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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.

     (Concluded from page 108.)

To aid you in making the effort to comply with the injunction we have been considering, I add the following considerations: 

1st.  It is right, this you will all acknowledge, no matter how unkindly a brother or sister may treat you, you will acknowledge that it is never right for you, never pleasing to God, that you should treat them unkindly in return.  Yes, you will all (except when you are angry) acknowledge that the injunction Be kindly affectioned one to another in brotherly love, is right, proper, beautiful; could there be a better reason for trying to obey the injunction?

2d.  You have already often disobeyed this injunction.  You cannot remember many of the instances, but you can some where you acted unbrotherly or unsisterly.  Alas, such are the pride and selfishness of our hearts that we begin very early to sin against our dearest friends.  Little boy, did you not get angry the other day, when your little brother or sister took one of your playthings which you wanted yourself, and if you did not speak unkindly or snatch it away roughly, did you not go and complain to mother, and was that very kind and loving?  Would it not have been kinder and more brotherly to try to make little brother and sister happy, and not to have troubled mother?  Little children, I say this especially for you, I want you all to make it a rule to love everybody, and to try and make everybody around you happy.  That is the way to be happy yourselves.  But, my young friends, you, who are older, are in equal danger of sinning, and I am afraid that your consciences can also condemn you.  Indeed I know not but the danger of violating this law is greater with those more advanced in life.  There is a transition period when the childhood is about losing itself in the youth, which is often very trying to brotherly and sisterly affection.  The sister is not quite a woman, the brother not quite a young man, and each is sometimes disposed to demand an attention which the other is not quite willing to yield on demand—­each would yield, perhaps, if it were asked as a favor—­but the spirit of an independent existence is beginning to rise, and that spirit spurns any claim.  This spirit is generally the stronger in the brother than in the sister, and he therefore sins most frequently against the law of love, and he will treat his sister as he will allow no other young man to do, and will treat every other young lady with more politeness and courtesy than he does his own noble-hearted and loving sister.  Oh, there is many a brother, who, if any young man were to say and do what he says and does to his sister, he would consider him to be no gentleman and a scoundrel.  Now, I would ask, does the fact