If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you.

If we choose our friends in Christ, neither here, nor ever, need we fear parting, and will have the secure joy and peace which come from having a friend who is as one's own soul.



The Eclipse of Friendship

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his pew.

* * * * * *

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead. Sunk though he be beneath the watery flow. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

MILTON.



The Eclipse of Friendship

As it is one of the greatest joys of life when a kindred soul is for the first time recognized and claimed, so it is one of the bitterest moments of life when the first rupture is made of the ties which bind us to other lives. Before it comes, it is hard to believe that it is possible, if we ever think of it at all. When it does come, it is harder still to understand the meaning of the blow. The miracle of friendship seemed too fair, to carry in its bosom the menace of its loss. We knew, of course, that such things had been, and must be, but we never quite realized what it would be to be the victims of the common doom of man.

If it only came as a sudden pain, that passes after its brief spasm of agony, it would not be so sore an affliction; but when it comes, it comes to stay. There remains a place in our hearts which is tender to every touch, and it is touched so often. We survive the shock of the moment easier than the constant reminder of our loss. The old familiar face, debarred to the sense of sight, can be recalled by a stray word, a casual sight, a chance memory. The closer the intercourse had been, the more things there are in our lives associated with him—things that we did together, places that we visited together, thoughts even that we thought together.

There seems no region of life where we can escape from the suggestions of memory. The sight of any little object can bring him back, with his way of speaking, with his tricks of gesture, with all the qualities for which we loved him, and for which we mourn him now. If the intimacy was due to mere physical proximity, the loss will be only a vague sense of uneasiness through the breakdown of long-continued habit; but, if the two lives were woven into the same web, there must be ragged edges left, and it is a weary task to take up the threads again, and find a new woof for the warp. The closer the connection has been, the keener is the loss. It comes back to us at the sight of the many things associated with him, and, fill up our lives with countless distractions as we may, the shadow creeps back to darken the world.

Sometimes there is the added pain of remorse that we did not enough appreciate the treasure we possessed. In thoughtlessness we accepted the gift; we had so little idea of the true value of his friendship; we loved so little, and were so impatient:—if only we had him back again; if only we had one more opportunity to show him how dear he was; if only we had another chance of proving ourselves worthy. We can hardly forgive ourselves that we were so cold and selfish. Self-reproach, the regret of the unaccepted opportunity, is one of the commonest feelings after bereavement, and it is one of the most blessed.

Still, it may become a morbid feeling. It is a false sentimentalism which lives in the past, and lavishes its tenderness on memory. It is difficult to say what is the dividing line between healthy sorrow and morbid sentiment. It seems a natural instinct, which makes the bereaved care lovingly for the very grave, and which makes the mother keep locked up the little shoes worn by the little feet, relics hid from the vulgar eye. The instinct has become a little more morbid, when it has preserved the room of a dead mother, with its petty decorations and ornaments as she left them. Beautiful as the instinct may be, there is nothing so dangerous as when our most natural feeling turns morbid.

It is always a temptation, which grows stronger the longer we live, to look back instead of forward, to bemoan the past, and thus deride the present and distrust the future. We must not forget our present blessings, the love we still possess, the gracious influences that remain, and most of all the duties that claim our strength. The loving women who went early in the morning to the sepulchre of the buried Christ were met with a rebuke, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" They were sent back to life to find Him, and sent back to life to do honor to His death. Not by ointments and spices, however precious, nor at the rock-hewn tomb, could they best remember their Lord; but out in the world, which that morning had seemed so cold and cheerless, and in their lives, which then had seemed not worth living.

Christianity does not condemn any natural human feeling, but it will not let these interfere with present duty and destroy future usefulness. It does not send men to search for the purpose of living in the graves of their dead hopes and pleasures. Its disciples must not attempt to live on the relics of even great incidents, among crucifixes and tombs. In the Desert, the heart must reach forward to the Promised Land, and not back to Egypt. The Christian faith is for the future, because it believes in the God of the future. The world is not a lumber room, full of relics and remembrances, over which to brood. We are asked to remember the beautiful past which was ours, and the beautiful lives which we have lost, by making the present beautiful like it, and our lives beautiful like theirs. It is human to think that life has no future, if now it seems "dark with griefs and graves." It comes like a shock to find that we must bury our sorrow, and come into contact with the hard world again, and live our common life once more. The Christian learns to do it, not because he has a short memory, but because he has a long faith. The voice of inspiration is heard oftener through the realities of life, than through vain regrets and recluse dreams. The Christian life must be in its degree something like the Master's own life, luminous with His hope, and surrounded by a bracing atmosphere which uplifts all who even touch its outer fringe.

The great fact of life, nevertheless, is death, and it must have a purpose to serve and a lesson to teach. It seems to lose something of its impressiveness, because it is universal. The very inevitableness of it seems to kill thought, rather than induce it. It is only when the blow strikes home, that we are pulled up and forced to face the fact. Theoretically there is a wonderful unanimity among men, regarding the shortness of life and the uncertainty of all human relationships. The last word of the wise on life has ever been its fleetingness, its appalling changes, its unexpected surprises. The only certainty of life is its uncertainty—its unstable tenure, its inevitable end. But practically we go on as if we could lay our plans, and mortgage time, without doubt or danger; until our feet are knocked from under us by some sudden shock, and we realize how unstable the equilibrium of life really is. The lesson of life is death.

The experience would not be so tragically universal, if it had not a good and necessary meaning. For one thing it should sober us, and make our lives full of serious, solemn purpose. It should teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. The man, who has no place for death in his philosophy, has not learned to live. The lesson of death is life.

On the whole, however, it is not our own liability to death which oppresses us. The fear of it to a brave man, not to speak of a man of faith, can be overcome. It is the fear of it for others whom we love, which is its sting. And none of us can live very long without knowing in our own heart's experience the reality, as well as the terror, of death. This too has its meaning for us, to look at life more tenderly, and touch it more gently. The pathos of life is only a forced sentiment to us, if we have not felt the pity of life. To a sensitive soul, smarting with his own loss, the world sometimes seems full of graves, and for a time at least makes him walk softly among men.

This is one reason why the making of new friends is so much easier in youth than later on. Friendship comes to youth seemingly without any conditions, and without any fears. There is no past to look back at, with much regret and some sorrow. We never look behind us, till we miss something. Youth is satisfied with the joy of present possession. To the young friendship comes as the glory of spring, a very miracle of beauty, a mystery of birth: to the old it has the bloom of autumn, beautiful still, but with the beauty of decay. To the young it is chiefly hope: to the old it is mostly memory. The man who is conscious that he has lost the best of his days, the best of his powers, the best of his friends, naturally lives a good deal in the past.

Such a man is prepared for further losses; he has adjusted himself to the fact of death. At first, we cannot believe that it can happen to us and to our love; or, if the thought comes to us, it is an event too far in the future to ruffle the calm surface of our heart. And yet, it must come; from it none can escape. Most can remember a night of waiting, too stricken for prayer, too numb of heart even for feeling, vaguely expecting the blow to strike us out of the dark. A strange sense of the unreality of things came over us, when the black wave submerged us and passed on. We went out into the sunshine, and it seemed to mock us. We entered again among the busy ways of men, and the roar of life beat upon our brain and heart,

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies, One set slow bell will seem to toll, The passing of the sweetest soul That ever looked with human eyes.

Was it worth while to have linked our lives on to other lives, and laid ourselves open to such desolation? Would it not be better to go through the world, without joining ourselves too closely to the fleeting bonds of other loves? Why deliberately add to our disabilities? But it is not a disability; rather, the great purpose of all our living is to learn love, even though we must experience the pains of love as well as the joys. To cut ourselves off from this lot of the human would be to impoverish our lives, and deprive ourselves of the culture of the heart, which, if a man has not learned, he has learned nothing. Whatever the risks to our happiness, we cannot stand out from the lot of man, without ceasing to be men in the only true sense.

