Each spake words of high disdainAnd 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 inLa Vita Nuovathat 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 themannerof 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.
Yet each will have one anguish—his own soul,Which perishes of cold.
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 adefectin 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 handsThat 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 livealone. 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 LandWould 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.
The lesson of all true living in every sphere is to learn our own limitations. It is the first lesson in art, to work within the essential limitations of the particular art. But in dealing with other lives it is perhaps the hardest of all lessons, to learn, and submit to, our limitations. It is the crowning grace of faith, when we are willing to submit, and to leave those we love in the hands of God, as we leave ourselves. Nowhere else is the limit of friendship so deeply cut as here in the things of the spirit.
No man can save his brother's soul,Nor pay his brother's debt.
Human friendship has limits because of the real greatness of man. We are too big to be quite comprehended by another. There is always something in us left unexplained, and unexplored. We do not even know ourselves, much less can another hope to probe into the recesses of our being. Friendship has a limit, because of the infinite element in the soul. It is hard to kick against the pricks, but they are meant to drive us toward the true end of living. It is hard to be brought up by a limit along any line of life, but it is designed to send us to a deeper and richer development of our life. Man's limitation is God's occasion. Only God can fully satisfy the hungry heart of man.
The Higher Friendship
Love Him, and keep Him for thy Friend, who, when all go away, will not forsake thee, nor suffer thee to perish at the last.
Hush, I pray you!What if this friend happen to be—God!
The Higher Friendship
Life is an education in love. There are grades and steps in it, occasions of varying opportunity for the discipline of love. It comes to us at many points, trying us at different levels, that it may get entrance somehow, and so make our lives not altogether a failure. When we give up our selfishness and isolation, even in the most rudimentary degree, a beginning is made with us that is designed to carry us far, if we but follow the leading of our hearts. There is an ideal toward which all our experience points. If it were not so, life would be a hopeless enigma, and the world a meaningless farce. There must be a spiritual function intended, a design to build up strong and true moral character, to develop sweet and holy life, otherwise history is a despair, and experience a hopeless riddle. All truly great human life has been lived with a spiritual outlook, and on a high level. Men have felt instinctively that there is no justification for all the pain, and strife, and failure, and sorrow of the world, if these do not serve a higher purpose than mere existence. Even our tenderest relationships need some more authoritative warrant than is to be found in themselves, even in the joy and hope they bring. That joy cannot be meant as an empty lure to keep life on the earth.
And spiritual man has also discovered that the very breakdown of human ties leads out to a larger and more permanent love. It is sooner or later found that the most perfect love cannot utterly satisfy the heart of man. All our human intercourse, blessed and helpful as it may be, must be necessarily fragmentary and partial. A man must discover that there is an infinite in him, which only the infinite can match and supply. It is no disparagement of human friendship to admit this. It remains a blessed fact that it is possible to meet devotion, which makes us both humble and proud; humble at the sight of its noble sacrifice, proud with a glad pride at its wondrous beauty. Man is capable of the highest heights of love. But man can never take the place of God, and without God life is shorn of its glory and divested of its meaning.
So the human heart has ever craved for a relationship, deeper and more lasting than any possible among men, undisturbed by change, unmenaced by death, unbroken by fear, unclouded by doubt. The limitations and losses of earthly friendship are meant to drive us to the higher friendship. Life is an education in love, but the education is not complete till we learn the love of the eternal. Ordinary friendship has done its work when the limits of friendship are reached, when through the discipline of love we are led into a larger love, when a door is opened out to a higher life. The sickness of heart which is the lot of all, the loneliness which not even the voice of a friend can dispel, the grief which seems to stop the pulse of life itself, find their final meaning in this compulsion toward the divine. We are sometimes driven out not knowing whither we go, not knowing the purpose of it; only knowing through sheer necessity that here we have no abiding city, or home, or life, or love; and seeking a city, a home, a life, a love, that hath foundations.
We have some training in the love of friends, as if only to prove to us that without love we cannot live. All our intimacies are but broken lights of the love of God. They are methods of preparation for the great communion. In so far even that our earthly friendships are helps to life, it is because they are shot through with the spiritual, and they prepare us by their very deficiencies for something more permanent. There have been implanted in man an instinct, and a need, which make him discontented, till he find content in God. If at any time we are forced to cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, it is that we may reach out to the infinite Father, unchanging, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. This is the clamant, imperious need of man.
