Dives, if we can take tradition’s name for him, first wanted personal relief from his eternal torments. But when Father Abraham, God’s stand-in, refused, Dives asked for a weekend pass to return and warn his brothers. Request denied! Abraham simply said that Moses and the prophets were sufficient. And even if Abraham should go himself, it would not lead Dives’ brothers to repentance. They would only see it as an extraordinary event making no claim upon their lives.

So Dives and his brothers, and their modern counterparts, continue in unbelief. For them there is no ultimate, personal meaning to life, even though with the poet Hardy, they rush to the stable on Christmas Eve to see if it were true that the animals knelt in reverence, "hoping it might be so." Dives, his family and present compa…