Article March 20, 1943 Issue

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

JUNE TEMPERLEY

IN Genesis we read that God demanded of cain, "Where is . . . thy brother?" and that Cain tried to disclaim the responsibility for his brother's welfare by asking, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

This question, which presents itself to each one of us continually, in one guise or another, was definitely answered by Christ Jesus for all time in his reply to the Pharisee's question, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." And then he linked the second commandment to the first, which, he said, "is like unto it," namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," adding, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Now humanly to love one's neighbor or brother man as oneself may seem to some an almost impossible achievement. But we learn in Christian Science that this love does not entail the sacrifice of one's own true selfhood; on the contrary, it is the recognition of that true selfhood, both in oneself and in one's neighbor, which entails the sacrifice of neither the one nor the other, but impartially acknowledges the brotherhood of man.

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