Year: 1874

ing down the law about Jones or Smths
we shake our heads knowingly a. We
go out of our pews. We are little
sharper, we fatter ourselves, than tho good
man there. Az to this matter of brotherhood
of which he talks, the secret conviction with
us, no matter what our Christian zeal, is that
while it is all very well for the Polynesian
savage or the Laplander, who are quite out Of
sight. to claim common Father with us, and
only pleasant Utilization of our emotions TO
send them brotherly greeting in the shape
of Bibles and missionaries, the case is very
different when it comes to that snObbish little
Potts round the corner, throwing mud on our
wife's dress from the wheels of his
dOg-cart, or the drunken cook who has
Just burned up our dinner. Brothers, indeed!
We are all alike in this. The good
preacher himself comes down out of the
pulpit. where he has been urging that God
made of one blood all the children of men.
and stops to speak kindly to Deacon Wright.
the meanest man in the parish, though he
knows Wright will sneer at him and bis SER
mon and his wifes new bonnet as soon az his
back is turned. But does he put the Deacon
side by side with his twin brother Joe out In
Iowa, whom he is going to see this coming
Augusti He has gone shivering without an
overcoat all Winter that he may take some
little gifts to poor Joc's wife and babies. Az
for the Wrights, he knows in his secret soul
that the parish and the world in general
would breathe freer If the whole lot were
incontinently drowned The world is divided
for us all into Wrights and brother JOes, and
the most that Christianity can do for us is TO
G.st xuith
forgiveness for their unlikeness to ourselves.


The fact is (and it would be wise in religious
and social leaders to recognize 1T as 1acU,
that differing tastes and temperaments, not
character nor position, put twO-thirds OF the
men and women about us at secret war
with us: if they are our brothers. they arc
certainly what the French would call les Jreres
loin. The service of our great Master requires
us to help them if they need it in body and
soul as energetically as we would help our
selves but it demands no more. Churches ana
society waste too much time in dragging peo-
ple into harness together, striving to make
intmates of them, when they would love each
other much better apart. AS long as tho
good parson keeps Deacon Wright at dis
tance there is chance that they will respect
each other and work together for their COM
mon cause in harmony. But as soon as they
fall into sOciable arguments and into the
habit of dining in company, each
discovers the other to be fool.
AS for society, how much of our lives is
wasted in trying to form partnersbips-for an
hours talk perhaps, or perhaps for life-with
men or women who ought to live at the
antipodes from us, with their heads forever
going precisely the other way through space1
To think of tho millions of "calls" made by
women and dinner parties given by men, from
which come nothing but platitudes, dreary
emptiness, and peevish sense of exhaustion


simply because like has not wit and wisdom
to mate with like. A heroic idea or our 10
lgion may make it easy for lis to die for a
man; while if he were to visit us for week,
| we would nag each other into frenzy. Oar
lay sermon to all beginners in social life, II
we could supplement those of Tomorrow.
would be to give their help heartily to all
their stop brothers in the world, but, If they
want peace in the family, to keep them at
arms length while they are shaking hands.