"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man."—Genesis 2:21, 22.
"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man."—Genesis 2:21, 22.
It is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever since sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings and scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and ornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of
just landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I speak—Eve, the first, the fairest and the best.
I make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border them withpearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and there are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple under the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon, and orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There are woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and death as compared with
of the text, the subject of my morning story. Never since have such skies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the Havilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddakel, even the pebbles being bdellium and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's hum, andwaterfall's dash. Great scene of gladness and love and joy.
Right there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred
Adam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and pronounced the ceremony when he said: "Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh."
stood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day alone looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders if it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says: "I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage to the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it down to examine it." She examined the fruit. She said: "I do not think there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it." She put the fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the fruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let the heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the hills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep, hell-rending howl:
Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw, and sting, and tooth, and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass. Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted myriads of a ruined race.
Do you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated
She wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six thousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity. Healthy curiosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science and for religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the geologist and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of nature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the antiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried Herculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulchre there came up shaft and terrace and amphitheatre. Healthful curiosity has enlarged the telescopic vision of the astronomer untilworlds hidden in the distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassoed with resplendent law.
has gone down and found the tracks of the eternal God in the polypi and the starfish under the sea and the majesty of the great Jehovah encamped under the gorgeous curtains of the dahlia. It has studied the spots on the sun, and the larvæ in a beech leaf, and the light under fire-fly's wing, and the terrible eye glance of a condor pitching from Chimborazo. It has studied the myriads of animalculæ that make up the phosphorescence in a ship's wake, and the mighty maze of suns, and spheres, and constellations, and galaxies that blaze on in the march of God. Healthful curiosity has stood by the inventor until forces that were hidden for ages came to wheels, and levers, and shafts, and shuttles—forces that fly the air, or swim the sea, or cleave the mountain until the earth jars, and roars, and rings, and crackles, and booms, with strange mechanism, and ships with nostrils of hot steam and yokes of fire draw the continents together.
I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden jars, and other electric batteries, and other voltaic piles,and other magnifying glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the natural world until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the mechanical curiosity of Liebig, and the zoölogical curiosity of Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and tens of thousands into ruin.
Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted, and that
and blasted all nations. So there are clergy in this day inspired by unhealthful inquisitiveness who have tried to look through the keyhole of God's mysteries, mysteries that were barred and bolted from all human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain
how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity, resurrection—inthe discussion of these subjects hundreds and thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who have actually been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not understand who Melchisedec was not!
Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are over anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of tittle-tattle. They invite and sumptuously entertain at their house Colonel Twaddle and Esquire Chitchat and Governor Smalltalk. Whoever hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable secret, let him come and sacrifice it to
Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this computation of moral algebra:good sense plus good breeding, minus curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!
Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm of
to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance while they look, and fall into remediless ruin; or, catching themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage healthful inquisitiveness, by all means discourage ill regulated curiosity.
The subject of the morning also impresses me with the fact that fruits that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise, and six thousand years of sorrow, and wretchedness, and war, and woe paid for that luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but there is death at the bottom.Intoxication has great exhilaration for a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man rich, and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands on the forehead, the night dew of everlasting darkness, and he is ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that crackle with all-consuming torture? "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!"
horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own image.
"Aha! aha!" says the roystering inebriate; "this is joy for you; fill high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's rags and my God's defiance." And he knows not that a fiend stirs the goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust their forkedtongues hissing through the froth on the rim.
The Philistines jeered and laughed and shouted at Samson. Oh, they wanted him to make sport for them, and he made sport for them! How bright and gay was the scene for a little while! After awhile the giant puts one hand against this pillar, and the other hand against this pillar, and bows himself, and three thousand merry-makers are mashed like grapes in a wine-press. Sin rapturous at the start, awful at the last.
That one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a butcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastenedlike a leech famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!
