To The Work! To The Work! Exhortations to Christians

by Dwight Lyman Moody

You smile at that, but this little story explains the secret of the whole thing. Some of you perhaps think you have bad and disagreable neighbors; most likely the trouble is with yourself. If you love your neighbors they will love you. As I said before, love is the key that will unlock every human heart. There is no man or woman in all this land so low and so degraded but you can reach them with love, gentleness and kindness. It may take years to do it, but it can be done.

Love must be active. As some one has said: “A man may hoard up his money; he may bury his talents in a napkin; but there is one thing he cannot hoard up, and that is love.” You cannot bury it. It must flow out. It cannot feed upon itself; it must have an object.

I remember reading a few years ago of something that happened when we had the yellow fever in one of the Southern cities. There was a family there who lived in a strange neighborhood where they had just moved. The father was stricken down with the fever. There were so many fatal cases happening that the authorities of the city did not stop to give them a decent burial. The dead-cart used to go through the street where the poor lived, and the bodies were carried away for burial.

The neighbors of this family were afraid, and no one would visit the house because of the fever. It was not long before the mother was stricken down. Before she died she called her boy to her, and said: “I will soon be gone, but when I am dead Jesus will come and take care of you.” She had no one on earth to whom she could commit him. In a little while she, too, was gone, and they carried her body away to the cemetery. The little fellow followed her to the grave. He saw where they laid her, and then he came back to the house.

But he found it very lonely, and when it grew dark he got afraid and could not stay in the house. He went out and sat down on the step and began to weep. Finally he went back to the cemetery, and finding the lot where his mother was buried, he laid down and wept himself to sleep.

Next morning a stranger passing that way found him on the grave, still weeping. “What are you doing here, my boy?” “Waiting for the Savior.” The man wanted to know what he meant, and the boy told the story of what his mother had said to him. It touched the heart of the stranger, and he said, “Well, my boy, Jesus has sent me to take care of you.” The boy looked up and replied: “You have been a long while coming.”

If we had the love of our Master do you tell me that these outlying masses would not be reached? There is not a drunkard who would not be reached. There is not a poor fallen one, or a blasphemer, or an atheist, but would be influenced for good. The atheists cannot get over the power of love. It will upset atheism and every false system quicker than anything else. Nothing will break the stubborn heart so quickly as the love of Christ.

I was in a certain home a few years ago; one of the household was a boy who, I noticed, was treated like one of the family, and yet he did not bear their name. One night I asked the lady of the house to explain to me what it meant. “I have noticed,” I said, “that you treat him exactly like your own children, yet he is not your boy.” “Oh no,” she said, “he is not. It is quite true I treat him as my own child.”

She went on to tell me his story. His father and mother were American missionaries in India; they had five children. The time came when the children had to be sent away from India, as they could not be educated there. They were to be sent to America for that purpose. The father and mother had been very much blessed in India, but they felt as though they could not give up their children. They thought they would leave their work in the foreign field and go back to America.

They were not blessed to the same extent in working at home as they had been in India. The natives were writing to them to return, and by and by they decided that the call was so loud the father must go back. The mother said to him: “I cannot let you go alone; I must go with you.” “But how can you leave the children? You have never been separated from them.” She said: “I can do it for Christ’s sake.” Thank God for such love as that.