It is everyone’s fault more or less that he is not. Each of us who is educated, civilised, converted to the knowledge and love of God, it is his sin and shame that he is _not_ that. Above all, it is the clergyman’s sin and shame that he is not. Ay, believe me, when I blame you, I blame myself ten thousand times more. I believe there is many a sin and sorrow from which I might have saved you here, if I had dealt with you more as a man should deal who believes that you and I are brothers, made in the same image of God, redeemed by the same blood of Christ. And I believe that I shall be punished for every neglect of you for which I have been ever guilty. I believe it, and I thank God for it; for I do not see how a clergyman, or anyone else, can learn his duty, except by God’s judging him, and punishing him, and setting his sins before his face. Yes, my friends, it is good for us to be afflicted, good for us to suffer anything that will teach us this great truth, that we are our brother’s keepers; that we are all one family, and that where one of the members suffers, all the other members suffer with it; and that if one of the members has cause to rejoice, all the others will have cause to rejoice with it. A blessed thing to know, is that—though whether we know it or not, we shall find it true. If we give way to our animal nature, and try to live as the beasts do, each one caring for his own selfish pleasure—still we shall find out that we cannot do it. We shall find out, as those Liverpool people did with the Irish widow, that our fellow-men _are_ our brothers—that what hurts them will be sure in some strange indirect way to hurt us. Our brothers here have had the fever, and we have escaped; but we have felt the fruits of it, in our purses—in fear, and anxiety, and distress, and trouble—we have found out that they could not have the fever without our suffering for it, more or less. You see we are one family, we men and women; and our relationship will assert itself in spite of our forgetfulness and our selfishness. How much better to claim our brotherhood with each other, and to act upon it—to live as brothers indeed. That would be to make it a blessing, and not a curse; for as I said before, just because it is in our power to injure each other, therefore it is in our power to help each other. God has bound us together for good and for evil, for better for worse. Oh! let it be henceforward in this parish for better, and not for worse. Oh! every one of you, whether you be rich or poor, farmer or labourer, man or woman, do not be ashamed to own yourselves to be brothers and sisters, members of one family, which as it all fell together in the old Adam, so it has all risen together in the new Adam, Jesus Christ. There is no respect of persons with God. We are all equal in His sight. He knows no difference among men, except the difference which God’s Spirit gives, in