Brotherliness

“ But, after all, it matters not: we are all of the same family, are we not?” “Yes; assuredly all men are brothers, in whatever kingdom each is born.” “That is true: what you say is founded on reason; all men are brothers. ”

“ This was the time, comrades, when we held out our hands to one another to be brothers! This is the foundation of our brotherhood! No ties are more holy than those of comradeship. The father loves his child, the mother loves her child, the child loves its father and mother ”

“ The broader, wider brotherhood, with every race and name;
To his own kin he kind and loyal was in truth, yet still,
His mother and his brethren were all who did God's will
All little ones were dear to him, for light from Paradise
Seemed falling on him through their pure and innocent eyes ”

“ I am not cruel and not pitiless. I must forget that I am a brother, and remember only I am a king, not only for the good of my family, but for the prosperity of my people. My brother must marry a princess of wealth and influence. ”

“ Cultivate that love which says that all are sisters and brothers. To the protection of the father, to the affection of the son, to the help of the brother, the response always comes. Heart meets heart in such response ”

“ Dear reader, we have written late into the night, and now, as the faces of these friends, whom we have followed so long and learned to love so well, fade from our sight among the shadows, let us rejoice that the time has come, when this great Nation, North and South, is united once more in the firmest bonds of friendship—one brotherhood. ”

“ True, and thank God! the greater excludes not the less; it makes all the weaker bonds stronger and truer, nor forbids that where all are brothers, some should be those of our bosom. Still my brother according to the flesh is my first neighbour, that we may be very nigh to each other, whether we will or no, while our hearts are tender, and so may learn brotherhood. For our love to each other is but the throbbing of the heart of the great brotherhood, and could come only from the eternal Father, not from our parents. ”

“ My love for you has been the magic key that has unlocked the doors dividing me from my fellow-men. No longer isolated, no longer apart, I am one of a brotherhood that claims fellowship with all humanity. ”

“ Love of the Brotherhood. What keeps us from quarreling with one another, from slandering and defrauding one another? Love of the Brotherhood. What keeps alive our sympathies for each other in times of distress and in seasons of sorrow? Love of the Brotherhood. ”

“ ODD-FELLOWSHIP, Reared upon the broad catholic principle of brotherhood, extending its helpful hand from nation to nation, and from continent to continent, linking its votaries together with the golden triple chain of Friendship, Love and Truth, can afford to be friendly with each, and have a kindly word for all societies that reach down after and raise up a fallen brother, and if possible make him wiser, better and happier. ”

“ Grant him to be a worthy member of our brotherhood; and may he be in his own person a perfect mirror of all Masonic virtues. Grant that all our doings may be to Thy honour and glory, and to the welfare of all mankind. ”

“ THE TREND OF SENTIMENT—Continued Nature of the Sentiment of Brotherhood—Favored by Communication and Settled Principles—How Far Contemporary Life Fosters It—How Far Uncongenial To It—General Outcome in this Regard—The Spirit of Service—The Trend of Manners—Brotherhood in Relation to Conflict—Blame—Democracy and Christianity.
The sentiment of mutual kindness or brotherhood is a simple and widespread thing, belonging not only to man in every stage of his development, but extending, in a crude form, over a great part of animal life. ”

“ Brotherhood, the declaration of ideals and philosophies, are but calls to the hosts, who lie crushed by this mountain nature piled above them, to arise again, to unite, to storm the heavens and sit on the seats of the mighty. ”

“ I admit your brother to have more faults than even you accuse him of having. Alas! you are so gentle and so friendly toward those from whom you expect your fortune and your establishment, and whose temper, haughtiness, and manners shock you. ”

“ It is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by equality, nor by likeness, but by giving and receiving; the souls that are unlike, and the nations that are unlike, and the natures that are unlike, being bound into one noble whole by each receiving something from, and of, the others’ gifts and the others’ glory. ”

“ Yes, I am a mystic—have joined the one brotherhood that is eternal and all-embracing, as young as love and as old as time—the society that no man suspects till he is close upon it, or hopes to enter till he finds himself in a moment within the sacred pale. ”

“ You, my dear brother, are a husband and father, and can appreciate my meaning, when I speak of the richness, the tenderness, the depth, of connubial and paternal love; how it lights up this dark world with smiles,—how it stimulates us to manly exertion,—how it lightens the burdens of human life, and enables us cheerfully to sustain its ills, while it almost restores to us Eden itself. ”

“ You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man, an increased sacredness of the human relation. Some things point that way; some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definite meaning without a father; sacredness can hardly be predicated without anything which consecrates. We can point to an eminent writer who tells you that he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether; that there are many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that he would like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. ”

“ Brotherhood is purpose of progress, not purpose of profit. Brotherhood is made beautiful by unity, not by schism. Brotherhood [111] suffereth long, and is kind. Brotherhood regardeth every brother, great and small. Brotherhood waiteth upon brother and grumbleth not. All build together the common home of all.
“Seek ye those of your own purpose. Unite together all who fain would build. Master and man, architect and mason, financier and farm laborer, all work to the same end, and this is Brotherhood. ”

“ Oath Seven reads: “If any brother is unable to escape you swear to assist him, no matter what are the consequences. If there are any that do not adhere to these feelings of kinship, let thunder annihilate them.” ”

