The Law of Growth and Other Sermons Author:Phillips Brooks General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: E.P. Dutton Subjects: Sermons, American Religion / Christianity / Anglican Religion / Christian Life / General Religion / Christianity / Episcopalian Religion / Sermons / Christian Religion / Christian Ministry / Preaching Notes: This is a... more » black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: VII. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. " Am I my brother's keeper ? " -- Genesis iv. 9. The first chapters of the Book of Genesis still keep their hold on human life. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the difficult and puzzling questions which have been raised concerning them had tightened that hold instead of loosening it. Many men at least have come to see that, whatever may be the fact with regard to the historical nature of the record which is written there, the narrative has a spiritual truth as a description of man's perpetual experience, which is most valuable and never can lose its power. Much in those chapters may perplex us, but yet its pictures never fade out of our sight nor lose their meaning for our consciences. The new-made garden with its freshness of sparkling stream and waving tree and bounteous grass; the man, first alone and then with his life richened and deepened by the woman's presence at his side; the mystic catastrophe of the disobedient eating of the apple; the gateway with the angels and the flashing, flaming sword and the poor man and woman terrified and desolate outside; then the new poetry and pathos that came into the world with the first familylife; the birth of the first children, the first boys the world had ever seen; and then, all of a sudden, bursting like a thunderbolt out of the sky, hatred and murder! How that picture has fastene...« less