THE SAME MEASURE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1897

THE SAME MEASURE.

“ACCORDING to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed.”

There lived forty years ago in Berlin a shoemaker, who had a habit of speaking harshly of all his neighbors who did not think quite as he did about religion. The old pastor of the parish in which the shoemaker lived, heard of this, and felt that he must give him a lesson.

He did it this way: He sent for the shoemaker one morning, and, when he came in, said to him, “Master, take my measure for a pair of boots.”

“With pleasure, your Reverence,” answered the shoemaker. “Please take off your boot.”

The clergyman did so, and the shoemaker measured his foot from toe to heel, and over the instep, noted all down in his pocketbook, and then prepared to leave the room.

But as he was putting up the measure, the pastor said to him, “Master, my son also requires a pair of boots.”

“I will make them with pleasure, your Reverence. Can I take the young man's measure?”

“It is not necessary,” said the pastor, “the lad is fourteen, but you can make my boots and his from the same last.”

“Your Reverence, that will never do,” said the shoemaker, with a smile of surprise.

“I tell you, sir, to make my son's on the same last.”

“No, your Reverence, I can not do it.”

“It must be—on the same last.”

“But, your Reverence, it is not possible, if the boots are to fit,” said the shoemaker, thinking to himself that the old pastor's wits were leaving him.

“Ah, then, master shoemaker,” said the clergyman, “every pair of boots must be made on their own last, if they are to fit, and yet you think that God is to form all Christians according to your own last, of the same measure and growth in religion as yourself! That will not do, either.”

The shoemaker was abashed. Then he said, “I thank your Reverence for this sermon, and I will try to remember it, and to judge my neighbors less harshly in the future.”—Ex.