The Camel and the Needle's Eye

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby

Long before the Christian era philosophers propounded this same doctrine, and many reformers have done so since. As a single instance we need only repeat the words of Sir Thomas More:

“For where is the justice that noblemen, goldsmiths, and usurers and those classes who either do nothing at all or in what they do are of no great service to the commonwealth, should live a genteel and splendid life in idleness or unproductive labour; whilst in the meantime the servant, the waggoner, the mechanic, and the peasant toiling almost longer and harder than the horse, in labour so necessary that no commonwealth could endure a year without it, lead a life so wretched that the condition of the horse seems more to be envied?... Thus after careful reflection, it seems to me, as I hope for mercy, that our modern republics are nothing but a conspiracy of the rich pursuing their own selfish interests under the name of a republic. They devise and invent all ways and means whereby they may, in the first place, secure to themselves the possession of what they have amassed by evil means; and in the second place, secure to their own use and profit the work and labour of the poor at the lowest possible price.”

Would he find words to express himself were he alive to-day?

But of them all no one has emphasised so clearly or insisted so strongly on the vanity and danger of worldly goods as Christ did.

The rich man consults Him, and tells Him that all the chief commandments he has observed from his youth. But Christ sees what is amiss, and the man goes away grieving, “For he had great possessions.” Then follows the great generalisation: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” As to whether or not the “needle’s eye” was the name of a narrow gate of the city through which heavily laden camels could not pass, does not signify. The meaning is clear beyond question. In the Kingdom of God upon earth, that is an ideally constituted human society, there is no place for a man encumbered with riches; his presence would assuredly disturb the even balance of the whole. Rousseau saw that it was a condition of good government that no citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and no citizen poor enough to be compelled to sell himself.[32] If all the social organisation of humanity, the arrangement of which rests apparently to a great extent in our control, were so constituted as to allow each man a full competence, far from its producing a deadening equality as some pretend, it would free the human race to make the most of its varied natural capacities and talents which are now mostly lost, and a competition of achievement and service founded on altruism would take the place of a competition for gain and profit based on egoism. The ideal may be unattainable for the present because we have drifted so far from it, but that is no reason for discarding it altogether and turning our faces in the exactly opposite direction.

There are many other equally noteworthy sayings in the Gospels, staled by custom and familiar to most of us in the same way as the Church service becomes familiar to children without their understanding one single syllable of what it all means.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where the moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.” And again, “The seeds that fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them, and they yielded no fruit. These are such as hear the Word, and the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entering in, choke the Word and it becometh unfruitful.” And yet again the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. These are not mere fantastic and rhetorical figures of speech, but are a few of the many instances of the reiterated insistence on the supreme importance of the dispersal of the riches heaped in the hands of the few. It is needless to multiply texts to prove that it is one of the cardinal doctrines of Christ’s teaching. He was profoundly impressed with the impediment, the handicap, the burden of wealth, the undischargeable responsibility which weighs men down and incapacitates them from participating in a juster and more perfect arrangement of society. And down through the ages many a great mind has strongly endorsed this lasting truth which, let it be remembered, though the world is blind to it, is as strictly utilitarian as it is moral.

There is nothing in the least complex about this teaching. It is almost self-evident; far easier to teach and far simpler to preach than the intricate speculative tangles of dogma which are cast like nets from pulpits over the minds of congregations. But there is this difference, that while the latter is only an intellectual effort on the part of the preacher or on the part of some other divine who has prompted him, the renunciation of worldly riches cannot be preached by any man who makes no attempt to practise it.

The clergy are like the rest of us, they do not really believe in it; they cannot therefore act as if they did; they are persuaded in their inmost hearts that to be richer must mean to be happier, and so they take refuge in what is for their congregations the less comprehensible and for themselves, therefore, the less embarrassing side of their religion. Accordingly, from our moral physicians we can get no guidance, on the contrary, with a very few notable exceptions, they encourage the fallacious belief in money-making, and slur over this important part of Christ’s message. Why did He associate with the poor and choose His disciples from among their ranks? Not because He hoped to enrich them, but because their deficiency in worldly goods made them fertile ground for the seed of His doctrine of self-sacrifice and humility. If we reject His teaching, well and good, we can discard this with the rest, but it is just those who do the most lip service to dogmatic Christianity who calmly ignore this unqualified essential.

It would be unfair to insist that no Churchmen are aware of these dangers. Occasionally a voice speaks out boldly.