"My love for you has been the magic key that has unlocked the doors dividing me from my fellow-men. No longer isolated, no longer apart, I am one of a brotherhood that claims fellowship with all humanity. One blood flows uninterruptedly through us all, one heart beats in us all, and, truly seen, we are not separate individuals, but only component parts of the Greater Self.
"Once I was absorbed in myself. Now I yearn unspeakably toward all with whom I come in contact. I see a thousand ways in which I may be kind. It is not for me to preach the gospel of love and understanding, but to live it, and, in living it, either to lead or to follow, as may be right and best.
"Hitherto I have kept away from the workers in the vineyard as much as I possibly could. Some of them have come for five years in succession, and I neither remembered their faces nor knew their names. Now, not because I felt that it was my duty, but because I really wanted to, I have tried to come a little closer, to see into their lives as best I might.
The Humble Toilers
"I have seen before me such dramas of suffering and love as have made me ashamed, more than once, of my own worthless life and my own vain repinings. These humble toilers in my vineyard had come nearer the truth of things than I had, and were happier. Night after night I have been glad of the shelter of the darkness and have moved back out of the circle of light made by the camp-fire, that none of them might see my face.
"One woman, too weak and ill to work, would lie down among the vines to rest, while her husband filled her basket from his own. They needed money for a crippled child who could be made right by an expensive operation. One night I saw a lantern moving back and forth among the vines, and when I went out to investigate, the man was hard at work, filling basket after basket, because he knew that it was not right to draw two people's pay without doing two people's work.
"He had done this every night, and sometimes, too, the woman had spent her limited strength labouring beside him. Both were nearly heartbroken, having figured up that, at the rate the work was being done, they would still be twenty dollars short of the desired sum. So I gave them this, and they are to return it when they can. If it is not possible to return it earlier, they are to come next year and work it out. I have no fear that they will not come, but, even should they fail me, I would rather lose the money and have my trust betrayed, than to miss a chance of helping where I might.