O-IjE-A-I^II^TGS-S I1>T see CTJLXTTIiE E2CTH-A-. 



He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.— Luke 16:10. 



Vol. XI. 



OCT., 1883. 



No. 10. 



IflYSEIiF AND MV NEIGHBORS. 



WHO IS MY neighbor!— LUKE 10: 29. 



Whosoever therefore shall confess me h^fore men. him will 

 I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.— Matt. 10:32. 



SOME years a{?o, when on ray way home 

 from my Abbeyville Sabbath-school, 

 -— for some reason, I hardly know why, 

 unless it is that I was full of the spirit of 

 wanting: to do good wherever it was in my 

 power, I stopped at a house by the wayside. 

 As this was not far from my father's, our 

 old homestead, these people were, in fact, 

 neighbors, and I stopped for a little neigh- 

 borly call. They were elderly people, and 

 had had sickness and affliction ; but the sad- 

 dest of all trials and afflictions was the fact 

 that a son was an intemperate man. At one 

 time he had done quite a flourishing busi- 

 ness as a cabinet-maker, but he was induced 

 to give up his trade and go into a saloon. I 

 wonder if anybody ever ijrospered in a sa- 

 loon. He soon became intemperate, and 

 lost all he possessed. At the time I called, 

 his family were in destitute circumstances, 

 and the mother begged of me to give him 

 something to do, that they might be relieved 

 from want. In a few weeks more he was in 

 my employ; and while on the way to the 

 Abbeyville school one Sunday afternoon he 

 told me someXof his experience with the de- 

 lirium-tremens. * He had been off on an ex- 

 cursion.^While^ I think of it, what is it 



about excursions that makes people drink 

 oftener than at any other time? or why does 

 an intemperate man want to go off on an ex- 

 cursion? While absent -on this excursion he 

 drank heavily ; and on his return home it 

 took him a day or two to recover from the 

 effects of the deadly poison. While sitting 

 quietly in the house one day he saw a lizard 

 creeping along the floor. He was astonished 

 to see it in the house, and began wondering 

 where it could have obtained access. He 

 soon noticed, however, a hole in the floor, 

 and was more astonished still to see a knot- 

 hole where he had never observed it. The 

 lizard ran down the hole. Strange as the 

 whole matter seemed, it never once occurred 

 to him that it was not real, and he went for 

 a hatchet to make a plug to stop out such 

 reptiles. When he came back, the door-knob 

 was spinning like a piece of machinery. 

 Then he knew that his mind was impaired, 

 and formed a resolution to reform ; in fact, 

 he began to fear the retribution of a just 

 God. It was at this time that his mother 

 spoke of him to me ; and he told me, as we 

 rode along, that it was his purpose to serve 

 God the rest of his days. He did every 

 thing, in fact, one could ask him to do, ex- 

 cept standing before men and confessing his 

 allegiance to his Savior. This he some 

 way stubbornly refused to do — or, at least, 

 he excused himself from so doing by a variety 

 ofi'excuses. He read the Bible in his family, 

 bad prayers, and seemed determined to take 