It is not easy to solve the problem of sorrow. Indeed there is no solution of it, unless the individual soul works out its own solution. Most attempts at a philosophy of sorrow just end in high-sounding words. Explanations, which profess to cover all the ground, are as futile as the ordinary blundering attempts at comfort, which only charm ache with sound and patch grief with proverbs. The sorrow of our hearts is not appreciably lessened by argument. Any kind of philosophy—any wordy explanation of the problem—is at the best poor comfort. It is not the problem which brings the pain in the first instance: it is the pain which brings the problem. The heart's bitterness is not allayed by an exposition of the doctrine of providence. Rachel who weeps for her children, the father whose little daughter lies dead at home, are not to be appeased in their anguish by a nicely-balanced system of thought. Nor is surcease of sorrow thus brought to the man to whom has come a bereavement, or a succession of bereavements, which makes him feel that all the glory and joy of life, its friendship and love and hope, have gone down into the grave, so that he can say,

Three dead men have I loved, And thou wert last of the three.

At the same time, if it be true that there is a meaning in friendship, a spiritual discipline to educate the heart and train the life, it must also be true that there is equally a meaning in the eclipse of friendship. If we have enough faith to see death to be good, we will find out for ourselves why it is good. It may teach us just what we were in danger of forgetting, some omission in our lives, which was making them shallow and poor. It may be to one a sight into the mystery of sin; to another a sight into the mystery of love. To one it comes with the lesson of patience, which is only a side of the lesson of faith; to another it brings the message of sympathy. As we turn the subject toward the light, there come gleams of color from different facets of it.

All life is an argument for death. We cannot persist long in the effort to live the Christian life, without feeling the need for death. The higher the aims, and the truer the aspirations, the greater is the burden of living, until it would become intolerable. Sooner or later we are forced to make the confession of Job, "I would not live alway." To live forever in this sordidness, to have no reprieve from the doom of sin, no truce from the struggle of sin, would be a fearful fate.

To the Christian, therefore, death cannot be looked on as evil; first, because it is universal, and it is universal because it is God-ordained. In St. Peter's, at Rome, there are many tombs, in which death is symbolized in its traditional form as a skeleton, with the fateful hourglass and the fearful scythe. Death is the rude reaper, who cruelly cuts off life and all the joy of life. But there is one in which death is sculptured as a sweet gentle motherly woman, who takes her wearied child home to safer and surer keeping. It is a truer thought than the other. Death is a minister of God, doing His pleasure, and doing us good.

Again, it cannot be evil because it means a fuller life, and therefore an opportunity for fuller and further service. Faith will not let a man hasten the climax; for it is in the hands of love, as he himself is. But death is the climax of life. For if all life is an argument for death, then so also all death is an argument for life.

Jowett says, in one of his letters, "I cannot sympathize in all the grounds of consolation that are sometimes offered on these melancholy occasions, but there are two things which have always seemed to me unchangeable: first, that the dead are in the hands of God, who can do for them more than we can ask or have; and secondly, with respect to ourselves, that such losses deepen our views of life, and make us feel that we would not always be here." These are two noble grounds of consolation, and they are enough.

Death is the great argument for immortality. We cannot believe that the living, loving soul has ceased to be. We cannot believe that all those treasures of mind and heart are squandered in empty air. We will not believe it. When once we understand the meaning of the spiritual, we see the absolute certainty of eternal life; we need no arguments for the persistence of being.

To appear for a little time and then vanish away, is the outward biography of all men, a circle of smoke that breaks, a bubble on the stream that bursts, a spark put out by a breath.

But there is another biography, a deeper and a permanent one, the biography of the soul. Everything that appears vanishes away: that is its fate, the fate of the everlasting hills as well as of the vapor that caps them. But that which does not appear, the spiritual and unseen, which we in our folly sometimes doubt because it does not appear, is the only reality; it is eternal and passeth not away. The material in nature is only the garb of the spiritual, as speech is the clothing of thought. With our vulgar standards we often think of the thought as the unsubstantial and the shadowy, and the speech as the real. But speech dies upon the passing wind; the thought alone remains. We consider the sound to be the music, whereas it is only the expression of the music, and vanishes away. Behind the material world, which waxes old as a garment, there is an eternal principle, the thought of God it represents. Above the sounds there is the music that can never die. Beneath our lives, which vanish away, there is a vital thing, spirit. We cannot locate it and put our finger on it; that is why it is permanent. The things we can put our finger on are the things which appear, and therefore which fade and die.

So, death to the spiritual mind is only eclipse. When there is an eclipse of the sun it does not mean that the sun is blotted out of the heavens: it only means that there is a temporary obstruction between it and us. If we wait a little, it passes. Love cannot die. Its forms may change, even its objects, but its life is the life of the universe. It is not death, but sleep: not loss, but eclipse. The love is only transfigured into something more ethereal and heavenly than ever before. Happy to have friends on earth, but happier to have friends in heaven.

And it need not be even eclipse, except in outward form. Communion with the unseen can mean true correspondence with all we have loved and lost, if only our souls were responsive. The highest love is not starved by the absence of its object; it rather becomes more tender and spiritual, with more of the ideal in it. Ordinary affection, on a lower plane, dependent on physical attraction, or on the earthly side of life, naturally crumbles to dust when its foundation is removed. But love is independent of time or space, and as a matter of fact is purified and intensified by absence. Separation of friends is not a physical thing. Lives can be sundered as if divided by infinite distance, even although materially they are near each other. This tragedy is often enough enacted in our midst.

The converse is also true; so that friendship does not really lose by death: it lays up treasure in heaven, and leaves the very earth a sacred place, made holy by happy memories. "The ruins of Time build mansions in Eternity," said William Blake, speaking of the death of a loved brother, with whose spirit he never ceased to converse. There are people in our homes and our streets whose highest life is with the dead. They live in another world. We can see in their eyes that their hearts are not here. It is as if they already saw the land that is very far off. It is only far off to our gross insensate senses.

The spiritual world is not outside this earth of ours. It includes it and pervades it, finding a new centre for a new circumference in every loving soul that has eyes to see the Kingdom. So, to hold commerce with the dead is not a mere figure of speech. Heaven lies about us not only in our infancy, but all our lives. We blind ourselves with dust, and in our blindness lay hold feverishly of the outside of life, mistaking the fugitive and evanescent for the truly permanent. If we only used our capacities we would take a more enlightened view of death. We would see it to be the entrance into a more radiant and a more abundant life not only for the friend that goes first, but for the other left behind.

Spiritual communion cannot possibly be interrupted by a physical change. It is because there is so little of the spiritual in our ordinary intercourse that death means silence and an end to communion. There is a picture of death, which, when looked at with the ordinary perspective, seems to be a hideous skull, but when seen near at hand is composed of flowers, with the eyes, in the seemingly empty sockets of the skull, formed by two fair faces of children. Death at a distance looks horrible, the ghastly spectre of the race; but with the near vision it is beautiful with youth and flowers, and when we look into its eyes we look into the stirrings of life.

Love is the only permanent relationship among men, and the permanence is not an accident of it, but is of its very essence. When released from the mere magnetism of sense, instead of ceasing to exist, it only then truly comes into its largest life. If our life were more a life in the spirit, we would be sure that death can be at the worst but the eclipse of friendship. Tennyson felt this truth in his own experience, and expressed it in noble form again and again in In Memoriam—

Sweet human hand and lips and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die;

Strange friend, past, present, and to be; Loved deeplier, darklier understood; Behold I dream a dream of good, And mingle all the world with thee.

Thy voice is on the rolling air; I hear thee where the waters run; Thou standest in the rising sun, And in the setting thou art fair.

It is not loss, but momentary eclipse, and the final issue is a clearer perception of immortal love, and a deeper consciousness of eternal life.

The attitude of mind, therefore, in any such bereavement—sore as the first stroke must be, since we are so much the creatures of habit, and it is hard to adjust ourselves to the new relationship—cannot be an attitude merely of resignation. That was the extent to which the imperfect revelation of the Old Testament brought men. They had to rest in their knowledge of God's faithfulness and goodness. The limit of their faith was, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." But to resignation we can add joy. "Not dead, but sleepeth," said the Master of death and life to a sorrowing man.

