Brotherly love

“ 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. ”

“ At the afternoon Christian Endeavor service, Bro. Herr made an extemporaneous address in which he revealed the secret of his wonderful success as a soul-winner, which the writer would call unlimited charity, and inexhaustible brotherly love; the love that always instantly forgives, and as quickly extends a hand to help a fallen brother rise. ”

“ Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual fruit of saintliness, and have always been reckoned essential theological virtues, however limited may have been the kinds of service which the particular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow logically from the assurance of God's friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediate inference from that of God's fatherhood of us all. ”

“ There is mention made only of brotherly love here, but certainly the other love to God flowing from the sense of his love, is the right wing of the soul, and brotherly love the left; and by these the pious soul mounts up to heaven with the wings of an eagle. The love of our brother is but the fruit and consequent of this love, but it is set down as a probation, and clear evidence of the love of God in our souls. ”

“ That brotherly love is the practical manifestation of the love of God in man. 2. That brotherly love should be constantly cultivated. 3. That brotherly love is a crowning feature of the higher Christian life. ”

“ Where there is love, it identifies itself with its neighbor; and when it goes ill with him, the heart feels it as though it were its own experience. But to be brotherly (affectionate as brethren) is this much, that one should regard another as his own brother. ”

“ You are to regard all the members of the church as brothers and sisters. You are to love them just in proportion as they are like Christ. It is the appearance of the image of Jesus, alone, in our Christian brethren, which can call forth the spiritual exercise of brotherly love. I say the {185}appearance of the image of Christ, because we may be deceived as to the existence of that image in the hearts of others, and yet our love may be as sincere and fervent as if the image were genuine. No Christian duty is more insisted on in Scripture than brotherly love. ”

“ Do thou love, and that with a brotherly love: he is not yet a brother, but thou lovest to the end he may be a brother. Well then, all our love is a brotherly love, towards Christians, towards all His members. The discipline of charity, my brethren, its strength, flowers, fruit, beauty, pleasantness, food, drink, meat, embracing, hath in it no satiety. If it so delight us while in a strange land, in our own country how shall we rejoice!
8. Let us run then, my brethren, let us run, and love Christ. What Christ? Jesus Christ. ”

“ They are spiritual, and, of course, of higher obligation. We are required to love Christ more than father or mother. And the Lord Jesus says with emphasis, "This is my commandment, that ye love one another." I have no doubt that, when grace is in full exercise in the heart, the brotherly love which Christians exercise towards one another is far stronger than the natural affection which exists between brothers and sisters of the same family. ”

“ Ah, friend, that grips us very tight—and if there were a little more reality and prose brought into our sentimental talk about Christian love, and that love were more often shown in action, in all the self-suppression and taking a lift of a world's burdens, which its great Pattern demands, the world would be less likely to curl a scornful lip at the Church's talk about brotherly love. ”

“ The Scriptures insist upon the duty of brotherly love. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Christ, in his sermon on the mount, severely rebukes the indulgence of anger, and the want of kindness and courtesy among brethren. And the apostle John says, that "whosoever hateth his brother, is a murderer." A kind, tender-hearted, affectionate, and peaceful temper, should be maintained, in all the intercourse of different members of the same family.
But as mankind began to multiply, it became necessary that the social relations should be extended. ”

“ The natural heart is essentially selfish and cruel, and delights in fierce aggression on the rights of others, and in angry retaliation for fancied wrongs. Brotherly love is a fruit of Christianity and is a powerful influence in harmonising the warring interests of humanity. If love prevail, other graces will not be absent. ”

“ I would have people begin at home to discover for themselves the meaning of brotherly love. A friend of mine wrote me the other day that she wondered what would46 happen if occasionally a member of Congress got up and mentioned in the House the existence of brotherly love. ”

“ Entreats them to bear the word of exhortation, mentions Timothy, and concludes with the apostolical benediction, [638] .
Verse 1
Let brotherly love continue - Be all of one heart and one soul.
Feel for, comfort, and support each other; and remember that he who professes to love God should love his brother also. They had this brotherly love among them; they should take care to retain it. As God is remarkable for his φιλανθρωπια, philanthropy, or love to man, so should they be for φιλαδελφια, or love to each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit show him to you, and teach you both his love and his call for love. Neither his mind nor yours holds more than these two orders of thought. ”

“ The brother, with his colossal spirit, lofty and original, moving forward through life with that slow majesty which indicates the wholeness of the individual, unlike the airy advance of natures which rush with but one faculty quickened, and mistake speed for greatness, supplied the sister with that manly, noble quality, which must ever exist in the real or ideal of every woman. No wonder her warm, beneficent nature expanded daily, until her heart seemed a garden full of flowers of love and gratitude. ”