And there are those who are
Let me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and your summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are loud voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with terror. You are past the "Narrows," and almost outside the "Hook," and if the Atlantic take thee, frail mortal, thou shalt never get to shore again. Put back, row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore casteth a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Oh, are there not some of you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a vessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? Thou nearest the breakers, one heave upon the rock. Oh, what an awful crash was that! Another lunge may crush thee beneath the spars or grind thy bones to powder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard! Trust not that loose plank nor attempt the move, but quickly clasp the feet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until He hear thee, "Lord, save me, or I perish." Sin beautifulat the start—oh, how sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads you is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The promise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen sword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous handwritings on the wall.
Observe also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to great attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such perfection of womanhood. You could not suggest an attractiveness to the body or suggest any refinement to the manner. You could add no gracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the voice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman to be the companion of a perfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in accord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against God's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the fruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults, that have set the universe a-wailing,
to all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and women naturally vulgar going into transgression. Weexpect that people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to the refinements of social life. The accomplishments of Mary Queen of Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more appalling. The genius of Catharine II., of Russia, only sets forth in more powerful contrast her unappeasable ambition. The translations from the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful qualifications for a queen, made the more disgusting her capriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness of Byron's mind made the more alarming Byron's sensuality.
Let no one who hears me this day think that refinement of manner or exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness, for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward can give no excuse. Accomplishment heaven high is no apology for vice hell deep.
My subject also impresses me with the regal
When I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the generations that have followed, it suggests to me thegreat power all women have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you, with the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and the stage. They mean nothing, they are accepted as nothing. Woman's nobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence, and when I see this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole human race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a blow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons, or up among the thrones.
Of course, I am not speaking of representative women—of Eve, who ruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike through the head of Sisera the warrior; of Esther, who overcame royalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess; of Mary, who nursed the world's Saviour; of Grandmother Lois, immortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove the dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover, or of Marie Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who, unambitious for political power, as
and sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of home.
When at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city; and the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the brother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and mother down the steep of years. Need I go into history to find you illustrations? Ah no; in your own memory there was at least one such! When I come to speak of womanly influence, my mind always wanders off to
the aged one who, twenty years ago, we put away for the resurrection. About eighty years ago, and just before their marriage day, my father and mother stood up in the old meeting-house at Somerville, New Jersey, and took upon them the vows of the Christian. Through a long life of vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her end in peace. No child of wantever came to her door and was turned empty away. No one in sorrow came to her but was comforted. No one asked her the way to be saved but she pointed him to the cross. When the angel of life came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to rejoice at the incarnation. When the angel of death came to a neighbor's dwelling she was there to robe the departed for the burial.
We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the absence of my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or honor, but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of thy comforting grace?" Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had but one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent missionary son; and when the ship from China anchored in New York harbor, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his paternal home, she said: "Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." The prayer was soon answered.
It was an autumnal day very much like this when we gathered from afar and found only the house from which the soul had fled forever. She looked very natural, the hands very much as when they were employed in kindness for her children. Whatever else we forget, we never forget the look of mother's hands. As we stood there bythe casket, we could not help but say: "Don't she look beautiful?" It was a cloudless day when, with heavy hearts, we carried her out to the last resting-place. The withered leaves crumbled under hoof and wheel as we passed, and the sun shone on the Raritan River until it looked like fire; but more calm and beautiful and radiant was the setting sun of that aged pilgrim's life. No more toil, no more tears, no more sickness, no more death. Dear mother! Beautiful mother!
"Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,While the pure spirit rests with God."
"Sweet is the slumber beneath the sod,While the pure spirit rests with God."
I need not go back and show you Zenobia or Semiramis or Isabella as wonders of womanly excellence or greatness, when I in this moment point to your own picture gallery of memory, and show you the one face that you remember so well, and arouse all your holy reminiscences, and start you in new consecration to God by the pronunciation of that tender, beautiful, glorious word, "Mother! mother!"
"And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him."—Exodus 2:4.
"And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him."—Exodus 2:4.
Princess Thermutis, daughter of Pharaoh, looking out through the lattice of her bathing-house, on the banks of the Nile, saw a curious boat on the river. It had neither oar nor helm, and they would have been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves of papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of that material, as we learn from Pliny, and Herodotus, and Theophrastus.