For one thing it must mean the hallowing of memory. The eclipse of love makes the love fairer when the eclipse passes. The loss of the outward purifies the affection and softens the heart. It brings out into fact what was often only latent in feeling. Memory adds a tender glory to the past. We only think of the virtues of the dead: we forget their faults. This is as it should be. We rightly love the immortal part of them; the fire has burned up the dross and left pure gold. If it is idealization, it represents that which will be, and that which really is.

We do not ask to forget; we do not want the so-called consolations which time brings. Such an insult to the past, as forgetfulness would be, means that we have not risen to the possibilities of communion of spirit afforded us in the present. We would rather that the wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world's goods, we are rich in happy associations in the past, and in sweet communion in the present, and in blessed hope for the future.



The Wreck of Friendship

They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder, A dreary sea now rolls between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.

COLERIDGE, Christabel.



The Wreck of Friendship

The eclipse of friendship through death is not nearly so sad as the many ways in which friendship may be wrecked. There are worse losses than the losses of death; and to bury a friendship is a keener grief than to bury a friend. The latter softens the heart and sweetens the life, while the former hardens and embitters. The Persian poet Hafiz says, "Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the unloving no heavenly knowledge enters." But so imperfect are our human relationships, that many a man has felt that he has bought his knowledge too dearly. Few of us go through the world without some scars on the heart, which even yet throb if the finger of memory touch them. In spite of all that has been said, and may be said in praise of this golden friendship, it has been too often found how vain is the help of man. The deepest tragedies of life have been the failure of this very relationship.

In one way or other the loss of friendship comes to all. The shores of life are strewn with wrecks. The convoy which left the harbor gaily in the sunshine cannot all expect to arrive together in the haven. There are the danger of storms and collisions, the separation of the night, and even at the best, if accidents never occur, the whole company cannot all keep up with the speed of the swiftest.

There is a certain pathos in all loss, but there is not always pain in it, or at least it is of varied quality and extent. Some losses are natural and unavoidable, quite beyond our control, the result of resistless change. Some loss is even the necessary accompaniment of gain. The loss of youth with all its possessions is the gain of manhood and womanhood. A man must put away childish things, the speech and understanding and thought of a child. So the loss of some friendship comes as a part of the natural course of things, and is accepted without mutilating the life.

Many of our connections with people are admittedly casual and temporary. They exist for mutual convenience through common interest at the time, or common purpose, or common business. None of the partners asks for more than the advantage each derives from the connection. When it comes to an end, we let slip the cable easily, and say good-bye with a cheery wave. With many people we meet and part in all friendliness and good feeling, and will be glad to meet again, but the parting does not tear our affections by the roots. When the business is transacted the tie is loosed, and we each go our separate ways without much regret.

At other times there is no thought of gain, except the mutual advantage of conversation or companionship. We are pleasant to each other, and enjoy the intercourse of kindred tastes. Most of us have some pleasant recollections of happy meetings with interesting people, perhaps on holiday times, when we felt we would be glad to see them again if fortune turned round the wheel again to the same place; but, though hardly ever did it come about that an opportunity of meeting has occurred, we do not feel that our life is much the poorer for the loss.

Also, we grow out of some of our friendships. This is to be expected, since so many of them are formed thoughtlessly, or before we really knew either ourselves or our friends. They never meant very much to us. Most boyish friendships as a rule do not last long, because they are not based on the qualities which wear well. Schoolboy comradeships are usually due to propinquity rather than to character. They are the fruit of accident rather than of affinity of soul. Boys grow out of these as they grow out of their clothes. Now and again they suffer from growing pains, but it is more discomfort than anything else.

It is sad to look back and realize how few of one's early companionships remain, but it is not possible to blame either party for the loss. Distance, separation of interest, difference of work, all operate to divide. When athletics seemed the end of existence, friendship was based on football and baseball. But as life opens out, other standards are set up, and a new principle of selection takes its place. When the world is seen to be more than a ball-ground, when it is recognized to be a stage oh which men play many parts, a new sort of intimacy is demanded, and it does not follow that it will be with the same persons. Such loss as this is the condition which accompanies the gain of growth.

There is more chance for the permanence of friendships formed a little later. It must not be too long after this period, however; for, when the generous time of youth has wholly passed, it becomes hard to make new connections. Men get over-burdened with cares and personal concerns, and grow cautious about making advances. In youth the heart is responsive and ready to be generous, and the hand aches for the grasp of a comrade's hand, and the mind demands fellowship in the great thoughts that are beginning to dawn upon it. The closest friendships are formed early in life, just because then we are less cautious, more open to impressions, and readier to welcome self-revelations. After middle life a man does not find it easy to give himself away, and keeps a firmer hand on his feelings. Whatever are the faults of youth, it is unworldly in its estimates as a rule, and uncalculating in its thoughts of the future.

The danger to such friendship is the danger of just letting it lapse. As life spreads out before the eager feet, new interests crop up, new relations are formed, and the old tie gets worn away, from want of adding fresh strands to it. We may believe the advice about not forsaking an old friend because the new is not comparable to him, but we can neglect it by merely letting things slip past, which if used would be a new bond of union.

As it is easier for some temperaments to make friends, it is easier for some dispositions to keep them. Little faults of manner, little occasions of thoughtlessness, or lack of the little courtesies, do more to separate people than glaring mistakes. There are some men so built that it is difficult to remain on very close terms with them, there are so many corners to knock against. Even strength of character, if unmodified by sweetness of disposition, adds to the difficulty of pulling together. Strong will can so easily develop into self-will; decision can become dogmatism; wit, the salt of conversation, loses its savor when it becomes ill-natured; a faculty for argument is in danger of being mere quarrelsomeness.

The ordinary amenities of life must be preserved among friends. We can never feel very safe with the man whose humor tends to bitter speaking or keen sarcasm, or with the man who flares up into hasty speech at every or no provocation, or with the man who is argumentative and assertive,—

Who 'd rather on a gibbet dangle Than miss his dear delight to wrangle.

There are more breaches of the peace among friends through sins of speech, than from any other cause. We do not treat our friends with enough respect. We make the vulgar mistake of looking upon the common as if it were therefore cheap in nature. We ought rather to treat our friend with a sort of sacred familiarity, as if we appreciated the precious gift his friendship is.

Every change in a man's life brings a risk of letting go something of the past, which it is a loss to part with. A change of work, or a change of residence, or entrance into a larger sphere, brings a certain engrossment which leads to neglect of the richest intercourse in the past life. To many a man, even marriage has had a drop of bitterness in it, because it has somehow meant the severing of old and sacred links. This may be due to the vulgar reason of wives' quarrels, the result of petty jealousy; but it may be due also to pre-occupation and a subtle form of selfishness. The fire needs to be kept alive with fuel. To preserve it, there must be forethought, and care, and love expended as before.

Friendship may lapse through the misfortune of distance. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. It only does so, when the heart is securely fixed, and when it is a heart worth fixing. More often the other proverb is truer, that it is out of sight out of mind. It is so easy for a man to become self-centred, and to impoverish his affections through sheer neglect. Ties once close get frayed and strained till they break, and we discover that we have said farewell to the past. Some kind of intercourse is needed to maintain friendship. There is a pathos about this gradual drifting away of lives, borne from each other, it sometimes seems, by opposing tides, as if a resistless power separated them,

And bade betwixt their souls to be The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Or friendship may lapse through the fault of silence. The misfortune of distance may be overcome by love, but the fault of silence crushes out feeling as the falling rain kills the kindling beacon. Even the estrangements and misunderstandings which will arise to all could not long remain, where there is a frank and candid interchange of thought. Hearts grow cold toward each other through neglect. There is a suggestive word from the old Scandinavian Edda, "Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path." It is hard to overcome again the alienation caused by neglect; for there grows up a sense of resentment and injured feeling.

