Of course one must answer that there is much truth which can be discovered by a loveless mind. Yet there is, on the other hand, much truth which cannot be discerned without love. There are many secrets of literature, of art, of music, and of the higher traits of character as well, into which you cannot enter unless you give your mind to these things with sympathy and affection and responsiveness; loving them, as Jesus says, with the mind. One {175} of our preachers has lately called attention to the new word in literature which illustrates this attitude of the mind.[1] When people wrote in earlier days of other people and their works they wrote biographies or criticisms or studies, but now we have what are called "appreciations;" the attempt, that is to say, to enter into a character and appreciate its traits or its art, and to love it with the mind. Perhaps that is what this ancient law asks of you in your relation to God, to come not as a critic, but as a lover, to the rational appreciation of the ways of God. Here is the noblest capacity with which human life is endowed. It is a great thing to love God with the heart and soul, to let the emotions of gratitude to Him or of joy in his world run free; but to rise into sympathetic interpretation of his laws, to think God's thoughts after Him, and to be moved by the high emotions which are stirred by exalted ideas,—to love God, that is to say, with the mind,—that, I suppose, is the highest function of human life, and the quality which most endows a man with insight and power.
[1] Rev. Leighton Parks, D. D., in a sermon at the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Boston, May, 1895.
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LXX
AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
Genesis iv. 9.
Cain was the first philosophical individualist; the first "laissez-faire" economist. When God asked: "Where is Abel?" Cain answered: "What responsibility have I for him? My business is to take care of myself. Am I my brother's keeper?" But the interesting fact is that Cain had been his brother's keeper though he declined responsibility for him. He refused to be responsible for his brother's life, but he certainly was responsible for his brother's death. He refused to be his brother's keeper, but he was willing to be his brother's slayer. There are plenty of people to-day who are trying to maintain this same impossible theory of social irresponsibility. They affirm that they have no social duty except to mind their own business; but that very denial of responsibility is what makes them among the most responsible agents of social disaster. They deal with their affairs on the principle that they are nobody's {177} keeper, and so they are stirring every day the fires of industrial revolt. We are passing through dark days in the business world, and there are many causes for the trouble, but the deepest cause is Cain's theory of life. "Where is thy brother?" says God to the business man to-day,—"thy brother, the wage-earner, the victim of the cut-down and the lockout?" "Where is thy brother?" says God again to the unscrupulous agitator, bringing distress into many a workman's home for the satisfactions of ambition and power. And to any man who answers: "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" the rebuke of God is spoken again: "Cursed art thou! The voice of thy brother crieth against thee from the ground."
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