“ Could we bear from one another, What He daily bears from us? Yet this glorious Friend and Brother, Loves us though we treat Him thus: Though for good we render ill, He accounts us brethren still. O for grace our hearts to soften! Teach us, Lord, at length to love ”

“ But, on the other hand, when our brother's soul is dear to us,—when, at all hazards, we seek first, and above all, his good,—when our love is such that we are willing to have its existence suspected, and ourselves despised and rejected by him, even as our loving Lord was by His "own whom He loved," rather than that we should selfishly save ourselves, and lose our brother; then indeed we are labourers together with God, and possess the spirit of Jesus! ”

“ It takes, for most of us, all the help to loving our brother which comes from believing that we have a common Father and a common home,—all the help which comes to the heart in answer to the prayer that God would melt its stoniness, and make it blossom into tenderness and sympathy,—to enable us to attain the love which is not the spring of social duty, but its climax,—the “fulfilling of the law.” ”

“ And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring brother's love along with it. If the poet's heart were not "a measureless ocean of love" that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he were not the one we have waited for so long. ”

“ He half-raised himself in the energy of his supplication. “Promise me but this, throw him not off from your love, your kindness, however he may turn aside, however he may fall; even if that fearful indifference increase, and in faith he scarcely seems your brother, my children, my blessed children, oh, love him still. Seek by kindness and affection to bring him back to his deserted fold. Promise me to love him, to bear with him; forget not that he is your brother, even to the last. Many a wanderer would return if love welcomed him back, many a one who will not bear reproach. ”

“ He loves that neighbor with a pure heart, loves him as a manifestation of his divine Father’s Love, Will, and Wisdom, and seeks to harmonize his own being with him in all his relations. He can not see a brother, however weak, crushed, without seeing himself crushed in that brother. When he loves a brother with that pure, unselfish love—when the common heart of humanity abides in his breast, he comes into the true plane of charity; for charity is that which seeketh not her own. The motive that prompts him is not self-gain. It is the desire to do good unto others that actuates him. ”

“ Let us consecrate all we have and are to Him, let us remember loved ones far away, let us gather all the work we have so long garnered in our hearts and lay it at his feet. We shall not have met in vain if out of the love learned of Him we give each to the other, and to all fellow-laborers for Him, a brother's love, a brother's sympathy, and a brother's prayers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We see, by this rule, that when a brother loses his fellowship for the saints, he is certainly in darkness. We must be careful not to follow what he may term “light.” Love for brethren is a test of our interest in Christ, without which all gifts and works are like sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal. ”

“ Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbour as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, travelling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father? ”

“ Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to you and your brother in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided, and kept separate from what it is and must forever be. ”

“ Then our love for each other will increase and deepen, for he that loveth God will love his brother also. Children, kneel with me, and let us offer hearty thanks to Him who has permitted us all meet together again in safety, and let us, too, ask His blessing upon the future that awaits us. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I appreciate, most clearly of all, that my baby-brother became from that hour, in some sort, my especial property. The peculiar tenderness that has characterized our feeling for each other, the steadfast affection and perfect confidence in our mutual love that have known no variableness or shadow of turning, for all our united lives, may not have been rooted in the vigil of unutterable horror and unspeakable thankfulness. ”

“ It is this sense of brotherhood that stirs us to make the conditions of life sweet and wholesome for every child in our own land, that rouses us to think of the needs of those who have never heard the Christian message of love. As we feel what it means to know God as our Father, we learn to see all men as our brothers, and hence to hear the call to serve them. ”

“ Is it not that Love may grow lord of all between him and me? Is it not that I may feel towards him what there are no words or forms of words to express— a love namely, in which the divine self rushes forth in utter self-forgetfulness to live in the contemplation of the brother—a love that is stronger than death,—glad and proud and satisfied? But if love stop there, what will be the result? Ruin to itself; loss of the brotherhood. He who loves not his brother for deeper reasons than those of a common parentage will cease to love him at all. ”

“ We preach; yet do we deem it worldly-wise To count unbounded brother-love a shame, So, ban the brother-look from out our eyes, Lest sparks of sympathy be fanned to flame. We smile; and yet withhold, in secret fear, The word so hard to speak, so sweet to hear-- The Open Sesame to meanest hearts, The magic word, to which stern eyes grow soft, And crafty faces, that the cruel marts Have seared and scored, turn gentle--Nay, how oft It trembles on the lip to die unppoke, And dawning love is stifled with a joke. ”

“ In your relationship with your brother, where He has taken charge of everything at your request, He has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside you nothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting have nothing in common in reality. Within yourself you love your brother with a perfect love. Here is holy ground, in which no substitution can enter, and where only the truth in one another can abide. ”