Among the petty things which wreck friendships, none is so common and so unworthy as money. It is pitiable that it should be so. Thackeray speaks of the remarkable way in which a five-pound note will break up a half-century's attachment between two brethren, and it is a common cynical remark of the world that the way to lose a friend is to lend him money. There is nothing which seems to affect the mind more, and color the very heart's blood, than money. There seems a curse in it sometimes, so potent is it for mischief. Poverty, if it be too oppressive grinding down the face, may often hurt the heart-life; but perhaps oftener still it only reveals what true treasures there are in the wealth of the affections. Whereas, we know what heartburnings, and rivalries, and envyings, are occasioned by this golden apple of discord. Most of the disputes which separate brethren are about the dividing of the inheritance, and it does seem to be the case that few friendships can survive the test of money.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend.

There must be something wrong with the friendship which so breaks down. It ought to be able to stand a severer strain than that. But the inner reason of the failure is often that there has been a moral degeneracy going on, and a weakening of the fibre of character on one side, or on both sides. The particular dispute, whether it be about money or about anything else, is only the occasion which reveals the slackening of the morale. The innate delicacy and self-respect of the friend who asks the favor may have been damaged through a series of similar importunities, or there may have been a growing hardness of heart and selfishness in the friend who refuses the request. Otherwise, if two are on terms of communion, it is hard to see why the giving or receiving of this service should be any more unworthy than any other help, which friends can grant to each other. True commerce of the heart should make all other needful commerce possible. Communion includes communism. To have things in common does not seem difficult, when there is love in common.

Friendship has also been wrecked by outside means, by the evil of others, through the evil speaking, or the envy, or the whispering tongues that delight in scandal. Some mean natures rejoice in sowing discord, carrying tales with just the slightest turn of a phrase, or even a tone of the voice, which gives a sinister reading to an innocent word or act. Frankness can always prevent such from permanently wrecking friendship. Besides, we should judge no man, still less a trusted friend, by a report of an incident or a hasty word. We should judge our friend by his record, by what we know of his character. When anything inconsistent with that character comes before our notice, it is only justice to him to at least suspend judgment, and it would be wisdom to refuse to credit it at all.

We sometimes wonder to find a friend cold and distant to us, and perhaps we moralize on the fickleness and inconstancy of men, but the reason may be to seek in ourselves. We cannot expect the pleasure of friendship without the duty, the privilege without the responsibility. We cannot break off the threads of the web, and then, when the mood is on us, continue it as though nothing had happened. If such a breakage has occurred, we must go back and patiently join the threads together again. Thoughtlessness has done more harm in this respect than ill-will. If we have lost a friend through selfish neglect, the loss is ours, and we cannot expect to take up the story where we left off years ago. There is a serene impudence about the treatment some mete out to their friends, dropping them whenever it suits, and thinking to take them up when it happens once more to suit. We cannot expect to walk with another, when we have gone for miles along another way. We will have to go back, and catch him up again. If the fault has been ours, desire and shame will give our feet wings.

The real source of separation is ultimately a spiritual one. We cannot walk with another unless we are agreed. The lapse of friendship is often due to this, that one has let the other travel on alone. If one has sought pleasure, and the other has sought truth; if one has cumbered his life with the trivial and the petty, and the other has filled his with high thoughts and noble aspirations; if their hearts are on different levels, it is natural that they should now be apart. We cannot stay behind with the camp-followers, and at the same time fight in the van with the heroes. If we would keep our best friends, we must go with them in sympathy, and be able to share their thoughts. In the letters of Dean Stanley, there is one from Jowett to Stanley, which brings out this necessity. "I earnestly hope that the friendship, which commenced between us many years ago, may be a blessing to last us through life. I feel that if it is to be so we must both go onward, otherwise the tear and wear of life, and the 'having travelled over each other's minds,' and a thousand accidents will be sufficient to break it off. I have often felt the inability to converse with you, but never for an instant the least alienation. There is no one who would not think me happy in having such a friend."

It is not, however, so much the equal pace of the mind which is necessary, as the equal pace of the spirit. We may think about a very brilliant friend that he will outstrip us, and outgrow us. The fear is natural, but if there be spiritual oneness it is an unfounded fear.

Yet oft, when sundown skirts the moor, An inner trouble I behold, A spectral doubt which makes me cold, That I should be thy mate no more.

But love is not dependent on intellect. The great bond of union is not that both parties are alike in mind, but that they are akin in soul. Mere intellect only divides men further than the ordinary natural and artificial distinctions that already exist. There are endless instances of this disuniting influence to be seen, in the contempt of learning for ignorance, the derisive attitude which knowledge assumes toward simplicity, the metropolitan disdain for provincial Galilee, the rabies theologica which is ever ready to declare that this people that knoweth not the law is accursed. It is love, not logic, which can unite men. Love is the one solvent to break down all barriers, and love has other grounds for its existence than merely intellectual ones. So that although similarity of taste is another bond and is perhaps necessary for the perfect friendship, it is not its foundation; and if the foundation be not undermined, there is no reason why difference of mental power should wreck the structure.

However it happen that friends are separated, it is always sad; for the loss of a friendship is the loss of an ideal. Sadder than the pathos of unmated hearts is the pathos of severed souls. It is always a pain to find a friend look on us with cold stranger's eyes, and to know ourselves dead of hopes of future intimacy. It is a pain even when we have nothing to blame ourselves with, much more so when we feel that ours is the fault. It would not seem to matter very much, if it were not such a loss to both; for friendship is one of the appointed means of saving the life from worldliness and selfishness. It is the greatest education in the world; for it is education of the whole man, of the affections as well as the intellect. Nothing of worldly success can make up for the want of it. And true friendship is also a moral preservative. It teaches something of the joy of service, and the beauty of sacrifice. We cannot live an utterly useless life, if we have to think for, and act for, another. It keeps love in the heart, and keeps God in the life.

The greatest and most irretrievable wreck of friendship is the result of a moral breakdown in one of the associates. Worse than the separation of the grave is the desolation of the heart by faithlessness. More impassable than the gulf of distance with the estranging sea, more separating than the gulf of death, is the great gulf fixed between souls through deceit and shame. It is as the sin of Judas. Said a sorrowful Psalmist, who had known this experience, "Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." And another Psalmist sobs out the same lament, "It was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it, but it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked into the house of God in company." The loss of a friend by any of the common means is not so hard, as to find a friend faithless. The trustful soul has often been disillusioned thus. The rod has broken in the hand that leaned on it, and has left its red wound on the palm. There is a deeper wound on the heart.

The result of such a breakdown of comradeship is often bitterness, and cynical distrust of man. It is this experience which gives point to the worldling's sneer, Defend me from my friends, I can defend myself from my enemies. We cannot wonder sometimes at the cynicism. It is like treason within the camp, against which no man can guard. It is a stab in the back, a cowardly assassination of the heart. Treachery like this usually means a sudden fall from the ideal for the deceived one, and the ideal can only be recovered, if at all, by a slow and toilsome ascent, foot by foot and step by step.

Failure of one often leads to distrust of all. This is the terrible responsibility of friendship. We have more than the happiness of our friend in our power; we, have his faith. Most men who are cynical about women are so, because of the inconstancy of one. Most sneers at friendship are, to begin with at least, the expression of individual pain, because the man has known the shock of the lifted heel. Distrust works havoc on the character; for it ends in unbelief of goodness itself. And distrust always meets with its own likeness, and is paid back in its own coin. Suspicion breeds suspicion, and the conduct of life on such principles becomes a tug-of-war in which Greek is matched with Greek.

The social virtues, which keep the whole community together, are thus closely allied to the supreme virtue of friendship. Aristotle had reason in making it the nexus between his Ethics and his Politics. Truth, good faith, honest dealing between man and man, are necessary for any kind of intercourse, even that of business. Men can do nothing with each other, if they have not a certain minimum of trust. There have been times when there seems to be almost an epidemic of faithlessness, when the social bond seems loosened, when men's hands are raised against each other, when confidence is paralyzed, and people hardly know whom to trust.

The prophet Micah, who lived in such a time, expresses this state of distrust: "Trust ye not any friend, put ye no confidence in a familiar friend. A man's enemies are of his own household." This means anarchy, and society becomes like a bundle of sticks with the cord cut. The cause is always a decay of religion; for law is based on morality, and morality finds its strongest sanction in religion. Selfishness results in anarchy, a reversion to the Ishmaelite type of life.

