How many souls of strongest powers
To selfish solitude consigned, Have whiled in idleness their hours,
Nor nobly sought to serve mankind!
But not to such the Muse may give Her sacred wreath, the Patriot's pride !
Since for themselves content to live, So for themselves alone they died.
1 B. W. Dale. « Hid.
142 AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
Happy the man who for his God Has left the world and all its ways,
To tread the path the saints have trod, And spend his life in prayer and praise I
Unhappy, who himself to please Forsakes the path where duty lies,
Either in love of selfish ease, Or in contempt of human ties.
In vain have they the world resigned
Who only seek an earthly rest; Nor to the soul that spurns mankind
Can ever solitude be blest.^
3. There is yet another encouragement to the follower of Christ to consider his brother, and it is a most wonderful and gracious one. Whatever service he renders to a brother he renders to Christ Himself.
I bend to help a little straying child
And soothe away its fears. When lo ! the Wondrous Babe, all undefiled,
Looks at me through its tears.
Beside a cot I kneel with pitying eyes,
A dying brow I fan — The pallet seems a cross and on it lies
One like the Son of Man !
The way is long, and when I pause to share
My cup, my crust of bread. With some poor wanderer — oh, vision rare! —
A halo crowns his head.
O'er sin's dark stream there comes a drowning cry,
Its woeful tide I stem And grasp for one who sinks — the Christ is there,
I touch His garment's hem.
O Presence, ever new and ever dear,
My Master, can it be In Thy great day of coming I shall hear,
"Thou didst it unto Me"?
> K Caswall.
GENESIS IV. 9 143
III.
The Chtjbch's Eesponsibujtt.
L The Corporate Life of the Church.
1. The instinct of social work, the idea of self-sacrifice for the many, of united effort for the common cause which is the good of all, is perfectly satisfied by the conception of the Holy Catholic Church. It is true that to many the Church has come to mean simply an institution for the spiritual advantage chiefly of the wealthier classes ; but that, surely, is a grotesque parody of the Church, which in its fulness and glory means nothing else than a spiritual society founded by our Lord Himself, to be His Kingdom on earth. The Church is a great Mutual Benefit Society, the greatest which has ever existed among men, and the salvation which the Church offers is no selfish or solitary thing. And if wo realize what is involved in being members of the Holy Catholic Church, we cannot rest until we are doing something, however little it may be, towards making this mutual helpfulness a more real thing than it was before. The Bible comes to us with lessons tending in this direction on every page. We are "members one of another " ; " Let him that loveth God, love his brother also " ; " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " ; " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." St. John is the strongest and clearest of all the inspired writers on this great lesson of mutual love and social service. He makes it a test: " By this we know that we have passed out of death into life." Why? How? Not becauf^e we have accepted the Christian Creed, not by participation in the Sacraments, but " because we love the brethren."
She sits in beauty by the world's Sin-Gate,
Where pass the hopes that come not back again, —
Lorn hearts and lonely, souls of love and hate, Sad women, weary children, broken men;
And evermore her Master's royal love
Goes down among the dark and hopeless bands.
Bids drooping souls rejoice, and look above, And trust, unfearing, to His wounded hands.*
* L. Maclean Watt, In Poets' Comer, 66.
144 AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
2, But our practice falls painfully short of what it ought to be and might be. Some of us have shaken off the fetters of Individualism. We have accepted, with our lips at least, this much more glorious creed of mutual service and co-operation; but how little there is really of social life even in the best organized Church ! Very few of us consider that the fact of being fellow-communicants creates any real demand on our sympathy or help. Most of us worship year after year in a church, seeing the same faces round us, kneeling next to us at the altar, and yet go out into the world and treat them as strangers.
^ Again and again complaint has reached me from young men who have come up to London to seek their fortune ; they have left home and friends and all companionship behind them, and have come up to hard toil in this grasping, grinding city. They are cut off from all the enjoyments and amenities of a young man's natural life ; and the Church is just the place where they might find what they need. The Church might supply a young man with these natural enjoyments, all the more delightful because they would be pure and good. But does the Church? That is the point. Again and again it has been said to me, " I have found such and such a church ; I like the preaching and the ritual ; I make my Communions there ; but I don't know anybody. Nobody has taken me up. Nobody has shown me any help; nobody has said anything to me; nobody is interested in me." Well, there is a way in which every one of us could do something to realize the social ideal of the Catholic Church. We could stretch out the right hand of fellowship to our brother- worshippers, and do something to break down a little of our national English stiffness and shyness, and enable people to realize — what, as a matter of fact, they do feel in their hearts — the bond which unites all those who meet together in the mystical Body of Christ. Very different would be the aspect of the world if we all did that.^