s we shall more perfectly
Serve him and love him, praise him, work for him,
Grow near and nearer him with all delight;
But there we shall not any more be called
To _suffer_, which is our appointment here."

[1] "Practical Religion," page 107

CHAPTER XI.

OTHER PEOPLE.

"We need--each and all--to be needed,
To feel we have something to give
Towards soothing the moan of earth's hunger;
And we know that then only we live
When we feed one another, as we have been fed
From the hand that gives body and spirit their bread."
--LUCY LARCOM.

There are other people. We are not the only ones. Some of the others
live close to us, and some farther away. We stand in certain relations
to these other people. They have claims upon us. We owe them duties,
services, love. We cannot cut ourselves off from them, from any of
them, saying that they are nothing to us. We cannot rid ourselves of
obligations to them and say we owe them nothing. So inexorable is this
relation to others that in all the broad earth there is not an
individual who has no right to come to us with his needs, claiming at
our hand the ministry of love. The other people are our brothers, and
there is not one of them that we have a right to despise, or neglect,
or hurt, or thrust away from our door.

We ought to train ourselves to think of the other people. We may not
leave them out of any of the plans that we make. We must think of
their interests and good when we are thinking of our own. They have
rights as well as ourselves, and we must think of these when asserting
our own. No man may set his fence a hair's breadth over the line on
his neighbor's ground. No man may gather even a head of his neighbor's
wheat, or a cluster of grapes from his neighbor's vine. No man may
enter his neighbor's door unbidden. No man may do anything that will
harm his neighbor. Other people have inalienable rights which we may
not invade.

We owe other people more than their rights; we owe them love. To some
of them it is not hard to pay this debt. They are lovable and winsome.
They are thoroughly respectable. They are congenial spirits, giving us
in return quite as much as we can give them. It is natural to love
these and be very kindly and gentle to them. But we have no liberty of
selection in this broad duty of loving other people. We may not choose
whom we shall love if we claim to be Christians. The Master'