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



MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOIiS. 



WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?— LUKE 10: 39. 



Thou Shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. — Matt. 

 19:19. 



^h SUS said, " Thou slialt love thy nei^h- 

 oj bor as thyself." I presume he put it in 

 this very emphatic way for the express 

 purpose of guarding us against sefishness. 

 In the Home Papers I have talked to you 

 about seltishness, and I have tried to tell you 

 about the evil of thinking about one's self, 

 and forgetting all about other people, or car- 

 ing nothing for other people. Wliile I look 

 at it now, it seems to me that selfishness is 

 the great crying sin of humanity ; and the 

 girl or boy who starts out in life with no 

 greater end in view than to please self, will 

 be pretty sure to come to some awful end, 

 sooner or later. 



A little story of real life is now agitating 

 the papers, and it illustrates so vividly what 

 selfishness may lead to, that I want to give 

 it to you briefly. It did not occur exactly in 

 my immediate neighborhood, nor among my 

 neighbors, but it occurred in the neighbor- 

 ing town of Shelby, Richland Co., Ohio. In 

 some town quite near to Shelby a safe had 

 been opened and robbed, and a sharp detec- 

 tive had traced the burglars to Shelby, and 

 found them in the morning sitting in a hotel. 

 There were four of them, and he certainly 

 lacked wisdom to attempt to arrest the four, 

 alone and unaided. Very likely he thought 

 there would.be Uttle resistance in such a 



p.iblic place with .«o many around ; but, my 

 friends, when one is so lost, both to God and 

 man, as to attempt to rob a safe, he is gener- 

 ally lost, also, to reason and good sense. 

 Just think a moment of the act of robbing a 

 safe. As a general thing, a safe contains 

 money belonging to several different individ- 

 uals — money probably earned by hard labor; 

 may be the earnings of a seamstress or a 

 washwoman, laid by until a time of need. 

 Money is now usually deposited in a safe, be- 

 cause we have iiad so many sad lessons in re- 

 gnrd to tlie unwise way of keeping it in 

 houses, or about one's person. 



Well, these four great strong men" deliber- 

 ately decided to steal this money they had 

 never earned. They did not care whose it 

 was, or what were the circumstances. They 

 were determined to have it, even at the risk 

 of their own lives. I have often wondered 

 what they wanted it for, and what they were 

 intending to do with it. They certainly 

 could not want it to buy property, because 

 such men can not use property much, of any 

 kind. They could hardly want it for any of 

 the purposes tliat people want money for. 

 Jklay be they wanted it to drink and gamble 

 with. At any rate, they had got so far away 

 from God and the precepts of the Bible, that 

 they decided to take it. Did you ever think 

 what a yawning gulf must be passed by a 

 human soul, in wandering from a disposition 

 to do right, and to love God, away off to that 

 other shore were God and right are lost to 

 sight, and ignored V Little by little, step by 

 step, this path of sin is traversed. Jesus is 