The story of the French Revolution has in it some of the darkest pages in the history of modern civilization, due to the breakdown of social trust. The Revolution, like Saturn, took to devouring her own children. Suspicion, during the reign of terror, brooded over the heads of men, and oppressed their hearts. The ties of blood and fellowship seemed broken, and the sad words of Christ had their horrid fulfilment, that the brother would deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child, and the children rise up against the parents and cause them to be put to death. There are some awful possibilities in human nature. In Paris of these days a man had to be ever on his guard, to watch his acts, his words, even his looks. It meant for a time a collapse of the whole idea of the state. It was a panic, worse than avowed civil war. Friendship, of course, could have little place in such a frightful palsy of mutual confidence, though there were, for the honor of the race, some noble exceptions. The wreck of friendship through deceit is always a step toward social anarchy; for it helps to break down trust and good faith among men.

The wreck of friendship is also a blow to religion. Many have lost their faith in God, because they have lost, through faithlessness, their faith in man. Doubt of the reality of love becomes doubt of the reality of the spiritual life. To be unable to see the divine in man, is to have the eyes blinded to the divine anywhere. Deception in the sphere of love shakes the foundation of religion. Its result is atheism, not perhaps as a conscious speculative system of thought, but as a subtle practical influence on conduct. It corrupts the fountain of life, and taints the whole stream. Despair of love, if final and complete, would be despair of God; for God is love. Thus, the wreck of friendship often means a temporary wreck of faith. It ought not to be so; but that there is a danger of it should impress us with a deeper sense of the responsibility attached to our friendships. Our life follows the fortunes of our love.



The Renewing of Friendship

Perhaps we may go further, and say that friends, whose friendship has been broken off, should not entirely forget their former intercourse; and that just as we hold that we ought to serve friends before strangers, so former friends have some claims upon us on the ground of past friendship, unless extraordinary depravity were the cause of our parting.—ARISTOTLE.



The Renewing of Friendship

It is a sentiment of the poets and romancers that love is rather helped by quarrels. There must be some truth in it, as we find the idea expressed a hundred times in different forms in literature. We find it among the wisdom of the ancients, and it remains still as one of the conventional properties of the dramatist, and one of the accepted traditions of the novelist. It is expressed in maxim and apothegm, in play and poem. One of our old pre-Elizabethan writers has put it in classic form in English:—

The falling out of faithful friends is the renewing of love.

It is the chief stock-in-trade of the writer of fiction, to depict the misunderstandings which arise between two persons, through the sin of one, or the folly of both, or the villainy of a third; then comes the means by which the tangled skein is unravelled, and in the end everything is satisfactorily explained, and the sorely-tried characters are ushered into a happiness stronger and sweeter than ever before. Friends quarrel, and are miserable in their state of separation; and afterward, when the friendship is renewed, it is discovered that the bitter dispute was only a blessing in disguise, as the renewal itself was an exquisite pleasure, and the result has been a firmer and more stable relationship of love and trust.

The truth in this sentiment is, of course, the evident one, that a man often only wakens to the value of a possession when he is in danger of losing it. The force of a current is sometimes only noted when it is opposed by an obstacle. Two persons may discover, by a temporary alienation, how much they really care for each other. It may be that previously they took things for granted. Their affection had lost its first glitter, and was accepted as a commonplace. Through some misunderstanding or dispute, they broke off their friendly relationship, feeling sure that they had come to an end of their regard. They could never again be on the same close terms; hot words had been spoken; taunts and reproaches had passed; eyes had flashed fire, and they parted in anger—only to learn that their love for each other was as real and as strong as ever. The very difference revealed the true union of hearts that had existed. They had been blind to the strength of their mutual regard, till it was so painfully brought to their notice. The love is renewed with a more tender sense of its sacredness, and a more profound feeling of its strength. The dissensions only displayed the union; the discord drove them to a fuller harmony. This is a natural and common experience.

But a mistake may easily be made by confusing cause and effect. "The course of true love never did run smooth"—but the obstacles in the channel do not produce the swiftness and the volume of the stream; they only show them. There may be an unsuspected depth and force for the first time brought to light when the stream strikes a barrier, but the barrier is merely the occasion, not the cause, of the revelation. To mistake the one for the other, may lead to a false and stupid policy. Many, through this mistake, act as though dissension were of the very nature of affection, and as if the one must necessarily react on the other for good. Some foolish people will sometimes even produce disagreement for the supposed pleasure of agreeing once more, and quarrel for the sake of making it up again.

Rather, the end of love is near at hand, when wrangling can live in its presence. It is not true that love is helped by quarrels, except in the small sense already indicated. A man may quarrel once too often with his friend, and a brother offended, says the proverb, is harder to be won than a strong city, and such contentions are like the bars of a castle. It is always a dangerous experiment to wilfully test affection, besides being often a cruel one. Disputing is a shock to confidence, and without confidence friendship cannot continue. A state of feud, even though a temporary one, often embitters the life, and leaves its mark on the heart. Desolated homes and lonely lives are witnesses of the folly of any such policy. From the root of bitterness there cannot possibly blossom any of the fair flowers of love. The surface truth of the poets' sentiment we have acknowledged and accounted for, but it is only a surface truth. The best of friends will fall out, and the best of them will renew their friendship, but it is always at a great risk, and sometimes it strains the foundations of their esteem for each other to shaking:

And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with tears!

But in any serious rupture of friendship it can only be a blessing when it means the tears of repentance, and these are often tears of blood. In all renewing there must be an element of repentance, and however great the joy of having regained the old footing, there is the memory of pain, and the presence of regret. To cultivate contention as an art, and to trade upon the supposed benefit of renewing friendship, is a folly which brings its own retribution.

The disputatious person for this reason never makes a good friend. In friendship men look for peace, and concord, and some measure of content. There are enough battles to fight outside, enough jarring and jostling in the street, enough disputing in the market-place, enough discord in the workaday world, without having to look for contention in the realm of the inner life also. There, if anywhere, we ask for an end of strife. Friendship is the sanctuary of the heart, and the peace of the sanctuary should brood over it. Its chiefest glory is that the dust and noise of contest are excluded.

It must needs be that offences come. It is not only that the world is full of conflict and controversy, and every man must take his share in the fights of his time. We are born into the battle; we are born for the battle. But apart from the outside strife, from which we cannot separate ourselves, and do not desire to separate ourselves if we are true men, the strange thing is that it looks as if it must needs be that offences come even among brethren. The bitterest disputes in life are among those who are nearest each other in spirit. We do not quarrel with the man in the street, the man with whom we have little or no communication. He has not the chance, nor the power, to chafe our soul, and ruffle our temper. If need be, we can afford to despise, or at least to neglect him. It is the man of our own household, near us in life and spirit, who runs the risk of the only serious dissensions with us. The man with whom we have most points of contact presents the greatest number of places where difference can occur. Only from circles that touch each other can a tangent strike off from the same point. A man can only make enemies among his friends. A certain amount of opposition and enmity a man must be prepared for in this world, unless he live a very invertebrate life. Outside opposition cannot embitter, for it cannot touch the soul. But that two who have walked as friends, one in aim and one in heart, perhaps of the same household of faith, should stand face to face with hard brows and gleaming eyes, should speak as foes and not as lovers of the same love, is, in spite of the poets and romancers, the bitterest moment of life.

There are some we cannot hurt even if we would; whom all the venom of our nature could not touch, because we mean nothing to them. But there are others in our power, whom we can stab with a word, and these are our brethren, our familiar friends, our comrades at work, our close associates, our fellow laborers in God's vineyard. It is not the crowd that idly jostle us in the street who can hurt us to the quick, but a familiar friend in whom we trusted. He has a means of ingress barred to strangers, and can strike home as no other can. This explains why family quarrels, ruptures in the inner circle, Church disputes, are so bitter. They come so near us. An offended brother is hard to win, because the very closeness of the previous intimacy brings a rankling sense of injustice and the resentment of injured love. An injury from the hand of a friend seems such a wanton thing; and the heart hardens itself with the sense of wrong, and a separation ensues like the bars of a castle.

