When Cain asked "Am I my brother's keeper?" it seemed a very strange question to come from a man who had just murdered his brother and held him so cruelly in his keeping. Fear led Cain to disguise his guilt by repudiating his obligation, through an interrogation more negative than a flat denial. What he said in guilty fear, many are now ready to say in pretended humanity, and it is one of the conceits of our time to make light of ties of kindred in the name of a world-wide philanthropy. A melo-dramatic patriotism not particularly famous for domestic attachment has been ready to swear brotherhood to the whole nation, perhaps the whole race, and many a scape-grace who has been a sad plague to his own kindred, has been heard shouting at the top of his voice the three noble watchwords of which fraternity is a climax. Philanthropists sometimes labor under a similar error, and people who have had no especial solicitude or felicity in helping their own families and neighbors, presume to despise such near at hand interests as trivial, and seek to reform the world in a wholesale way. Professed Christians are not wholly free from the error. Some certainly there are who are ready to _brother_ and _sister_ all Christendom with most profuse generosity of tongue, who show their little sense of the meaning of the term by pinching selfishness towards those of their own blood, that seems to say, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is well, that large views of social obligation are making headway, and that Christianity has so mightily rebuked the narrowness of exclusive cliques and clanships. But if humanity is to be true in its progress, it must be true in its source; and if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love not merely God whom he hath not seen, but the brother whom he hath not seen? In fact what is regard for our brother but the first and most obvious application of the second of the two great commandments? Our brother is our next neighbor, and even our humanity must begin with him, that it may be really worth any thing. We turn now to the collateral relations of the household, or the duties of brothers and sisters. Sacred and suggestive subject, speaking to each of us in the tones of our own peculiar experience. Let it speak to the conscience as well as to the sensibilities and the memory. * * * * * Where shall we begin but at the beginning, that is with the will of God, which is the ground of every duty? The family, as we have seen and believe, is the first form of society, a government founded by the Creator. All that can be said in favor of its peace and order, goes to set forth its collateral as well as its ascending and descending ties--to urge the obligations of brothers and sisters as well as parents and children. Co-operation between the former is as essential to the home, as are protection and dependence between the latter.