KINDRED. We have contemplated man as a person, deriving supply to his necessities, guidance in his ways, solace and hope in sorrow and in death, from the presence, the inspiration, and the peace of God. We have even remarked his relation to the kind of which each is one; so far only, however, as it bears upon his own person, his joys and sorrows, his weaknesses and his supports, his good and his evil. We may pass now to wider views. We come to contemplate man, not as lonely soul, great though this surely is, but as member of one living brotherhood; seeking, amidst the various forms which the kindly element assumes, to learn something of the duties, the wants, the resources, of which this larger sphere gives experience. We may begin with the assertion, even if it bring some repetition, of the principle which pervades this division of our work. Man is not merely individual, much less exclusively selfish. We are told that the Scandinavians, those wild children of the Northern forests, used to figure existence, universal existence, as a huge tree, the strong roots down in unfathomable depths, the broad trunk rising above and conveying upward the fluent life, thence the long and many branches growing and stretching out through the immensity. The image might be applied for other purposes; let it suggest at present this single thought, or rather fact,—the vital connection in which that one branch of the boundless tree, humanity, stands within itself to all which we may call its twigs and shoots and leaves, these living of that, and all living through the life which at once quickens them and makes them one. Man is indeed one. Ages gather and fulfil themselves, then dissolve into the successions of new eras; nations rise and grow and fall; tribes shoot forth of the central stock, to wither soon and decline; families spring up together, and are scattered like leaves; persons go through like processes of growth and decay; but the human race, the living humanity, survives. One and the same, this growth of the spirit outlives all change. Continually fresh life pushes off the decaying leaves; and if smaller branches decay and drop, we see no loss, for, before they have fallen, shoots all alive and green cover them up and renew the spring. The leaf upon the branch, however, is not equally near to all its neighbor leaves. Two or three or more may come out together, their stems meeting at the point from which they grow, united even in separation. And men such the necessary, let us say, the benignant, limitations of nature grow, some far apart, others nearer to each other, a few consciously meeting and joined together. The great life, excluding none, shoots out into severed unions. The union which seems most intimate, which is in reality vital and of true sanctity, reveals itself in the family. There are the husband and the wife; there are the children calling up from the depths parental and filial affections, developing at length the kindnesses of brothers and sisters. The child goes out into other circles; special affinities generate new connections; friendships are formed, relations extended; kindness reaches into widening circles; the larger heart interprets at length its sympathies with country, with church, therein with mankind. Let it be distinctly remarked, that through these successive processes the affections, drawn forth as by magnetic attractions, follow the power which leads them to fix upon the objects themselves; there they find their rest as their motive, instead of giving us mere reflections and modifications of self-love. Each loves, not himself in another, but the other, immediately, directly, purely. |