September 7

Every man his brother’s keeper


“Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9).
“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him” (Luke 10:33).

Here comes the demand that every man should be the keeper of his brother-man. That means, that whatever may be the care which a man takes of his own life, however he watches it and tends it, he has not done his duty, he has not filled out his existence, unless he also has, just as far as he possesses the ability and chance, watched and protected and helped the lives of other people.
Are there not in the world very many intelligent people who do not in the least believe that they have any responsibility for other people? Somebody has, they think. There are the ministers. There are the managers of philanthropic institutions. There is the “benevolent public.” But they have no such responsibility. They are nobody’s keepers but their own.


Men have been too apt to think of helpfulness to their brother-man as an accidental privilege or an exceptional duty of human life, and not as a true and essential part of humanity, without whose presence humanity is not complete. See what I mean. A beautiful voice is an exceptional privilege of a few extraordinary people among mankind. It does not belong to this man because he is a man, in very virtue of his manhood. Other men are destitute of it, and cannot sing any more than the stone upon the hillside, and yet they are as truly men as he. But a man has two arms. They are not the exception. They are the constant human rule. It is not a privilege to have them. The man who has one arm or none—he is the exception. He is not a total man. The loss may come nobly, by some great self-exposure which it was glorious for him to make. Nevertheless, he has suffered a detraction from the completeness of his humanity. Not to have the beautiful voice is to lack a lovely ornament and decoration of the life; not to have two arms is to lack a portion of the life itself.
Helpfulness to our fellowman has been put in a wrong class. It has seemed to be like the beautiful voice, a special, splendid privilege and gift; not like the two arms, a test and proof of humanity.
—Phillips Brooks.

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