brethren who have been picking and heaving for him amidst the darkness
and dangers of the mine. If the poorest mother writes a letter to her
son in some distant spot in India and puts it into the window-slit of
a village post-office, without a word being spoken, how much is done
for her before that letter reaches its destination! The hands of
unknown brethren will receive it, and transmit it; rapid trains will
hurry it over leagues of railways; splendid steamships will sail with
it, and hundreds of busy hands will pass it from port to port, from
land to land. It is watched day and night, through calm and hurricane,
and precious lives are risked to keep it in security, until in silence
and in safety, after months of travel, it is delivered from the
mother's hand into the hand of her child.

And thus it is that, whether we choose it or not, we are placed by God
as "members one of another," so that we cannot, if we would, separate
ourselves from our brother. For good or evil, prosperity or adversity,
we are bound up with him in the bundle of this all-pervading and
mysterious life. If one member suffers or rejoices, all are compelled
in some degree to share his burden of joy or sorrow. Let disease, for
example, break out in one district or kingdom, and, like a fire, it
will rush onward, passing away from the original spot of outbreak, and
involving families and cities far away in its desolating ruin. Let war
arise in one portion of the globe, it smites another. The passion or
the pride of some rude chief of a barbarous tribe in Africa or New
Zealand, or the covetousness and selfish policy of some party in
America, tell upon a poor widow in her lonely garret in the darkest
corner of a great city; and she may thus be deprived of her labour
through the state of commerce, as really as if the hand of the
foreigner directly took her only handful of meal out of the barrel, or
extinguished the cruise of oil, leaving her in poverty and darkness to