Unflinchingly the preacher pointed out that Dives, apparently, lay in hell for no other reason than that he had been a rich man; no sin was imputed to him; not even unbelief; he had not only transgressed no law, but was doubtless a respectable, God-fearing man of irreproachable morals--sent to hell for his wealth.
And Lazarus appeared to have won heaven merely by reason of his poverty.
No virtue, no active good conduct, was accredited to him.
Reading with the eye of common understanding, Jesus taught that the rich merited eternal torment by reason of their riches, and the poor merited eternal life by reason of their poverty, a belief that one might hear declared even to-day.

Nor was this view attested solely by this parable.

Jesus railed constantly at those in high places, at the rich and at lawyers, and the chief priests and elders and those in authority--declaring that he had been sent, not to them, but to the poor who needed a physician.
But was there not a seeming inconsistency here in the teachings of the Master?
If the poor achieved heaven automatically by their mere poverty, _why were they still needing a physician ?_ Under that view, why were not the rich those who needed a physician--according to the literal words of Jesus?
Up to the close of this passage the orator's manner had been one of glacial severity--of a sternness apparently checked by rare self-control from breaking into a denunciation of the modern Dives.

Then all was changed.

His face softened and lighted; the broad shoulders seemed to relax from their uncompromising squareness; he stood more easily upon his feet; he glowed with a certain encouraging companionableness.
Was that, indeed, the teaching of Jesus--as if in New York to-day he might say, "I have come to Third Avenue rather than to Fifth ?" Can this crudely literal reading of his words prevail?
Does it not carry its own refutation--the extreme absurdity of supposing that Jesus would come to the squalid Jews of the East Side and denounce the better elements that maintain a church like St.Antipas?
The fallacy were easily probed.