And the next world according to Jesus was not really a better world, but the reverse of this. Some are hungry now, some are full. In the world of Jesus, those who are full now, will be hungry, and those who are hungry now will be full. Here Lazarus is suffering, and Dives is in comfort; there, they will change places. That is not a world worth looking forward to. It is not even a _new_ world, but the old world turned about and actually made much worse. The suffering, the misery, the pain, in the world, now, are at least temporary, but there, they will be _eternal_. Here, the rich man, at least, gives of the crumbs of his table to Lazarus, but in heaven Lazarus refuses even a drop of water to moisten the lips of Dives in hell. No healthy and optimistic soul could have dreamed so prosaic a dream. The future is a place of revenge according to Jesus. Such a future as he describes, with thrones for his friends, and hell everlasting for the stranger, would, if really accepted, smite humanity with the worst kind of pessimism. We could pardon Jesus for wishing the destruction of this world, if he only offered a better one in its place. It is in the light of this belief in a vanishing world that the teachings of Jesus should be interpreted. "If any one," says Jesus, "take away thy coat, let him take thy cloak also." Of course. Of what use is property in a world soon to be set on fire? Besides, according to the Sermon on the Mount, the way to have property in heaven is not to have any here. To Jesus, the world was like a tavern--good only for a night's lodging; or to change the simile, the world was like a sinking ship from which, to save ourselves, everything else must be thrown overboard. Who would care to accumulate wealth, who would care to marry, or rear children, on a sinking ship? Could such an alarmist be a sane moral teacher? Yet, Jesus must have been sane enough to realize that the command not to resist evil,--to give to everyone that would borrow; to turn also the other cheek to the aggressor; and to let the robber bully people out of their belongings,--would upset the very foundations of human society and create a chaos unspeakably injurious to the moral life; but what is the difference if we are on a sinking ship! In the same spirit, Jesus advises his disciples to let the tares grow up with the wheat. It is not worth while trying to separate them now, the time is so short. And when he says that we must "hate father, mother, and children for his sake," he means that to escape this great, this hastening calamity which he predicts, would be better for us than to cultivate the affections and the friendships that will soon be no more. It is really impossible for anyone believing in a heaven to be quite just to the world that now is. The other world looks so important to the believer that this one becomes, as John Wesley expressed it, "A fleeting show."