’Our dreamer-donkey went into exile as servant to a woodcutter, and his life was lenient if dull, for the woodcutter had no sticks to waste upon his back; and next day his young mistress who was once a star took a pony for her love, whom some time after she discarded for a talented hunter, and, one fine day, like many of her sex, she pitched her affections upon a man—­he too being a talented hunter.  To their wedding came all the countryside.  And with the countryside came the donkey.  He carried a great bundle of firewood for the servants’ hall, and as he waited outside, gazing up at his old loves the stars, while his master drank deeper and deeper within, he revolved many thoughts.  But he is only known to have made one remark—­in the nature, one may think, of a grim jest—­

’"After all!” he was heard to say, “she has married a donkey—­after all!”

’No doubt it was feeble; but then our donkey was growing old and bitter, and hope deferred had made him a cynic.’

ON LOVING ONE’S ENEMIES

Like all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the Christian religion was possessed of a profound knowledge of the world.  As, according to the proverb, the woodlander sees nothing of the wood for its trees, so those who live in the world know nothing of it.  They know its gaudy, glittering surface, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the paste-diamonds with which it bedecks itself; they know its music-halls and its night clubs, its Piccadillys and its politics, its restaurants and its salons; but of the bad—­or good?—­heart of it all they know nothing.  In more meanings than one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner; and Christ certainly knew as well as saved the sinner.

But none of His precepts show a truer knowledge of life and its conditions than His commandment that we should love our enemies.  He realised—­can we doubt?—­that, without enemies, the Church He bade His followers build could not hope to be established.  He knew that the spiritual fire He strove to kindle would spread but little, unless the four winds of the world blew against it.  Well, indeed, may the Christian Church love its enemies, for it is they who have made it.

Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that wants to get on, there is nothing like a few hearty, zealous enemies.  Most of us would never be heard of if it were not for our enemies.  The unsuccessful man counts up his friends, but the successful man numbers his enemies.  A friend of mine was lamenting, the other day, that he could not find twelve people to disbelieve in him.  He had been seeking them for years, he sighed, and could not get beyond eleven.  But, even so, with only eleven he was a very successful man.  In these kind-hearted days enemies are becoming so rare that one has to go out of one’s way to make them.  The true interpretation, therefore, of the easiest of the commandments is—­make your enemies, and your enemies will make you.