It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto him by whom they come. The strife-makers find in themselves, in their barren heart and empty life, their own appropriate curse. The blow they strike comes back upon themselves. Worse than the choleric temperament is the peevish, sullen nature. The one usually finds a speedy repentance for his hot and hasty mood; the other is a constant menace to friendship, and acts like a perpetual irritant. Its root is selfishness, and it grows by what it feeds on.

When offences do come, we may indeed use them as opportunities for growth in gracious ways, and thus turn them into blessings on the lives of both. To the offended it may be an occasion for patience and forgiveness; to the offender, an occasion for humility and frank confession; and to both, a renewing of love less open to offence in the future. There are some general counsels about the making up of differences, though each case needs special treatment for itself, which will easily be found if once the desire for concord be established. Christ's recipe for a quarrel among brethren is: "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother."

Much of our dissension is due to misunderstanding, which could be put right by a few honest words and a little open dealing. Human beings so often live at cross purposes with each other, when a frank word, or a simple confession of wrong, almost a look or a gesture, would heal the division. Resentment grows through brooding over a fancied slight. Hearts harden themselves in silence, and, as time goes on, it becomes more difficult to break through the silence. Often there are strained relations among men, who, at the bottom of their hearts, have sincere respect for each other, and smouldering affection also, which only needs a little coaxing of the spark to burst out again into a dancing flame. There is a terrible waste of human friendship, a waste of power which might be used to bless all our lives, through our sinful separations, our selfish exclusiveness, our resentful pride. We let the sweetest souls we have met die without acknowledging our debt to them. We stand aside in haughty isolation, till the open grave opens our sealed hearts—too late. We let the chance of reconciliation pass till it is irrevocable. Most can remember a tender spot in the past somewhere, a sore place, a time when discord entered with another they loved, and

Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother.

And in some cases, as with the friends in Coleridge's great poem, the parting has been eternal, and neither has ever since found another such friend to fill the life with comfort, and free the hollow heart from paining.

There is more evil from such a state of discord than the mere loss it is to both; it influences the whole heart-life, creating sometimes bitterness, sometimes universal suspicion, sometimes cynicism. Hatred is contagious, as love is. They have an effect on the whole character, and are not confined to the single incident which causes the love or the hate. To hate a single one of God's creatures is to harden the heart to some extent against all. Love is the centre of a circle, which broadens out in ever-widening circumference. Dante tells us in La Vita Nuova that the effect of his love for Beatrice was to open his heart to all, and to sweeten all his life. He speaks of the surpassing virtue of her very salutation to him in the street. "When she appeared in any place, it seemed to me, by the hope of her excellent salutation, that there was no man mine enemy any longer; and such warmth of charity came upon me that most certainly in that moment I would have pardoned whomsoever had done me an injury; and if any one should then have questioned me concerning any matter, I could only have said unto him 'Love,' with a countenance clothed in humbleness." His love bred sweetness in his mind, and took in everything within the blessed sweep of its range. Hatred also is the centre of a circle, which has a baneful effect on the whole life. We cannot have bitterness or resentment in our mind without its coloring every thought and affection. Hate of one will affect our attitude toward all.

If, then, we possess the spirit to be reconciled with an offended or an offending brother, there are some things which may be said about the tactics of renewing the broken tie. There is needed a certain tactful considerateness. In all such questions the grace of the act depends as much on the manner of it, as on the act itself. The grace of the fairest act may be hurt by a boorish blemish of manner. Many a graceful act is spoiled by a graceless touch, as a generous deed can be ruined by a grudging manner. An air of condescension will destroy the value of the finest charity. There is a forgiveness which is no forgiveness—formal, constrained, from the teeth and lips outward. It does not come as the warm breath which has had contact with the blood of the heart. The highest forgiveness is so full and free, that it is forgetfulness. It is complete as the forgiveness of God.

If there is something in the method of the approach, there is perhaps more in the time of it. It ought to be chosen carefully and considerately; for it may be that the other has not been prepared for the renewal by thought and feeling, as the man who makes the advances has been. No hard and fast rule can be formulated when dealing with such a complex and varied subject as man. So much depends on temper and character. One man taken by surprise reveals his true feeling; another, when taken off his guard, is irritated, and shuts up his heart in a sort of instinctive self-defence. The thoughtfulness of love will suggest the appropriate means, but some emphasis may rightly be given to the phrase in Christ's counsel, "between thee and him alone." Let there be an opportunity for a frank and private conversation. To appeal to an estranged friend before witnesses induces to special pleading, making the witnesses the jury, asking for a verdict on either side; and the result is that both are still convinced they have right on their side, and that they have been wronged.

If the fault of the estrangement lies with us, the burden of confession should rest upon us also. To go to him with sincere penitence is no more than our duty. Whether the result be successful or not, it will mean a blessing for our own soul. Humility brings its own reward; for it brings God into the life. Even if we have cause to suspect that the offended brother will not receive us kindly, still such reparation as we can make is at least the gate to reconciliation. It may be too late, but confession will lighten the burden on our own heart. Our brother may be so offended that he is harder to be won than a strong city, but he is far more worth winning; and even if the effort be unsuccessful, it is better than the cowardice which suffers a bloodless defeat.

If, on the other hand, the fault was not ours, our duty is still clear. It should be even easier to take the initiative in such a case; for after all it is much easier to forgive than to submit to be forgiven. To some natures it is hard to be laid under an obligation, and the generosity of love must be shown by the offended brother. He must show the other his fault gently and generously, not parading his forgiveness like a virtue, but as if the favor were on his side—as it is. Christ made forgiveness the test of spirituality. If we do not know the grace of forgiveness, we do not know how gracious life may be. The highest happiness is not a matter of possessions and material gains, but has its source in a heart at peace; and thus it is that the renewing of friendship has a spiritual result. If we are revengeful, censorious, judging others harshly, always putting the worst construction on a word or an act, uncharitable, unforgiving, we certainly cannot claim kinship with the spirit of the Lord Jesus. St. Paul made the opposite the very test of the spiritual man: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness."

If we knew all, we would forgive all. If we knew all the facts, the things which produced the petulance, the soreness which caused the irritation, we would be ready to pardon; for we would understand the temptation. If we knew all, our hearts would be full of pitiful love even for those who have wronged us. They have wronged themselves more than they can possibly wrong us; they have wounded a man to their own hurt. To think kindly once more of a separated friend, to soften the heart toward an offending brother, will bring the blessing of the Peace-maker, the blessing of the Reconciler. The way to be sure of acting this part is to pray for him. We cannot remain angry with another, when we pray for him. Offence departs, when prayer comes. The captivity of Job was turned, when he prayed for his friends.

If we stubbornly refuse the renewing of friendship, it is an offence against religion also. Only love can fulfil the law of Christ. His is the Gospel of reconciliation, and the greater reconciliation includes the lesser. The friends of Christ must be friends of one another. That ought to be accepted as an axiom. To be reconciled to God carries with it at least a disposition of heart, which makes it easy to be reconciled to men also. We have cause to suspect our religion, if it does not make us gentle, and forbearing, and forgiving; if the love of our Lord does not so flood our hearts as to cleanse them of all bitterness, and spite, and wrath. If a man is nursing anger, if he is letting his mind become a nest of foul passions, malice, and hatred, and evil wishing, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

If we cannot, at need, even humiliate ourselves to win our brother, it is difficult to see where our religion comes in, especially when we think what humiliation Christ suffered, that He might reconcile us to God, and make us friends again with our heavenly Father, and renew our broken love. Whatever be our faith and works, and however correct be our creed and conduct, if we are giving place to anger, if we are stiffening ourselves in strife and disdain, we are none of His, who was meek and lowly of heart. We may come to the Sanctuary with lips full of praises and eyes full of prayers, with devotion in our hearts and gifts in our hand, but God will spurn our worship and despise our gifts. It is not a small matter, this renewing of friendship, but is the root of religion itself, and is well made the very test of spiritual-mindedness. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Misunderstandings and estrangements will arise, occasions will come when it seems as if not even love and forbearance can avoid a quarrel, but surely Christ has died in vain if His grace cannot save us from the continuance of strife.

