While memory lasts I shall never forget my mother’s earnest, supplicating, trembling voice, as she pleaded with God for Christ’s sake to have mercy on her children.  And shall our children forget ours?  No, dear sisters, let our entreaties with our God be as they will, I think they will not be forgotten.  Therefore, let us be more awake to this subject, let us sincerely endeavor to train our children up for God, that they may be useful in his service while they live, and that we may be that happy band of mothers that may be able to say in God’s great day:  Here, Lord, are we, and the children which thou hast given us.

                          A. HAMILTON, Secretary.
  Salem, Wash.  Co., Michigan, Dec. 31, 1851.

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Original.

BROTHERLY LOVE.

BY REV.  MANCIUS S. HUTTON, D.D.

     “Be kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love, in
     honor preferring one another.”

In no system of morals or religion, except the Bible, can such a precept be found.  It at once proclaims its divine author.  We feel as we read it—­here speaks that God and Almighty Father who so loved the world as to give his Son to die to save it.  We feel that none but a being who regards himself as the Father of all, and who would unite his children in the bonds of family affection, would think of urging upon a company of men and women, gathered from all classes and conditions of life, the duly regarding each other with the same sincerity, tenderness, respect and kindness as if they were the nearest relatives.  Such is the force of the expression, “Be kindly affectioned one to another.”  The word expresses properly the strong natural affection between parents and children; but the apostle is not satisfied with this, and uses the word to qualify that brotherly love which our Lord has made the badge of discipleship.  It should be with the tenderness and the unselfishness which characterize the filial and paternal relation, blending love with natural affection, and making it manifest in common intercourse.  Oh, how different this from the spirit of the world, the spirit which seeks not to bless others, but self; not to confer honor but to obtain it; which aims not to diffuse respect, but to attract all others to give honor to ourselves.

I design at present to use this divine injunction as conveying the Holy Spirit’s direction and description of proper family intercourse, in reference, particularly, to children in the family circle.

I notice very briefly (for the direction must commend itself to the heart of every child) its application to parents:  “Be kindly affectioned toward your father and mother.”  It is indeed hardly necessary to urge this duty, for God has in his wisdom so constituted us, as in a good degree to insure the duty of filial love even in those who do not regard his own authority over their spirits.  No child