est with the intention of providing early in the morning for
the wants of the following day. They had not a morsel to set before the
weary stranger. The head of the house, willing to undergo any amount of
trouble rather than seem lacking in hospitality, determined to borrow
even at that late hour the necessary supply of bread. To the door of his
nearest neighbour, accordingly, he went, and knocked as the traveller
had already knocked at his own. Between the two villagers a conversation
now takes place, the one lying in bed within, and the other standing on
the street without. The request is met at first by a polite but
peremptory refusal. The hour is untimely; the children are asleep;
unwonted movements in the house will awaken and alarm them: better that
one stranger should fast till morning than that a whole family should be
disturbed in the night.

But the suppliant at the door has taken the matter much to heart. The
customs of society elevate the exercise of hospitality into the highest
rank of virtues: he was ashamed to be caught off his guard, and unable
to comply with the cardinal social duty of the East. He knew not how to
meet his friend and confess that he had no bread in his house; bread he
must have, and will not want; he plies his request accordingly. He will
listen to no refusal; he continues to knock and plead. To every answer
from within, "I will not give," he sends a reply from without, "I shall
have." It was for the sake of shielding his own sleeping family from
disturbance at midnight that this neighbour had, in the first instance,
refused; but now he discovers that the method which he had adopted to
preserve the seemly stillness of night is the surest way of disturbing
it. At first, that he might protect his sleeping family from
disturbance, he refused; but at last, for the same reason, he complied.
Although he would not give from friendship, he gave to importunity.

This parable is remarkable in that the temporal and spiritual, instead
of lying parallel throughout their length, touch each other only at one
point. They are like two straight rigid rods laid one upon another at
right angles; all the weight of the upper rod lies on the under at one
spot, and therefore presses there with tenfold intensity. The comparison
has been chosen, I think, precisely because of this quality. Because the
analogy does not hold good in every feature, it better serves the
purpose in hand: the point of comparison delive