III.

Carn AND ABEL—THE WorLp’s First BROTHERS.

“Am I my brother's keeper?”—Gevests tv., 9.

“Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that
which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor
preferring one another.”—Aomaits xtt., 9, 0.

“Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
In your hearts are the birds with sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklets flow;
But in mine is the wind of Autumn,
And the first fall of the snow.
Ah! What would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should tread the desert behind us,
Worse than the dark before.
Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For grave the living poems,
And all the rest are dead.”
—Fflenry Wadsworth Longfellow,

This strange, sad story of the world’s first brothers,
carries our thoughts back to the very dawn of human
history. Like all the other stories of this book, we shall
find this record a mere outline, a fragment of biography.
But fragments are full of instruction to those who carefully
study them. It was said of a great sculptor, that if you
gave him the merest fragment to work from, he could, from
the fragment, construct a perfect statue. We cannot hope,

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