The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

Four Prose Fancies

By Richard Le Gallienne

I.—On Loving One’s Enemies
ike all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the


I j Christian religion was possessed of a profound knowledge of
the world. As, according to the proverb, the woodlander sees
nothing of the wood, because of its trees, so those who live in the
world know nothing of it. They know its gaudy, glittering sur-
face, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the paste-diamonds with
which it bedecks itself; they know its music halls and its night
clubs, its Piccadillies and its politics, its restaurants and its salons ;
but of the bad—or good r—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 a
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.