34 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



And Jesus, looking into his earnest young face, loved 

 him* He would gladly have had him join their little 

 company, but He saw only too well that if he had brought 

 all his wealth with him social distinctions must inevitably 

 have arisen. So He told Him, '' Go, sell all that thou 

 hast, and give to the poor, and then come and follow 

 Me/' And the rich young ruler did what you and I 

 would have done under the circumstances ♦ Or perhaps 

 it would be more honest to say that he did what you 

 and I have done ; he made '' the Great Refusal/' Then, 

 as he went away sorrowful, Jesus told His disciples that 

 it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than 

 for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. Theologians have 

 performed miracles of exegesis to get the rich man into 

 Heaven. They, like the rich ruler, are chiefly interested 

 in a Heaven beyond the grave. So they have turned the 

 camel into a cable, and the needle's eye into an archway 

 in Jerusalem. But there is one thing that even scholars 

 cannot do, and that is to make a Kingdom of Universal 

 Brotherhood compatible with unequal distribution of 

 wealth. What would we think of a family in which 

 one child got the best of everything, while another 

 child lived on cheese-parings ? Now, Christ's Ideal 

 was a Kingdom of Heaven in which the whole human 

 race should live as one family and share and share alike. 

 Any inequality must be to the advantage of the weak. 



The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard shows 

 us that even if the wage system worked fairly and those 

 who worked the hardest were given most, it would still 

 be utterly un-Christian. Those who came at the 

 eleventh hour were paid the penny, not because they 

 had earned it, but because they needed it. In a family 

 the needs of the children are provided for, regardless of 

 their earning capacity ; and so in the Kingdom men's 

 needs must be provided for, so that they may live as 

 free from anxious thought as the birds of the air or the 



