good, or a corresponding amount of harm, may yet be done after the home education period has, strictly speaking, passed away. And here is, perhaps, the best place to touch upon the holy influence which an elder brother or sister may exercise on a younger one. This, one of the most powerful means of good, is only second to that of the parents themselves, and may furnish a very beautiful illustration of true and discerning brotherly love. It is spiritual friendship engrafted upon the stock of natural affection, itself a noble virtue and most sweet tie, which has often, even in heathen times, produced great effects. Under this figure of brotherhood God has typified his union with creatures; he made himself our Brother through the incarnation; and everywhere brotherhood is synonymous with the dearest and purest fellowship. Our brothers and sisters in the flesh, especially if they are younger than ourselves, are as much our care and charge as they are of our parents; and of this we have a striking instance in the very first book of the Pentateuch, and only a few years after the sinless creation of Adam. Cain’s defiant plea, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” failed to meet with God’s endorsement, but brought instead the terrible answer that he should be “a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.” In the daily companionship of brotherhood, this scene is often re-enacted; souls are slain by their own kindred, and the world smiles and passes blindly on. But God has set a mark upon the murderer by which the devils know him and kill him not, because they know too well whose road he is even now treading, and that in the last day his mark shall be revealed to all. Here is the dark side of that continuous education which is as potently at work in dens of shame and places of pleasant danger as it is in Christian homes and schools. Here is that nefarious education which neutralizes or obliterates the happy past, and leads our young men by tortuous paths of gradual vice to the end of many such deceptive panoramas—the gallows or suicide. False example, insidious promptings, rash indulgences, intoxicating freedom, wily friendship—through these and many kindred forms, subtle may be and proportionately dangerous, the devil, in the person of your brother or your seeming friend, leads you on till the murder of Abel is repeated, and the insolent excuse flung back to heaven: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”