Such renewing of love, done with this high motive, will indeed bring an added joy, as the poets have declared. The very pain will give zest to the pleasure. We will take the great gift of friendship with a new sense of its beauty and sacredness. We will walk more softly because of the experience, and more than ever will tremble lest we lose it. For days after the reconciliation, we will go about with the feeling that the benediction of the peace-makers rests on our head and clings round our feet.

But more than any personal joy from the renewed friendship, we will have the smile of God on our life. We will know that we have done what is well pleasing in His sight. Sweeter than the peace which comes from being at one with men, is the peace which comes from being at one with God. It settles on the soul like the mist on the mountains, enveloping and enswathing it. It comes to our fevered life as a great calm. Over the broken waters there hovers the golden glory of God's eternal peace.

And more even than all that, we will have gained a new insight into the love of the Father, and into the sacrifice of the Son. We will understand a little more of the mystery of the Love which became poor, which gladly went into the wilderness to seek and to save the lost. The cross will gain new and rich significance to us, and all the world will be an arena in which is enacted the spectacle of God's great love. The world is bathed in the love of God, as it is flooded by the blessed sun. If we are in the light and walk in love, our walk will be with God, and His gentleness will make us great. There is intended an ever fuller education in the meaning, and in the life of love, until the assurance reaches us that nothing can separate us from love. Even death, which sunders us from our friends, cannot permanently divide us. In the great Home-coming and Reunion of hearts, all the veils which obscure feeling will be torn down, and we shall know each other better, and shall love each other better.

But every opportunity carries a penalty; every privilege brings with it a warning. If we will not live the life of love, if we harden our heart against a brother offended, we will find in our need even the great and infinite love of God shut against us, harder to be won than a strong city, ribbed and stockaded as the bars of a castle. To the unforgiving there is no forgiveness. To the hard, and relentless, and loveless, there is no love. To the selfish, there is no heaven.



The Limits of Friendship

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, but thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God.

DEUTERONOMY.

Yet each will have one anguish—his own soul, Which perishes of cold.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.



The Limits of Friendship

Friendship, at its very best and purest, has limits. At its beginning, it seems to have no conditions, and to be capable of endless development. In the first flush of new-born love it seems almost an insult to question its absolute power to meet every demand made upon it. The exquisite joy of understanding, and being understood, is too keen to let us believe, that there may be a terminal line, beyond which we may not pass. Friendship comes as a mystery, formless, undefined, without set bounds; and it is often a sore experience to discover that it is circumscribed, and limited like everything human. At first to speak of it as having qualifications was a profanation, and to find them out came as a disillusionment.

Yet the discovery is not all a loss. The limitless is also the vague, and it is well to know the exact terms implied in a relationship. Of course we learn through experience the restrictions on all intimacy, and if we are wise we learn to keep well within the margin; but many a disappointment might have been saved, if we had understood the inherent limitations of the subject. These are the result of personality. Each partner is after all a distinct individual, with will, and conscience, and life apart, with a personal responsibility which none can take from him, and with an individual bias of mind and heart which can never be left out of account.

As is to be expected, some of the limits of friendship are not essential to the relation, but are due to a defect in the relation, perhaps an idiosyncrasy of character or a peculiarity of temper. Some of the limits are self-imposed, and arise from mistake of folly. A friend may be too exacting, and may make excessive demands, which strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous of other interests. Jealousy is usually the fruit, not of love, but of self-love. Life is bigger than any relationship, and covers more ground. The circles of life may intersect, and part of each be common to the other, but there will be an area on both sides exclusive to each; and even if it were possible for the circles to be concentric, it could hardly be that the circumference of the two could be the same; one would be, almost without a doubt, of larger radius than the other. It is not identity which is the aim and the glory of friendship, but unity in the midst of difference. To strive at identity is to be certain of failure, and it deserves failure; for it is the outcome of selfishness. A man's friend is not his property, to be claimed as his exclusive possession. Jealousy is an ignoble vice, because it has its roots in egotism. It also destroys affection, since it is an evidence of want of trust, and trust is essential to friendship.

There are physical limits to friendship, if nothing else. There are material barriers to be surmounted, before human beings really get into touch with each other, even in the slightest degree. The bodily organs, through which alone we can enter into communication, carry with them their own disabilities. The senses are at the best limited in their range, and are ever exposed to error. Flesh stands in the way of a complete revelation of soul. Human feet cannot enter past the threshold of the soul's abode. The very means of self-revelation is a self-concealment. The medium, by which alone we know, darkens, if it does not distort, the object. Words obscure thought, by the very process through which alone thought is possible for us; and the fleshly wrappings of the soul hide it, at the same time that they make it visible.

And if there are physical limits to friendship, there are greater mental limits. The needs of living press on us, and drive us into different currents of action. Our varied experience colors all our thought, and gives a special bias to our mind. There is a personal equation which must always be taken into account. This is the charm of intercourse, but it is also a limitation. We do not travel over the same ground; we meet, but we also part. However great the sympathy, it is not possible completely to enter into another man's mind, and look at a subject with his eyes. Much of our impatience with each other, and most of our misunderstandings, are caused by this natural limitation. The lines along which our minds travel can at the best be asymptotic, approaching each other indefinitely near, but never quite coinciding.

The greatest limit of friendship, of which these other are but indications, is the spiritual fact of the separate personality of each human being. This is seen most absolutely in the sphere of morals. The ultimate standard for a man is his own individual conscience, and neither the constraint of affection, nor the authority of numbers, can atone for falseness there. One of the most forceful illustrations of this final position of all religion is to be found, in the passage of terrific intensity from the Book of Deuteronomy, which we have transcribed as a preface to this chapter. The form of the passage of course gets its coloring from the needs of the time and the temper of the age. The Book of Deuteronomy is so sure that the law of God is necessary for the life of Israel, and that departure from it will mean national ruin, that it will shrink from nothing needed to preserve the truth. Its warnings against being led away to idolatry are very instant and solemn. Every precaution must be taken; nothing must be allowed to seduce them from their allegiance, not the most sacred ties, nor the most solemn authority. No measure of repression can be too stern. In that fierce time it was natural that apostasy should be thought worthy of death; for apostasy from religion meant also treason to the nation: much more those who used their influence to seduce men to apostasy were to be condemned. The passage is introduced by the assertion that if even a prophet, a recognized servant of God, attesting his prophecy with signs and wonders, should solicit them to leave the worship of Jehovah, in spite of his sacred character, and in spite of the seeming evidence of miracles, they must turn from him with loathing, and his doom should be death. And if the apostasy should have the weight of numbers and a whole city go astray, the same doom is theirs. If the tenderest relationship should tempt the soul away, if a brother, or son, or daughter, or wife, or friend, should entice to apostasy, the same relentless judgment must be meted out.

The fact that this stern treatment is advocated in this Book, which is full of the most tender consideration for all weak things, shows the need of the time. Deuteronomy has some of the most beautiful legislation in favor of slaves and little children and birds and domestic animals, some of it in advance of even our modern customs and practices, permeated as these are by Christian sentiment. And it is in this finely sensitive Book that we find such strong assertion of the paramount importance of individual responsibility.

The influence of a friend or near relative is bound to be great. We are affected on every side, and at every moment, by the environment of other lives. There is a spiritual affinity, which is the closest and most powerful thing in the world, and yet in the realm of morals it has definite limits set to it. At the best it can only go a certain length, and ought not to be allowed to go further than its legitimate bounds. The writer of Deuteronomy appreciated to the full the power and attraction of the near human relationships. We see this from the way he describes them, adding an additional touch of fondness to each, "thy brother the son of thy mother, the wife of thy bosom, thy friend who is as thine own soul." But it sets a limit to the place even such tender ties should be allowed to have. The most intimate of relatives, the most trusted of friends, must not be permitted to abrogate the place of conscience. Affection may be perverted into an instrument of evil. There is a higher moral law than even the law of friendship. The demands of friendship must not be allowed to interfere with the dictates of duty. It is not that the moral law should be blindly obeyed, but because in obeying it we are choosing the better part for both; for as Frederick Robertson truly says, "the man who prefers his dearest friend to the call of duty, will soon show that he prefers himself to his dearest friend." Such weak giving in to the supposed higher demand of friendship is only a form of selfishness.

