Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/373

 hotly contended for the family idea of society against the exploiters and graspers at the top. Dante's idea that each sin on earth fashions its own proper punishment in hell receives confirmation in this parable. "The great gulf fixed," which constituted Dives's hell, was the gulf which he himself had brought about. For the private fortune he amassed had broken up the solidarity of society—had introduced into it a chasm both broad and deep. The gulf between him and Lazarus in this world exists in the world to come to plague him. The thirst which parched Dives's tongue, "being in torments," was the thirst for companionship, the healing contact once more with his fellows, from whom his fortune had sundered him like a butcher's cleaver. Jesus had so exalted a notion of the working class, their absence of cant, their rugged facing of the facts, their elemental simplicities, their first-hand contact with the realities of life, that he regarded any man who should draw himself off from them in a fancied superiority, as immeasurably the loser thereby, and as putting himself "in torments."

Lazarus

(From the London "Spectator")

Still he lingers, where wealth and fashion Meet together to dine or play— Lingers, a matter of vague compassion, Out in the darkness across the way; Out beyond the warmth and the glitter, The light where luxury's laughter rings, Lazarus waits, where the wind is bitter, Receiving his evil things.