SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 40, 15 February 1913, Page 2

SUNDAY COLUMN.

DAY OF REST. A TALK ON OUR RESPONSIBILITY. (“Am I my brother’s keeper?”) Where shall we find a training school in the business of being a guardian? On all sides we are beset with teachers of personal efficiency who offer sure systems for self-im-provement, and for gaining success in the battle of life. The institution or instructor who can best equip the youth to meet competition, to rise above his fellows, to win Victories over his rivals, is sure of eager pupils day : and night. Prizes for the. winners in the race; positions for the men who excel their trade; big profits for the captains of industry .who crowd and trample their way to the front; triumph and power and honor for him who by his superior skill or aggressive force has captured the highest place. Such men the world applaud. Such men are said to have achieved success. And so they have, even as you and I are trying to do. The world is rightly .grateful to the successful teacher of personal efficiency; we need more of it in every branch of business and religious work, but wo need something else with even greater urgency. We need more earnest attention to the study of relationships and to the business of guarding the interests of others. Individualism must be merged into brotherhood. lam my brother’s keeper. If lam faithful to my charge, he . will advance with me. If he goes down to defeat, or to a life of littleness and ill-favor with God and man, it is partly my fault. “No, I protest! exclaims the self-made man, and the man 'whose days are strenuous with efforts to make wealth and power. 1 want no guardianship, and I deny that it is my business to play tbo guardian to any other man. Every man must fight his own way and win his own battles. No one need accept responsibility for me if I fail. I shall nave no one to thank, but myself if I succeed. 1 shall struggle for every advantage I gain and I shall snatch it when and where I can.” Such is the law of “self-help”—a law greatly exacted by many teachers, but a pitiless law, which, when it operates alone, destroys fellowship, forces some men up- and many men down, and postpones into an unknown future the era of “peace on earth, good will to mo.”

No one of us is ; independent of the guardianship of our brothers and sisters. If ,tlley are faithful to ns, wo prosper laud ■rejoice. If some one of them forgets his obligation, we immediately suffer. The strongest man in tho community, with unquestioned credit--end large balance in tho bank, careless of the result of his gossip, spreads a rumour which causes a run on the bank and a sudden failure, when better sense of Jus responsibility to others would have kept him silent. Wo are guardians of our brother’s reputation as ns f° rtune - Freedom of gives. us the right to express our own vjsws and to spread our owp ~belicfs,( }b ut it does not give us the -right to, destroy our brother’s good;,name. ) I am my brother’s keeper, therefore I will make myself strong that I may lend him a 'hand when he is weak; that I may carry my own burden unfalteringly and 'lift a part of his when he ife weary. I am my brothre’s keeper, therefore I will cheer him on the way; 1 will show him that in storm and darkness I am unaffaid, so that he may ho emboldened to walk through his own valley of t shadow, with a brave heart and head erect.

I am my brother’s keeper, therefore I will be true and clean' in my life, that as his life touches mine, lie may not be soiled; that he' may find in me some example to keep his dealings with men honorable and kind.

I am my brother’s keeper, therefore I will cherish his fame, and never, if I can help it, cast a slur upon his motives or his acts. lam not his judge. lam his brother. I am my brother’s keeper, therefore I will try to solve the problems of life with a view to his welfare, knowing that in the rightful adjustment of business and society, and life irt its truest sense, my brothers welfare is my own, and mine is his. When ,perplexing questions must he answered by my voice, or my pen, or my vote, 1 will seek the answer which means my brother’s good, not merely because such answer will mean also my good, but because ho is my brother.

1 am my brother’s keeper, therefore 1 want to know more and more about my relationship with him and how to acquit myself as a brother should; because, one day, I shall hear a voice calling to me in the garden: “Son,, son, where is thy brother?” and I shall want to answer: “Here, Father, hero is my brother; we have coma homo together.”