Friendship is sometimes too exacting. It asks for too much, more than we have to give, more than we ever ought to give. There is a tyranny of love, making demands which can only be granted to the loss of both. Such tyranny is a perversion of the nature of love, which is to serve, not to rule. It would override conscience, and break down the will. We cannot give up our personal duty, as we cannot give up our personal responsibility. That is how it is possible for Christ to say that if a man love father, or mother, or wife more than Him, he is not worthy of Him. No human being can take the place of God to another life; it is an acted blasphemy to attempt it.

There is a love which is evil in its selfishness. Its very exclusive claim is a sign of its evil root. The rights of the individual must not be renounced, even for love's sake. Human love can ask too much, and it asks too much when it would break down the individual will and conscience.

The hands that love us often are the hands That softly close our eyes and draw us earthward. We give them all the largesse of our life— Not this, not all the world, contenteth them, Till we renounce our rights as living souls.

We cannot renounce our rights as living souls without losing our souls. No man can pay the debt of life for us. No man can take the burden of life from us. To no man can we hand over the reins unreservedly. It would be cowardice, and cowardice is sin. The first axiom of the spiritual life is the sacredness of the individuality of each. We must respect each other's personality. Even when we have rights over other people, these rights are strictly limited, and carry with them a corresponding duty to respect their rights also. The one intolerable despotism in the world is the attempt to put a yoke on the souls of men, and there are some forms of intimacy which approach that despotism. To transgress the moral bounds set to friendship is to make the highest forms of friendship impossible; for these are only reached when free spirits meet in the unity of the spirit.

The community of human life, of which we are learning much to-day, is a great fact. We are all bound up in the same bundle. In a very true sense we stand or fall together. We are ever on our trial as a society; not only materially, but even in the highest things, morally and spiritually. There is a social conscience, which we affect, and which constantly affects us. We cannot rise very much above it; to fall much below it, is for all true purposes to cease to live. We have recognized social standards which test morality; we have common ties, common duties, common responsibilities.

But with it all, in spite of the fact of the community of human life, there is the other fact of the singleness of human life. We have a life, which we must live alone. We can never get past the ultimate fact of the personal responsibility of each. We may be leaves from the same tree of life, but no two leaves are alike. We may be wrapped up in the same bundle, but one bundle can contain very different things. Each of us is colored with his own shade, separate and peculiar. We have our own special powers of intellect, our own special experience, our own moral conscience, our own moral life to live. So, while it is true that we stand or fall together, it is also true—and it is a deeper truth—that we stand or fall alone.

In this crowded world, with its intercourse and jostling, with its network of relationships, with its mingled web of life, we are each alone. Below the surface there is a deep, and below the deep there is a deeper depth. In the depth of the human heart there is, and there must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with another. We never completely open up our nature to even our nearest and dearest. In spite of ourselves something is kept back. Not that we are untrue in this, and hide our inner self, but simply that we are unable to reveal ourselves entirely. There is a bitterness of the heart which only the heart knoweth; there is a joy of the heart with which no stranger can intermeddle; there is a bound beyond which even a friend who is as our own soul becomes a stranger. There is a Holy of Holies, over the threshold of which no human feet can pass. It is safe from trespass, guarded from intrusion, and even we cannot give to another the magic key to open the door. In spite of all the complexity of our social life, and the endless connections we form with others, there is as the ultimate fact a great and almost weird solitude. We may fill up our hearts with human fellowship in all its grades, yet there remains to each a distinct and separated life.

We speak vaguely of the mass of men, but the mass consists of units, each with his own life, a thing apart. The community of human life is being emphasized to-day, and it is a lesson which bears and needs repetition, the lesson of our common ties and common duties. But at the same time we dare not lose sight of the fact of the singleness of human life, if for no other reason than that, otherwise we have no moral appeal to make on behalf of those ties and duties. In the region of morals, in dealing with sin, we see how true this solitude is. There may be what we can truly call social and national sins, and men can sin together, but in its ultimate issue sin is individual. It is a disintegrating thing, separating a man from his fellows, and separating him from God. We are alone with our sin, like the Ancient Mariner with the bodies of his messmates around him, each cursing him with his eye. In the last issue, there is nothing in the universe but God and the single human soul. Men can share the sinning with us; no man can share the sin. "And the sin ye do by two and two, ye must pay for one by one." Therefore in this sphere of morals there must be limits to friendship, even with the friend who is as our own soul.

Friendship is a very real and close thing. It is one of the greatest joys in life, and has noble fruits. We can do much for each other: there are burdens we can share: we can rejoice with those who do rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Through sympathy and love we are able to get out of self; and yet even here there are limits. Our helplessness in the presence of grief proves this fundamental singleness of human life. When we stand beside a friend before the open grave, under the cloud of a great sorrow, we learn how little we can do for him. We can only stand speechless, and pray that the great Comforter may come with His own divine tenderness and enter the sanctuary of sorrow shut to feet of flesh. Mourners have indeed been soothed by a touch, or a look, or a prayer, which had their source in a pitiful human heart, but it is only as a message of condolence flashed from one world to another. There is a burden which every man must bear, and none can bear for him: for there is a personality which, even if we would, we cannot unveil to human eyes. There are feelings sacred to the man who feels. We have to "dree our own weird," and live our own life, and die our own death.

In the time of desolation, when the truth of this solitude is borne in on us, we are left to ourselves, not because our friends are unfeeling, but simply because they are unable. It is not their selfishness which keeps them off, but just their frailty. Their spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak. It is the lesson of life, that there is no stay in the arm of flesh, that even if there is no limit to human love, there is a limit to human power. Sooner or later, somewhere or other, it is the experience of every son of man, as it was the experience of the Son of Man, "Behold the hour cometh, and now is come, that ye My friends shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone."

Human friendship must have limits, just because it is human. It is subject to loss, and is often to some extent the sport of occasion. It lacks permanence: misunderstandings can estrange us: slander can embitter us: death can bereave us. We are left very much the victims of circumstances; for like everything earthly it is open to change and decay. No matter how close and spiritual the intercourse, it is not permanent, and never certain. If nothing else, the shadow of death is always on it. Tennyson describes how he dreamed that he and his friend should pass through the world together, loving and trusting each other, and together pass out into the silence.

Arrive at last the blessed goal, And He that died in Holy Land Would reach us out the shining hand, And take us as a single soul.

It was a dream at the best. Neither to live together nor to die together could blot out the spiritual limits of friendship. Even in the closest of human relations when two take each other for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, they may be made one flesh, but never one soul. Singleness is the ultimate fact of human life. "The race is run by one and one, and never by two and two."

In religion, in the deepest things of the spirit, these limits we have been considering are perhaps felt most of all. With even a friend who is as one's own soul, we cannot seek to make a spiritual impression, without realizing the constraint of his separate individuality. We cannot break through the barriers of another's distinct existence. If we have ever sought to lead to a higher life another whom we love, we must have been made to feel that it does not all rest with us, that he is a free moral being, and that only by voluntarily yielding his heart and will and life to the King, can he enter the Kingdom. We are forced to respect his personality. We may watch and pray and speak, but we cannot save. There is almost a sort of spiritual indecency in unveiling the naked soul, in attempting to invade the personality of another life. There is sometimes a spiritual vivisection which some attempt in the name of religion, which is immoral. Only holier eyes than ours, only more reverent hands than ours, can deal with the spirit of a man. He is a separate individual, with all the rights of an individual. We may have many points of contact with him, the contact of mind on mind, and heart on heart; we may even have rights over him, the rights of love; but he can at will insulate his life from ours. Here also, as elsewhere when we go deep enough into life, it is God and the single human soul.