^ Cardinal Newman, in his beautiful sermon on "Love of Eelations and Friends," remarks on the apparent strangeness of the fact that the Son of God should have thus "had a private friend." "This shows us," he says, "first, how entirely He was a man, as much as any of us, in His wants and feelings ; and next, that there is nothing contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, nothing inconsistent with the fulness of Christian love, in having our affections directed in an especial way towards certain objects, towards those whom the circumstances of our past life, or some peculiarities of character, have endeared to us."
^ The whole subject of friendship makes clear to us the relationship we should hold to Jesus Christ. The only perfect friendship is a friendship that is inward and spiritual; but in imperfect and feeble natures like ours the varieties and degrees of friendship are endless. There is only one Being on whose love we may count without fail. It is not every one with whom we can hold fellowship. There are minds and lives with which we cannot have any free and intimate intercourse. There seems to be nothing in common between them and us. They are too high, too self- absorbed, they move in an orbit far removed from the range of our small careers. It is only a certain order of mind that can have close friendship with men like Plato and Spinoza and Hegel. The world in which these wise men live is not the same as that in which the majority 01 us think and toil. It is only trained scientific minds that can keep company with Newton and Darwin and Kelvin. We read Cromwell's letters, and Wellington's dispatches, but, somehow, while we feel these men are human like ourselves, their dealings are mainly with politicians and administrators and military leaders. Dante and Shakespeare
DiiUT.-ESTH. — 20
3o6 FRIENDSHIP
and Milton are for imaginative natures ; Gibbon and Macaulay and Lecky and Mommsen for those whose interest lies in tracing the rise and fall and growth and power of nationalities. These great minds are not companions for every one. They have their circle and school. Their empire does not cover humanity. There is only one, Jesus Christ, who offers His heart to all, be they what they may. With Him all may be in friendship.^
^ The last words of President Edwards, after bidding his weeping relatives good-bye, were: "Now where is Jesus of Nazareth, my true and never-failing Friend ? " So saying he fell asleep.
4 We must, as Christians, bring our friendships under the yoke of Christ, and make them instruments of righteousness ; we may not safely indulge the merely natural attraction which drew us first together. There must follow the " covenant " of mutual service and sacrifice. When the generous prince felt his heart go out to the young hero standing before his father's throne, and when he gave place to his love and bound himself by the eager vows and protestations of friendship in its first enthusiasm, he little guessed the demands which that friendship would make on him, he little thought that his love for David would have to stand the strain of so many strange and disastrous contingencies. But from the first it was a consecrated thing between the young men, and at every fresh crisis of trouble, they renewed their " covenant before the Lord." And even now, across those dim wastes of time, we can see how that consecrated friendship blessed them both. Jonathan, the bold, eager, heroic warrior, was softened and hallowed by his love for David, and grew into the noblest and most winning heroism of history by the discipline of that stern, exacting obligation which he had taken on himself in youth; and David, the gay, all-prospering, ambitious man, was lifted into chivalry and melted into tenderness by the spectacle of so much generosity, and sjich enduring love.
What might be done if men were wise — What glorious deeds, my suffering brother. Would they unite In love and right, And cease their scorn of one another.
' W. Watson, A Young Man's Ideal, 63.
2 SAMUEL I. 26 307
Oppression's heart might be imbued With kindling drops of loving-kindness,
And knowledge pour
From shore to shore Light on the eyes of mental blindness.
All slavery, warfare, lies, and wrongs, All vice and crime might die together,
And wine and corn
To each man born Be free as warmth in summer weather.
The meanest wretch that ever trod, The deepest sunk in sin and sorrow,
Might stand erect
In self-respect And share the teeming world to-morrow.
"What might be done ? This might be done, And more than this — my suffering brother!
More than the tongue
E'er said or sung, If men were wise, and loved each other!
Thou art the Man.
309
Literature.
Ainger (A.), Sermons in the Temple Church, 26.
Barnett (S. A.), in Lombard Street in Lent, 84.
Black (H.), Christ's Service of Love, 147.
Butler (J.), Sermons (ed. Bernard), 125.
Campbell (R. J.), Sermons addressed to Individuals, 227.
Dawson (W. J.), The Threshold of Manhood, 198.
Ford (H.), Sermons xoith Analyses, 77.
Goulburn (E. M.), Personal Religion, 83.
Macgregor (G, H. C), Messages of the Old Testament, 129.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 2 Samuel and Kings, 55.
Moule (H. C. G.), Temptation and Escape, 34.