XIII.

Christ's Sense of Brotherhood.

MATT. xxiii. 8:

"All ye are brethren."

THE essence and the bond of human fellowship is identity of nature before God. "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?" No spiritual relationship can be separated from a living recognition of its natural consequences. We cannot claim kindred with God and evade its legitimate inferences and expressions; the penalty of neglect in the consequential duty is growing blindness to the spiritual reality. By considering the fulness of their natural outflowings we invigorate the great spiritual sentiments which are the fountains of life in us, or we become aware of the stagnancy in which we suffer them to be.

It follows from our Brotherhood that the smallest justice, the poorest charity each of us owes to man, is that we should interpret human nature through the best that in ourselves we know of it-that in our estimation of others the known mingled good and

evil of our own being should suggest to us the unexpressed and concealed good that may co-exist with any evil that is prominent. A man who thinks meanly of human nature must think meanly of himself, or else deem himself above human nature. A man who distrusts human nature must distrust himself, and proclaim that the specimen of human nature he is best acquainted with he knows to be false and hollow; else he must deem himself an exceptional being-a peculiar and eccentric product of the race, or of another order altogether. It is thus that a cynical distrust of our nature, an habitual imputation of low motives as the solution of apparent nobleness or magnanimity, attributing to Satan the works of the Spirit of God; incredulity as to disinterested goodness, is either the self-consciousness of abject life that has so long given itself up to the lower conditions of feeling and of action, that it has quite fallen out of the range of the higher, or else it is absolute inhumanity

an isolation, and denial of fellowship with mankind-that swollen and Pharisaic insolence which, knowing some good of itself and believing no good of others, claims a separate rank. This is an extreme case; but something of this arrogant, self-isolating temper enters into most of our severe judgments of men; so that the Charity even of the tenderest of us is perhaps not so much as our simple Justice would become, if all whom we condemn had but the full

and righteous benefit of the pleadings which our own self-knowledge ought to suggest.

Let us consider, in this light, the two classes with whom mainly it is difficult, in spirit and in truth, to hold the ties and sentiments of a full Christian Brotherhood: first, with the Uninteresting; secondly, with the Repulsive.

The peculiarity of the first class is simply negative, -they excite no strong feeling. Now, if we separate the few whom God has endowed with an inexhaustible freshness, this is in fact the case with all men, except in their intermittent states. And yet there is no class more exposed to the hard neglect of mankind than those who only are permanently what all of us are, except occasionally-in their isolation from sympathy-in the wounds they suffer from indifference or contempt-in the deprivation of the genial stimulants and encouragements which they especially need -and fearfully, though unconsciously, are they avenged in the barren inhumanity they introduce into those who turn from them with carelessness or scorn; for it is impossible to have such claims constantly before us, and constantly neglected, without an induration of the heart.

What is it that makes so large a class incapable of exciting strong interest? Chiefly, I suppose, their want of power to manifest strong interest; and if this be so, then those who are most richly blessed with the

power of feeling and exciting sympathy would do well to remember by what a slight change in their nature, in their capacity-it may be, in their opportunitiesthey might be reduced to the same helpless condition, if they were to be dealt with after the same measure. Examine those who are [consigned to indifference. What are their characteristics? For the most part it might seem that nature had denied them the forcible qualities of character, talent, energy, wit, richness and play of mind, the powers that make us useful and exhilarating, or the powers which make us formidable to others. We must not make Goodness one of their necessary deficiencies, for often the most unselfish Goodness is in those who find themselves totally neglected, only because through some infirmity they want the faculty of expression. But why is this, or any class, abandoned to indifference? Only because they do not come into our sphere-to co-operate with us, to stimulate us, to cheer us, to amuse us, or to overawe us, and hold us in salutary check—and so they fall out of our selfish regards, though we might enter into their spheres, bringing with us in our contrasted qualities the very stimulus they need, or in our geniality and gentleness the atmosphere of ease and of encouragement, which perhaps alone had been wanting to educe in them qualities finer and more delicate than our own.

And to show the ordinary inhumanity of this neg

lect, we have only to remember what circumstances will often dispel it, without any elevation, moral or intellectual, in those who have been exposed to it. Suppose the inherent deficiencies in vivacity, in energy, in wit and humour, in all profitable, or exhilarating, or formidable properties, to remain as before, but add station, add wealth, add the power to distinguish, the power to give and to bequeath,-and there is no more danger to the dullest mortal of forgetfulness or indifference. And this may be quite apart from any direct birth of selfishness, or from the smallest expectation of personal benefit to ourselves; it is only that they have come within the region of our sympathies; for let the inherent incapacity, with all the uninteresting deadness or dumbness, remain, but add some positive interest of mere condition, add the pitiableness, or terror, or excitement of an apprehended exposure to some great suffering, and the object of indifference may speedily become an object of intense solicitude, of moral cares, hopes, efforts, and of that strong personal interest which soon attaches to any one for whom we make sacrifices, for whose welfare we are earnest.

But the special inhumanity consists in drawing a line of separation between ourselves and others only because they seem stricken with barrenness; only because they want more than others the refreshing and awakening which gifted spirits can impart to