"little lad" who is with him, and as the boy runs forward to
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pick up the arrow, his master cries after him the words agreed upon as a message of danger, and as soon as the arrow has been recovered sends him away with his weapons. " And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place toward the South, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times: and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded. And Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying. The Lord shall be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed, for ever."
Once more they met, and, so far as we know, only once. It was when Saul was pursuing David persistently but unsuccess- fully. It is impossible to imagine a more difficult situation than that of Jonathan. Indignant at his father's obstinate injustice, unable to restrain his violence, he yet refused to desert him, and seems to have quietly exerted himself to protect his friend. For the third time the covenant was renewed. " Jonathan, Saul's son arose, and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his hand in God. And he said unto him. Fear not: for the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee ; and that also Saul my father knoweth. And they two made a covenant before the Lord." In the disastrous scene on Gilboa, Jonathan fought and fell by his father's side, and the suggestion of that fact is borne out by the emphasis laid on the union of the two in David's lament. Jonathan was a devoted son, as well as the most loyal of friends, and when he had to take sides in the final conflict, he stood by his misguided father. "Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided ; ... I am dis- tressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : very pleasant hast thou been unto me : thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women."
The subject is Friendship. Let us consider —
I. The Marks of Friendship. IF. Its Value. III. Its Place in Christianity.
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The Marks of Fkiendship.
1. There are not a great many friendships which have left an abiding record in human memories; but there is in legend the friendship of Theseus and Peirithous, of Orestes and Pylades, of Roland and Oliver on the borderland of legend and history ; and in Jewish story this of David and Jonathan. The world's later ages do not furnish so readily as the earlier ages examples of a friendship between men heroic enough in force and beauty to make a mark on the human mind.
•[[ Pythias was condemned to death by Dionysius the tyrant. He begged leave to go home to wish his friends good-bye and to arrange his affairs. He had a friend named Damon, who said, '* Let him go, and I will remain in prison and die for him if he does not return." Dionysius consented, and Pythias went off home, and came back just in time to meet his fate, and save the friend who had risked death for his sake. The tyrant was so struck by the nobility of heart in the two men that he pardoned Pythias, and said : '■ Let me be a third person in so sacred a friendship." ^
2. Still friendship remains a great good among human goods, and it is well that we should know the secret of it, and by what care and art it can be engendered and preserved and heightened. Therefore it will not be ami^s to look at this old tale of how David and Jonathan loved one the other with a love, as the poet of them says, passing the love of women, in the hope that by looking at it we may recover some portion of that lost secret — how friends are made and kept. Most of us have friends ; all of us wish for them. How may we make and keep them ? Three things are necessary to a genuine and lasting friendship.
(1) Spontaneousness. — The love of Jonathan for David was a case of love at first sight. Jonathan had watched, as all Israel did, the unequal combat between the mailed giant and the shepherd ; and he doubtless took a prominent part in the slaughter of the Philistines which followed the discomfiture of their champion. He was standing by, afterwards, when David, with
^S. Gregory.
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modesty equal to his merit, gave Saul an account of his experi- ence of God's faithfulness ; and was so impressed by what he saw and heard that " it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."
^ You are to find something in your friend which will be complementary to your own nature. His tastes, his aptitudes, his thoughts, so dissimilar from your own, will all help to contribute to your wealth. His point of view will reveal many things you have failed to observe from yours. His habits of mind will pleas- antly and helpfully react upon your own. If there is genuine equality of friendship and neither of you requires that the other should merge his individuality or sink his convictions in your own, the friendship cannot easily fail to be a blessing to you both. You remember the canto of In Memoriam which Tennyson ad- dressed to his brother. He had said that his friend, Henry Hallam, was more to him than his brothers were; and then he wrote those beautiful verses —