why there should be any difference in position between these two classes of men because one had a small capital, another's was twice as great, a third's three times as great, etc.; and each one points with his finger saying: "Is it I that am rich? Such a one, or another, may indeed be called so."

It is these rich men of whom Jesus Christ has said: "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." (St. Mark x. 25.)

But I have seen a distance between the rich and poor like that between heaven and earth, or between the east and west. Between us and you, as has been said, is a great gulf fixed : we cannot come to you, nor you to us.

155. Suppose, for example, I gave a rich or an educated man this counsel: "You see on your side only baseness; come over to ours. Do not labor for bread, since you never have done it, but, by the mere fact of coming to us, you will escape the insupportable reproaches of your conscience." "I cannot do it," he will reply; "I would rather die than join you."

156. Will it not be the same at the last judgment, as says the Holy Scriptures? In his