his old loves the stars, while his master
drank deeper and deeper within, he revolved many thoughts. But he is
only known to have made one remark--in the nature, one may think, of a
grim jest--

'"After all!" he was heard to say, "she has married a donkey--after
all!"

'No doubt it was feeble; but then our donkey was growing old and bitter,
and hope deferred had made him a cynic.'

ON LOVING ONE'S ENEMIES

Like all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the Christian
religion was possessed of a profound knowledge of the world. As,
according to the proverb, the woodlander sees nothing of the wood for
its trees, so those who live in the world know nothing of it. They know
its gaudy, glittering surface, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the
paste-diamonds with which it bedecks itself; they know its music-halls
and its night clubs, its Piccadillys and its politics, its restaurants
and its salons; but of the bad--or good?--heart of it all they know
nothing. In more meanings than one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner;
and Christ certainly knew as well as saved the sinner.

But none of His precepts show a truer knowledge of life and its
conditions than His commandment that we should love our enemies. He
realised--can we doubt?--that, without enemies, the Church He bade His
followers build could not hope to be established. He knew that the
spiritual fire He strove to kindle would spread but little, unless the
four winds of the world blew against it. Well, indeed, may the Christian
Church love its enemies, for it is they who have made it.

Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that wants to get on, there is nothing
like a few hearty, zealous enemies. Most of us would never be heard of
if it were not for our enemies. The unsuccessful man counts up his
friends, but the successful man numbers his enemies. A friend of mine
was lamenting, the other day, that he could not find twelve people to
disbelieve in him. He had been seeking them for years, he sighed, and
could not get beyond eleven. But, even so, with only eleven he was a
very successful man. In these kind-hearted days enemies are becoming so
rare that one has to go out of one's way to make them. The true
interpretation, therefore, of the easiest of the commandments is--make
your enemies, and your enemies will make you.

So soon as the armed men begin to spring up in our fields, we may be
sure that we have not sown in vain.

Properly understood, an enemy is b