A modern intelligence can scarcely prefigure heaven or hell as a reward or punishment for mere carnal comfort or discomfort--as many literal-minded persons believe that Jesus taught.

The Son of Man was too subtle a philosopher to teach that a rich man is lost by his wealth and a poor man saved by his poverty, though primitive minds took this to be his meaning.

Some primitive minds still believe this--witness the frequent attempts to read a literal meaning into certain other words of Jesus: the command, for example, that a man should give up his cloak also, if he be sued for his coat.
Little acumen is required to see that no society could protect itself against the depredations of the lawless under such a system of non-resistance; and we may be sure that Jesus had no intention of tearing down the social structure or destroying vested rights.

Those who demand a literal construction of the parable of Dives and Lazarus must look for it in the Bowery melodrama, wherein the wealthy only are vicious and poverty alone is virtuous.
We have only to consider the rawness of this conception to perceive that Jesus is not to be taken literally.
Who, then, is the rich man and who the poor--who is the Dives and who the Lazarus of this intensely dramatic parable?
Dives is but the type of the spiritually rich man who has not charity for his spiritually poor brother; of the man rich in faith who will not trouble to counsel the doubting; of the one rich in humility who will yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the unsanctified beggar at his gate.
And who is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring--the soul-hungry, whether he be a millionaire or a poor clerk--the determined seeker whose eye is single and whose whole body is full of light?
In this view, surely more creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the abundance of his faith, would never miss.
Christianity has suffered much from our failure to give the Saviour due credit for subtlety.

So far as money--mere wealth--is a soul-factor at all, it must be held to increase rather than to diminish its possessor's chances of salvation, but not in merely providing the refinements of culture and the elegances of modern luxury and good taste, important though these are to the spirit's growth.