that it overstep just bounds, and hence the Saviour by His practice taught self-sacrifice and brings self-love into His teaching only by implication. But, secondly, the love of our neighbors He explicitly inculcates, for it does not come to us by nature to deal justly by all men. To live justly in this world is to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to do to him as we would wish to be done by. One might say that it was the violation of this command that caused the fall of man, for Adam, had he wished to live for others, would have reached for the fruit of the tree of life; but in partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge he betrayed his inordinately selfish ambition to be as God and to have others live for him. What true sons of Adam we are! How few of us really and practically love our fellowmen as we love ourselves! What a rare thing it is to find a man who realizes that the most precious love, the love most certain of reward, is not that which comes to, but that which goes out from him; that it is more blessed to give than to receive, to love than to be loved! If our horse or ox fall into a pit, how strenuously we labor to extricate it; if we lose a coin, how we search and sweep to find it, but when a neighbor's soul is in need, or dying, or dead, we coolly ask: " Am I my brother's keeper? " And if we love our relatives and friends alone, what thanks to us? Even the heathens do as much. " But I say to you," says Christ, "love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you." Like good St. Stephen we should send back a
