“On that score, I’ve only a right to half-rations,” said Ernest Clare, laughing; “for though I have offered my services to a certain overworked rector in our neighborhood, he only trusted me to read the lessons this morning.”
“Sure he was afraid ye’d be after preaching Socialism if he let ye into his pulpit, from the text of the eleventh commandment, ‘Thou shalt surely divide,’” said Father McClosky.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” returned the other; “there is only one rich man in the congregation, and it would have been decidedly personal. However, if I had preached from ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ I don’t know that he could have taken offence.”
“And you think they mean the same?” asked Dr. Richards.
“Don’t you?” returned the man who never argued.
“In so far as neither one is practised or practicable, I suppose they do.”
“You are entirely right, Dr. Richards. My text should have been ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;’ then the other would follow as a practical consequence.”
“Humph! I suppose you mean that in a Pickwickian sense?”
“Did you ever know a man who loved God with heart, soul, and strength, and did not love his neighbor as himself?”
“I never knew—anything about it. Great heavens! can I read a man’s heart, and say whom he loves?”