Friends: I wish to deal to-night with the question of the principle of Brotherhood as applied to human life; how we may use it to solve some of the problems that we find around us at the present day, how we may use it to make possible the transition from one stage of civilisation to another, so that the transition may come in peace and goodwill, and thereby may last, rather than in anger and revolution, which can only mean a brief period of the new order, and then another struggle, prolonged ill-will, and misery. But if Brotherhood is to be applied to the solution of our difficulties, the first thing that is necessary is to try to understand what is meant by Brotherhood, and what it implies. Now, Brotherhood by no means implies what is called equality, for just as you do find Brotherhood in nature, so do you not find equality; in fact, the very name Brotherhood carries our thoughts to the constitution of the family, implies at once the inequality of elder and younger, of wiser and more ignorant, of those who guide and those who obey; so that if man is to aim at a society in which equality is to be the watchword, then the principle of Brotherhood must be entirely thrown on one side. The disadvantage of taking the war-cry of equality in trying to make a social system, or even to fight a social battle, is that natural law is against you, and that you are dealing with a fiction, not with a fact. There is nothing more obvious throughout the whole realm of nature than the inequalities of which natural order consists; and if you turn aside from the vaster order of the various grades of living things, and confine yourselves only to the study of man, there the same principle of inequality is perpetually asserting itself. It is not only the difference of age which always comes in, in the question of a family; it is the difference of capacity, of power, of characteristics, of qualifications. What sort of equality is possible between the strong and healthy man and the cripple or the invalid? what sort of equality between the man with eyes and the blind? between the man who is dowered with genius and the man who is weighted by dulness and stupidity? Inequality is the law of nature, not equality; and it is of no use to try to build a social system on that which is only a fiction, thought out in the study of doctrinaires, but breaking down the very moment it comes to be applied to human life. That famous declaration of the American Republic: “Man is born free,” and on that freedom basing equality, is denied by every fact of human life. Man is born a babe, helpless and dependent; and if the babe were left to the enjoyment of freedom, he would have very little chance of growing into youth and maturity. A babe is not born free, but dependent on all those around him for the possible continuance of his life; and if it were not that he is born into a system of affection and obligation, there would be no chance for the human babe to survive the