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Many of you know the name of William Law, the author of the "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life." He was one of the best of clergymen, and was bent on leading a life of Christian obedience in the most thorough and unshrinking manner. He and two rich friends agreed to live together, and to spend as little as possible on themselves, and to give away almost their joint income. They did so by relieving all who applied to them and who represented themselves as in want. The result was that they attracted crowds of idle and lying mendicants. For a long time Law shut his eyes to the evil of which he and his friends were thus the occasion; until at last his fellow-parishioners were driven to present a memorial to the magistrates, entreating them in some way to prevent Mr. Law from thus demoralizing their parish. A sad and pathetic incident illustrating the perplexities and contradictions of human life! The best men are not above the need of learning wisdom from experience. The real Christian duty of these good people was not to be less self-denying and liberal, but to consider anxiously how they might lay out their means so as to do the most good and the least evil. If you give sixpence to a poor creature, when you know, or may know, if you think or inquire, that the sixpence will be turned at once into intoxicating drink, you are putting a stumbling-block or occasion of falling in the way of a brother or sister for whom Christ died. What is it that forbids you to do this? Is it political economy? Perhaps, but it is certainly also Christian duty, Christian love. I once heard an excellent clergyman say, "Warn as you will, if I were to refuse help to the apparently hungry woman who begs me to give her food, I could not eat my own dinner in comfort." My answer to such a remark would be, "What does it matter whether you eat your own dinner in comfort or not? This is a very secondary consideration, compared with the question of doing good or harm to the brother or sister for whom Christ died." People are imposed upon, as we say, not unfrequently: when they find it out they are vexed; but too often their regret is limited to their own humiliation, to their own insignificant loss; and they fail to reproach themselves for having in their carelessness put an occasion of falling in the way of the weak brother for whom Christ died.

(J. H. Davies, M. A.)

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KJV: But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,

WEB: "But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,