"Kill every Hebrew boy when he is born," had been Pharaoh's order. To save her son, Jochebed, the mother of little Moses, had put him in that queer boat and launched him. His sister Miriam stood on the bank watching that craft with its precious burden. She was far enough off not to draw attention to the boat, but near enough to offer protection. There she stands on the bank,Miriam the poetess, Miriam the quick-witted, Miriam the faithful, though very human, for in after time she became so mad with that very brother for marrying a woman she did not like, that she made a great family row, and was struck with leprosy.
Miriam was a splendid sister, but had her faults like all the rest of us. How carefully she watched the boat containing her brother! A strong wind might upset it. The buffaloes often found there might in a sudden plunge of thirst sink it. Some ravenous water-fowl, might swoop, and pick his eyes out with iron beak. Some crocodile or hippopotamus crawling through the rushes might craunch the babe. Miriam watched and watched until Princess Thermutis, a maiden on each side of her, holding palm leaves over her head to shelter her from the sun, came down and entered her bathing-house. When from the lattice she saw that boat she ordered it brought, and when the leaves were pulled back from the face of the child and the boy looked up he cried aloud, for he was hungry and frightened, and would not even let the princess take him. The infant would rather stay hungry than acknowledge any one of the court as mother.
Now Miriam, the sister, incognito, no one suspecting her relation to the child, leapsfrom the bank and rushes down and offers to get a nurse to pacify the child. Consent is given, she brings Jochebed, the baby's mother, incognito, not sure of the court knowing that she was the mother, and when Jochebed arrived the child stopped crying, for its fright was calmed and its hunger appeased. You may admire Jochebed, the mother, and all the ages may admire Moses, but I clap my hands in applause at the behavior of Miriam, the faithful, brilliant, and strategic sister!
"Go home," someone might have said to Miriam. "Why risk yourself out there alone on the banks of the Nile, breathing the miasma and in danger of being attacked of wild beast or ruffian; go home!" No; Miriam, the sister, most lovingly watched and bravely defended Moses, the brother. Is he worthy her care and courage? Oh, yes; the sixty centuries of the world's history have never had so much involved in the arrival of any ship at any port as in the landing of that papyrus boat calked with bitumen. Its one passenger was to be a non-such in history. Lawyer, statesman, politician, legislator, organizer, conqueror, deliverer.
He had such remarkable beauty in childhood that Josephus says, when he was carriedalong the road, people stopped to gaze at him, and workmen would leave their work to admire him. When the king playfully put his crown upon this boy, he threw it off indignantly, and put his foot on it. The king, fearing that this might be a sign that the child might yet take down his crown, applied another test. According to the Jewish legend, the king ordered two bowls to be put before the child, one containing rubies, and the other burning coals. And if he took the coals he was to live, and if he took the rubies he was to die. For some reason the child took one of the coals, and put it in his mouth, so that his life was spared, although it burned the tongue till he was indistinct of utterance ever after. Having come to manhood, he spread open the palms of his hands in prayer and the Red Sea parted to let two million five hundred thousand people escape. And he put the palms of his hands together in prayer and the Red Sea closed on a strangulated host.
His life was unutterably grand, his burial must be on the same scale. God would let neither man nor saint nor archangel have anything to do with weaving for him a shroud or digging for him a grave. The omnipotent God left His throne in heaven one day, and if the question was asked,"Whither is the King of the Universe going?" the answer was, "I am going down to bury Moses." And the Lord took this mightiest of men to the top of a hill, and the day was clear, and Moses ran his eye over the magnificent range of country. Here, the valley of Esdraelon, where the final battle of all nations is to be fought; and yonder, the mountains Hermon, and Lebanon, and Gerizim, and hills of Judea; and the village of Bethlehem there, and the city of Jericho yonder, and the vast stretch of landscape that almost took the old lawgiver's breath away as he looked at it.
And then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye of Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased; and his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: "To the skies, thou immortal spirit!" And then one divine hand was put against the back of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in the Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed in crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into an everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only obsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, andundertaker, and grave-digger, and mourner were ended.
Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one passenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming eternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the God-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house, would have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of her own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for faithful sisterhood!
For how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a deliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the farm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuoushomes! Come up from the banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the Mobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics and religion!
If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants, and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and trades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would rise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how much of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the banks of self-denial.
Miriam was the oldest of the family, Moses and Aaron, her brothers, are younger. Oh, the power of the elder sister to help decide the brother's character for usefulness and for heaven! She can keep off from her brother more evils than Miriam could have driven back water-fowl or crocodile from the ark of bulrushes. The older sister decidesthe direction in which the cradle-boat shall sail. By gentleness, by good sense, by Christian principle she can turn it toward the palace, not of a wicked Pharaoh, but of a holy God; and a brighter princess than Thermutis shall lift him out of peril, even religion, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
The older sister, how much the world owes her! Born while yet the family was in limited circumstances, she had to hold and take care of her younger brothers. And if there is anything that excites my sympathy it is a little girl lugging round a great fat child, and getting her ears boxed because she cannot keep him quiet. By the time she gets to young womanhood she is pale and worn out, and her attractiveness has been sacrificed on the altar of sisterly fidelity, and she is consigned to celibacy, and society calls her by an ungallant name, but in heaven they call her Miriam.
In most families the two most undesirable places in the record of births are the first and the last, the first because she is worn out with the cares of a home that cannot afford to hire help, and the last because she is spoiled as a pet. Among the grandest equipages that sweep through the streets of heaven will be those occupied by sisters whosacrificed themselves for brothers. They will have the finest of the Apocalyptic white horses, and many who on earth looked down upon them will have to turn out to let them, pass.
Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother. It is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your brother can ever turn out anything very useful. Well, he may not be a Moses. There is only one of that kind needed for six thousand years. But I tell you what your brother will be—either a blessing or a curse to society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. He will, like Moses, have the choice between rubies and living coals, and your influence will have much to do with his decision. He may not, like Moses, be the deliverer of a nation, but he may, after your father and mother are gone, be the deliverer of a household. What thousands of homes to-day are piloted by brothers! There are properties now well invested and yielding income for the support of sisters and younger brothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the day the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured,censorious, unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few years of your companionship, you will have your counsels reflected back upon you some day by his splendor of behavior in some crisis where he would have failed but for you.
Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his ability. Don't talk discouragingly about his future. Don't let Miriam get down off the bank of the Nile, and wade out and upset the ark of bulrushes. Don't tease him. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease. That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and lacerating the disposition and the soul. It is the curse of innumerable households that thebrothers tease the sisters, and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the shape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by revealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an "Ahem!" Tease! Tease! Tease! For God's sake quit it. Christ says: "He that hateth his brother is a murderer." Now, when you, by teasing, make your brother or sister hate you, you turn him or her into a murderer or murderess.
Don't let jealousy ever touch a sister's soul, as it so often does, because her brother gets more honor or more means. Even Miriam, the heroine of the text, was struck by that evil passion of jealousy. She had possessed unlimited influence over Moses, and now he marries, and not only so but marries a black woman from Ethiopia, and Miriam is so disgusted and outraged at Moses, first because he had married at all, and next, because he had practised miscegenation, that she is drawn into a frenzy, and then begins to turn white, and gets white as a corpse, and then whiter than a corpse. Her complexion is like chalk; the fact is, she has the Egyptian leprosy. And now the brother whom she had defended on the Nile comes to her rescue in a prayer that brings her restoration.
Let there be no room in all your house for jealousy, either to sit or stand. It is a leprous abomination. Your brother's success, O sisters! is your success. His victories will be your victories; for, while Moses the brother led the vocal music after the crossing of the Red Sea, Miriam, the sister, with two glittering sheets of brass uplifted and glittering in the sun, led the instrumental music, clapping the cymbals till the last frightened neigh of pursuing cavalry horse was smothered in the wave, and the last Egyptian helmet went under.