“ Adhering to it absolutely, most beloved brothers, you will wish to have for ever in Heaven nothing else than the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And wherever the brothers are and shall meet, they shall show themselves as of one household; and the one shall safely manifest to the other his necessity. For if a mother loves and nourishes her son in the flesh, how much more zealously should one love and nourish one's spiritual brother? And if any of them fall into sickness, the other brothers ought to serve him, as- they would wish themselves to be served. ”

“ If the beauty and grandeur of universal brotherhood could be impressed upon the minds of all the people, how very different from the past would the future history of the world read. What a delightful place this old stone-ribbed earth would be if men would look upon each other as brothers, members of one common family ”

“ 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. ”

“ The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. ”

“ Brethren, if you have hard feelings against a brother, go to him like a man, and tell him that he has done so and so, and that it is your desire to have the thing straightened out; and if you cannot make it right yourselves call to your aid the services of a teacher, and rather let us sacrifice our feelings than allow that genial spirit which belongs to true brotherhood to be crushed out of our hearts. Let every man and woman in this congregation to-day feel that any difficulties they may have had with their brethren or sisters shall be buried from to-day, and shall not be harbored any longer. ”

“ This very love of God for the individual brings into being the divine family of all individuals, the universal brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father. And this brotherhood, being universal, is a relationship of the whole. ”

“ LV. We permit you to have married brothers in this manner, if such should seek to participate in the benefit of your fraternity; let both the man and his wife grant, from and after their death, their respective portions of property, and whatever more they acquire in after life, to the unity of the common chapter; and, in the interim, let them exercise an honest life, and labour to do good to the brethren: but they are not permitted to appear in the white habit and white mantle. ”

“ It enables me in all the unembellished sternness of legal proof to display to an age little credulous of much affection the force of a brother's love,—the high-hearted devotion by which a man encountered a long life of poverty and privation, rather than disturb the peaceful possession of a brother. ”

“ But here we stand in one unbroken row of brotherhood. No symbol establishes a hierarchy that divides one from another; every name which has passed into our golden book, the triennial catalogue, is illuminated and emblazoned in our remembrance and affection with the purple and sunshine of our common Mother's hallowed past and hopeful future. ”

“ If you are seeking some special advantage, how can the brotherhood or sisterhood help you? Serve the community and other men by it, as is the nature of love, and you will have your reward for this love without any effort and desire on your part. But if you deem the service and reward of love too small, it is evidence that yours is a perverted brotherhood. Love serves freely and for nothing, therefore God also gives again to it every blessing freely and or nothing. Since, then, everything must be done in love, if it is to please God at all, the brotherhood must also be a brotherhood in love. ”

“ They set their heads together, got the good old fathers of the Brotherhood— (We have no Brotherhood now,—neither religious nor social: every man is his own brother, as the king says in the English play.—Did you ever read Calderon?) ”

“ For in those days, brethren and the children of a family meet together from afar beneath a father's or a brother's roof—the grandsire and the grandson sit at the table together—and the words of the inspired royal bard, that it is good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity, are exemplified. ”

“ This is your spiritual coming of age, in which you set aside your childish dependence upon teachers and upon taught phrases, upon rote and direction, and stand up to look your Master in the face. You profess a great brotherhood when you do that, a brotherhood that goes round the earth, that numbers men of every race and nation and country, that aims to bring God into all the affairs of this world and make him not only the king of your individual lives but the king—in place of all the upstarts, usurpers, accidents, and absurdities who bear crowns and sceptres today—of an united mankind. ”

“ The brotherhood of rest, one might name his theme for grown-up folk; as in the morning, we afterwards learnt, he is wont to sing them another little song of the brotherhood of work; the aim of his whole beautiful effort for them being to fill their hearts with a sense of the brotherhood of all living things—flowers, butterflies, bees and birds, the milk-boy, the policeman, the man at the crossing, the grocer's pony, all within the circle of their little lives, as living and working in one great camaraderie. ”

“ I will say, first, that when one brother loves another with a pure heart fervently, he tries in all ways and at all times to do his brother good, and no harm. This love fills the mouth with good things and the hands with blessings. ”

“ O you who have found mankind for a brother, be not content! You are brothers and sisters of angels and archangels: and your feet are on the glimmering roadways of unimaginable stars.
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. ”

“ The whole outlook on life was eminently brotherly. There has never been such a teaching of true fraternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the necessity for mutual aid and then of such practice of it as makes it easy, as among these old gilds. ”

“ Harbingers of the benign reign of Human Brotherhood which the popular spirit of our age devoutly regards as the eventual destiny of the world, they will be venerated, and their memories cherished and loved, when laurelled conquerers are mentioned no more with praise, or are forgotten. ”

“ But each felt that the man, however unknown to him who stood next him, was indeed a brother in loyalty to that beautiful soul, beautiful face, beautiful smile, beautiful voice, from which, in public or in secret, each had received noble impulses, tender consolation, loving correction, and clearer and juster conceptions of God, of duty, of the meaning of themselves and of the universe. ”

“ Love and justice grew; men read the brotherhood into the sunlight and the fields and the woods, and the brotherhood became real. I see the minister, no longer so young, sitting in his office in the “Tribune” building, still planning Fresh Air holidays for the children of the hot, stony city. ”