These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, Each with its leafy crown: Hark! from their sides a thousand rills A hundred brooks, and still they run A bracelet spun from mountain mist With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist Be patient! On the breathing page - Oliver Wendell Holmes. A Greylock Pulpit. BROTHERHOOD AND PEACE. "And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the Earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." Acts 17: 26. "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Is. 2. 4. race. Christianity includes the great fact of the unity of the human There is on this theme, no longer any uncertain sound. Science teaches physical unity. Christianity, which includes science, but which approaches investigation of race unity from the mental and spiritual side, teaches race unity and brotherhood. Born in different climates and countries, we are all human. The form of the skull, the color of the cuticle, the shape of the eye, our creed aud condition, are not fundamental differences. We are all children of a common Father, younger brethren of a common Lord and Saviour. If this is platitude, it is the hardest of all lessons to learn. He who was annointed as Prince of Peace, taught the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, but we shall be a long time learning to practice it. Our famous Declaration of Independence repeated the idea of brotherhood. A new application of the law of justice from man to man obtained recognition. The fathers felt the injustice and unbrotherly attitude of that lower England, which has at times overcome the higher and better England of peace and progress. They felt the tyranny of inequality before the law. Doubtless they had a dream of equality which was not realized. They had but to consider their own sufferings and the cost of their settlement in the new world, to see that men are created in conditions and inheritance of decided inequality. Freedom comes to man, not at birth, but when he has grown to the stature of a great de sign. “All men are created" unequal to become free and often more unequal. We are not equal, nor is there anything to be gained by equality. No two men are equal, with the same grade of powers, the same scale of pleasures, or the same number of rooms in the heavenly mansions. The many mansions are not continuous tenements on the same street, all in dull, hopeless uniformity and apparent equality. There is infinite variety. Justice demands it. But are not men in some sense, equal and free? Certainly; before God as their common parent; before Christ as their elder brother; before the law where law-abiding people dwell; but the equal rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue and happiness, do not mean the same amount of life, liberty and happiness. We must learn to substitute brotherhood for a false dream of equality, and hence peace for war. The race unity is an organic unity whose tendency and duty and destiny is peace. Occasionally the newspapers in their thirst for sensational headlines have much to say of war. The same spirit, which would not stop a fight between men and animals, likes jingoism. There is a good deal of the gobler too often developed along with the wearing of brass buttons and the handling of a gun. People, who have the least dignity to defend, can walk forth with much importance and pomp. If some pet legislation is at stake, they would die in the last ditch, but if the defense of civilization and all that is sacred to progress is at stake, they would run at the report of the first gun. They would not require serious treatment were it not that they do serve to retard the cause of peace. There are many who do not seem to realize that our late wars have been chiefly wars for great ideas. Preparations for war are or ought to be preparations for peace. The best single thing that Col. Frye said, in his late admirable lecture before our young men and the militia company, was that the object of an improved coast defense is peace. No doubt there may be a necessary appeal to fear in the relation of this country to some other countries. It is our misfortune however, in carrying firearms, to shoot at the wrong nation, or at the wrong time. Instead of dealing with Turkey for real crimes, we contrive to get into a squabble with England over imaginary difficulties. Fortunately there is a real vital alliance between England and the United States, not less vital and powerful because the legislators are dilatory in completing the papers which will make arbitration the written as well as the moral law of these and other countries. I love the English tongue, not alone because it is American; that would be a narrow view, but because it is composite and one in its wealth. It gathers to itself the Saxon, the Angle, the Jute, the Dane, the Roman, the Scot, the Pict, the Teuton, the Celt, the Aryan and the Greek, and fusing them in one mould, carries with it peace. Feudalism, in which the warring tribes abjured union even for mutual defense, is no more. The old feudal castle, seen from the car windows every few minutes, all over Great Britain, strikes an American strangely, because the American has built a school house instead of a castle. We little realize how the ivy mantled relic is covered over with romance and brotherhood in a land of kings and queens. Notwithstanding certain power our constitutions give to our representatives in high office, it scarcely seems, when we think of the degree of civilization in England and America, that it is any longer possible for us to go to war. Our congressmen and senators should be statesmen, and as regards this subject, warriors for peace, students of its progress, preserving its treasure. The very method of writing History has undergone a revolution. The life of the common people, their advancement, not at the whim of court and king, but by their merit, the ability of any poor boy to reach the positions of the civil service without a pull, save the pull of his own ambition, claims the attention of all. Learning, unmolested and rewarded, serves both the fine and the useful arts. No longer is free speech forbidden, no longer are shipwrecked mariners plundered, on alien shores, under the sanction of even the law. Faith, Morality, Law, Education and Liberty, the legacy of the Pilgrims, must be guarded by the angel of Peace. Our peace congresses, and their literature are only one phase of this progress. The lovers of peace are but barely represented at the peace congress. Their influence is however felt and tends to draw those countries together, which by origin and education have to lead the van in civilizing and Christianizing the race. The fuller disclosure of this natural unity, of brotherhood and peace, is to be secured by education. By education is not meant a common school or higher education, but a real development of the whole man with all the help he can get from men and books and hard knocks. Men are tired of war, because they have at last learned that they were fighting for the baron and the king or his successor. The soldiers put in everything and took out nothing. The few oppressed the many. Government was for the governors, and at the expense of the governed. The poor man fought. The rich man drew near the fireside and sat down in his comfortable slippers, to read about the battle. As one has well said, he is so full of patriotism, that he is prepared to lay on the altar of his country his cousins and all his wife's relatives. If we educate our people sufficiently to secure a Board of Arbitration, as a permanent factor of International Law, then it will become a study to find out whose feelings are hurt and the cost of cure. It might not be necessary for such men as Mr. Salisbury and Mr. Cleveland to expiate a trouble by a duel, but a duel of that sort would be infinitely better ethics, than to send us all into the conflict. Our studies must cover the field of moral philosophy and not merely a few chapters on expediency. We must study religion as well as politics. A man who talks fight, must not only be willing to shoulder a gun himself, but be reasonably sure that he will have a following great enough to make his move a success, in more senses than one. If education is not always afforded even in high places, it is improving; if not always free, it is becoming more free; if not always for all classes, it is rapidly reaching the lower strata; so that men are learning the laws of of life, the nature of the body, the world we live in, the importance of justice, and the duty of making life |