How strong it makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the same father and mother, you fight each other across the parental grave in the cemetery.
If you only knew it, your interests areidentical. Of all the families of the earth that ever stood together, perhaps the most conspicuous is the family of the Rothschilds. As Mayer Anselm Rothschild was about to die in 1812, he gathered his children about him, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan, Charles and James, and made them promise that they would always be united on 'Change. Obeying that injunction, they have been the mightiest commercial power on earth, and at the raising or lowering of their sceptre, nations have risen or fallen. That illustrates how much on a large scale, and for selfish purposes, a united family may achieve. But suppose that, instead of a magnitude of dollars as the object, it be doing good and making salutary impression and raising this sunken world, how much more ennobling! Sister, you do your part, and brother will do his part. If Miriam will lovingly watch the boat on the Nile, Moses will help her when leprous disaster strike.
When father and mother are gone, and they soon will be, if they have not already made exit, the sisterly and fraternal bond will be the only ligament that will hold the family together. How many reasons for your deep and unfaltering affection for each other! Rocked in the same cradle; bent over by the same motherly tenderness; toiledfor by the same father's weary arm and aching brow; with common inheritance of all the family secrets; and with names given you by parents who started you with the highest hopes for your happiness and prosperity—I charge you, be loving and kind and forgiving. If the sister see that the brother never wants a sympathizer, the brother will see that the sister never wants an escort.
Oh, if the sisters of a household knew through what terrific and damning temptations their brother goes in this city life, they would hardly sleep nights in the anxiety for his salvation! And if you would make a holy conspiracy of kind words and gentle attentions and earnest prayers, that would save his soul from death and hide a multitude of sins. But let the sister dash off in one direction in discipleship of the world, and the brother flee off in another direction in dissipation, and it will not be long before they will meet again at the iron gate of Despair, their blistered feet in the hot ashes of a consumed lifetime. Alas, that brothers and sisters, though living together for years, very often do not know each other, and that they see only the imperfections and none of the virtues!
General Bauer, of the Russian cavalry,had in early life wandered off in the army, and the family supposed he was dead. After he gained a fortune he encamped one day in Husam, his native place, and made a banquet, and among the great military men who were to dine, he invited a plain miller and his wife, who lived near by, and who, affrighted, came, fearing some harm would be done them. The miller and his wife were placed one on each side of the general at the table. The general asked the miller all about his family, and the miller said that he had two brothers and a sister. "No other brothers?" "My younger brother went off with the army many years ago, and no doubt was long ago killed." Then the general said: "Soldiers, I am this man's younger brother whom he thought was dead." And how loud was the cheer, and how warm was the embrace!
Brother and sister, you need as much of an introduction to each other as they did. You do not know each other. You think your brother is grouty and cross and queer, and he thinks you are selfish and proud and unlovely. Both wrong! That brother will be a prince in some woman's eyes, and that sister a queen in the estimation of some man. That brother is a magnificent fellow, and that sister is a morning in June. Come, let me introduce you: "Moses, this is Miriam." "Miriam, this is Moses." Addseventy-five per cent to your present appreciation of each other, and when you kiss good-morning; do not stick up your cold cheek, wet from the recent washing, as though you hated to touch each other's lips in affectionate caress. Let it have all the fondness and cordiality of a loving sister's kiss.
Make yourselves as agreeable and helpful to each other as possible, remembering that soon you part. The few years of boyhood and girlhood will soon slip by, and you will go out to homes of your own, and into the battle with the world and amid ever-changing vicissitudes, and on paths crossed with graves, and up steps hard to climb, and through shadowy ravines. But oh, my God and Saviour, may the terminus of the journey be the same as the start, namely, at father's and mother's knee, if they have inherited the kingdom! Then, as in boyhood and girlhood days, we rushed in after the day's absence with much to tell of exciting adventure, and father and mother enjoyed the recital as much as we who made it, so we shall on the hillside of heaven rehearse to them all the scenes of our earthly expedition, and they shall welcome us home, as we say: "Father and mother, we have come, and brought our children with us." Theold revival hymn described it with glorious repetition: