' Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 182, 2 q_ Silvester Home.
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(3) It provides Gomradesliip. — A friend is the best of all comrades in the work and warfare of life, the most serviceable, the most trustworthy, the least likely to be deluded by irrelevant considerations. "A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father ; to his wife, but as a husband ; to his enemy, but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak, as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person."
Bacon's shrewd insight into average human life leads him in these concluding words to fall below the nobility of his theme. The father and the husband may add the character of the friend, and though this, perhaps, is not commonly attained, yet neither fatherhood nor the married state reaches its true altitude other- wise. Jeremy Taylor raised the question, " whether a friend may be more than a husband or wife," and he answered with equal truth and decision : " It can never be reasonable or just, prudent or lawful, but the reason is, because marriage is the queen of friendship, in which there is a communication of all that can be communicated by friendship ; and it being made sacred by vows and love, by bodies and souls, by interest and custom, by religion and by laws, by common counsels and common fortunes ; it is the principal in the kind of friendship, and the measure of all the rest."!
What is the best a friend can be
To any soul, to you or me ?
Not only shelter, comfort, rest —
In most refreshment unexpressed;
Not only a beloved guide
To thread life's labyrinth at our side,
Or, with love's torch lead on before;
Though these be much, there yet is more.
The best friend is an atmosphere. Warm with all inspirations dear, Wherein we breathe the large free breath Of life that has no taint of death. Our friend is an unconscious part Of every true beat of our heart ; A strength, a growth, whence we derive God's health that keeps the world alive.
1 H. H. Henson.
2 SAMUEL I. 26 301
Can friend lose friend ? Believe it not ! The tissue whereof life is wrought, Weaving the separate into one, No end hath, nor beginning; spun From subtle threads of destiny- Finer than thought of man can see. God takes not back His gifts divine ; While thy God lives, thy friend is thine.^
^ Walt Whitman is the poet of comrades, and sings the song of companionship more than any other theme. He ever comes back to the lifelong love of comrades. The mystery and the beauty of it impressed him.
O tan-faced prairie-boy,
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last
among the recruits You came, taciturn, with nothing to give — we but looked on
each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.
III.
The Place of Friendship in Christianity.
The accusation has not rarely been urged against the New Testament that it contains no precepts for the guidance of friends — nay, that friendship does not seem to be recognized by the sacred writers.
The truth is that friendship, the marriage of souls, is one of the ultimate facts of life, connected with an integral element of human nature itself, and that Christianity, the religion of the Incarnation, takes it for granted, and pours into it a wonderful treasure of purity, purpose, and permanence. Certainly we ought not to be astonished if we discover outside the Christian sphere splendid examples of all those virtues which are properly de- scribed as natural — conjugal love, patriotism, courage, friendship. What would be astonishing, and ought (did it indeed exist) to move in us the most profound perplexity and searching of heart,
^ Lucy Larcora.
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would be the absence or degradation within the Christian sphere of these natural virtues. Whatever is truly natural is necessarily Christian, the very witness of the Incarnation prohibits the notion that any natural excellence can be excluded from perfected humanity.
1. What was the secret which kept alive the friendship of David and Jonathan, in defiance of all that difficulty and danger, and family affection and duty, and most urgent self-interest could do to destroy it ? The mere mutual liking of two gallant and generous young men, who had the same manly tastes and chivalrous sentiments, is not enough to explain it. The unsolder- ' able spell which cemented this union of hearts was of no such stuff as that. The same passage which reminds us of what there was to imperil their friendship reveals also the secret of its safe keeping. Jonathan "arose, and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his hand in God." What is "strengthening his hand in God"? The expression is obscure, but its most natural meaning is that Jonathan heartened David in his danger and exile by reminding him of God's promise, and by declaring his own faith in it. That touches the true bond of this friend- ship. What bound these two together was not natural and congenial temper, but the sympathy of a common faith. Each saw in the other one priceless virtue — devotion to a holy ideal ; each knew that the other lived faithful to a sacred purpose, an ambition which was pure. If Jonathan loved David, it was because David was true to a divinely appointed destiny and followed it unshaken through peril and pain and discouragements. If, in turn, David loved Jonathan, it was because he, too, saw in his friend a lofty and pathetic obedience to a fate which was a fate of deprivation and endurance and humiliation, but yet was the fate which God had chosen for him. They loved each other so well, and with such steadfastness, because they loved God yet more: their "loves in higher love endured." The glory that gathered upon their earthly affection was the glory which breathed upon it from a spiritual faith.