The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1920-12-01
CAIN OR PAUL?


ears many times that you should al
ways strictly mind your own bust
ness, that the best way to cure q
sucker is to let him bite, that he who
plays another mans game deserves
to lose and that a man who tries to
obtain something for little or nothing
Is entitled to no sympathy.
There are few men or women who
advance these theories who are will
ing to have them practiced on them
selves.
Rudyard Kipling convincingly and
amusingly tells how it is best to edu-
cate young dog by letting him have
his own way, by letting him worry
old dogs till they thrashed him and
eat the backing off boots until it
made him sick. Which is very good
policy to apply to young dogs. Few
babies would live thru it.
Kipling goes on to tell of a boy
who with little sophistication went
from England out to India, where he
found himself in a bunch of men and
women educated to the country. and
who consequently let him attend to
his own education. 1t was finished in
few months by his shooting him
self.
Only story of course, but most of
as older people know of stories just
like it that were true.
There are many men and women
whe have climbed the hill of life,
passed the peak of middle age and
progressed on the downward slope,
who have since years of discretion,
or rather after they had scrambled
thru the years of indiscretion, prac-
tired the theory of letting other peo-
pie fall down, and yet who have
walked tolerable steady themselves,
who pride themselves on the fact
that they have not tried to put the
brakes on any needless boy or girl,
that they haven't warned incautious
neighbors that they were about to
fall in ditch-that in fact they have
minded their own business and found
that it paid.
Yet when our records are read on
the Great Judgment Day it viii be
found that each and every one of
those pharisaica1, self sufficient men
and women would have suffered severe
loss, even that of life, if at some
periods in their lives strong hands
had not pulled them back from the
precepices, kept their heads above
water or pushed their reluctant feet
into safer paths.
There are plenty of men and wom-
en- who say to themselves in the
words of Cain. "Am / my brothers
keeper?" And later OIL, when there
ID little but death to look forward to,
and nothing to look back to but life
filed with selfish acts. they say as
the night comes down, my punish
inent is greater than can bear"
How different the course mapped
out by man who most of the Stars
readers believe to be inspired. and
who said:
"We that are strong ought to bear
the infirmities OF the weak, and not
to please ourselves"
"Bear we one another's burdens, and
30 fulfill the law of Christ"
"And let US consider one another, to
provoke unto love and good works"
It is on the sentiment expressed by
the apostle, and implanted in his
mind by what he had learned of the
l:fe and works of Christ, that all that
is helpful and merciful in our civili-
zation is expressed.
1t is mingled with the spirit of the
law by which society guides and
governs its action. The law in itself
is good. It is bad only when pervert-
ed by evil men. The law is intended
to protect society. 1t is intended to
prevent wrong even more than to