The solitude of life in its ultimate issue is because we were made for a higher companionship. It is just in the innermost sanctuary, shut to every other visitant, that God meets us. We are driven to God by the needs of the heart. If the existence of God was due to a purely intellectual necessity; if we believed in Him only because our reason gave warrant for the faith; it would not matter much whether He really is, and whether we really can know Him. But when the instincts of our nature, and the necessities of the heart-life demand God, we are forced to believe. In moments of deep feeling, when all pretence is silenced, a man may be still able to question theexistenceof God, but he does not question his ownneedof God. Man, to remain man, must believe in the possibility of this relationship with the divine. There is a love which passeth the love of women, passeth the love of comrades, passeth all earthly love, the love of God to the weary, starved heart of man.
To believe in this great fact does not detract from human friendship, but really gives it worth and glory. It is because of this, that all love has a place in the life of man. All our worships, and friendships, and loves, come from God, and are but reflections of the divine tenderness. All that is beautiful, and lovely and pure, and of good repute, finds its appropriate setting in God; for it was made by God. He made it for Himself. He made man with instincts, and aspirations, and heart-hunger, and divine unrest, that He might give them full satisfaction in Himself. He claims everything, but He gives everything. Our human relationships are sanctified and glorified by the spiritual union. He gives us back our kinships, and friendships, with a new light on them, an added tenderness, transfiguring our common ties and intimacies, flooding them with a supernal joy. We part from men to meet with God, that we may be able to meet men again on a higher platform. But the love of God is the end and design of all other loves. If the flowers and leaves fade, it is that the time of ripe fruit is at hand. If these adornments are taken from the tree of life, it is to make room for the supreme fruitage. Without the love of God all other love would be but deception, luring men on to the awful disillusionment. We were born for the love of God; if we do not find it, it were better for us if we had never been born. We may have tasted of all the joys the world can offer, have known success and the gains of success, been blessed with the sweetest friendships and the fiercest loves; but if we have not found this the chief end of life, we have missed our chance, and can only have at the last a desolated life.
But if through the joy or through the sorrow of life, through love or the want of it, through the gaining of friends or the loss of them, we have been led to dower our lives with the friendship of God, we are possessed of the incorruptible, and undefiled, and that passeth not away. The man who has it has attained the secret cheaply, though it had to be purchased with his heart's blood, with the loss of his dream of blessedness. When the fabric of life crumbled to its native dust, and he rose out of its wreck, the vision of the eternal love came with the thrill of a great revelation. It was the entrance into the mystery, and the wonder of it awed him, and the joy of it inspired him, and he awakened to the fact that never again could he bealoneto all eternity.
Communion with God is the great fact of life. All our forms of worship, all our ceremonies and symbols of religion, find their meaning here. There is, it is true, an ethic of religion, certain moral teachings valuable for life: there are truths of religion to be laid hold of by the reason: there are the consolations of religion to comfort the heart: but the root of all religion is this mystical union, a communion with the Unseen, a friendship with God open to man. Religion is not an acceptance of a creed, or a burden of commandments, but a personal secret of the soul, to be attained each man for himself. It is the experience of the nearness of God, the mysterious contact with the divine, and the consciousness that we stand in a special individual relationship with Him. The first state of exaltation, when the knowledge burst upon the soul, cannot, of course, last; but its effect remains in inward peace, and outward impulse toward nobler life.
Men of all ages have known this close relationship. The possibility of it is the glory of life: the fact of it is the romance of history, and the true reading of history. All devout men that have ever lived have lived in the light of this communion. All religious experience has had this in common, that somehow the soul is so possessed by God, that doubt of His existence ceases; and the task of life becomes to keep step with Him, so that there may be correspondence between the outer and the inner conditions of life. Men have known this communion in such a degree that they have been called pre-eminently the Friends of God, but something of the experience which underlies the term is true of the pious of all generations.
To us, in our place in history, communion with God comes through Jesus Christ. It is an ineffable mystery, but it is still a fact of experience. Only through Jesus do we know God, His interest in us, His desire for us, His purpose with us. He not only shows us in His own example the blessedness of a life in fellowship with the Father, but He makes it possible for us. United to Jesus, we know ourselves united to God. The power of Jesus is not limited to the historical impression made by His life. It entered the world as history; it lives in the world as spiritual fact to-day. Luther's experience is the experience of all believers, "To me it is not simply an old story of an event that happened once; for it is a gift, a bestowing, that endures forever." We offer Christ the submission of our hearts, and the obedience of our lives; and He offers us His abiding presence. We take Him as our Master; and He takes us as His friends. "I call you no longer servants," He said to His disciples, "but I have called you friends." The servant knoweth not what his Master doeth, his only duty is to obey; a friend is admitted to confidence, and though he may do the same thing as a servant, he does not do it any longer unreasoningly, but, having been taken into counsel, he knows why he is doing it. This was Christ's method with His disciples, not to apportion to each his task, but to show them His great purpose for the world, and to ask for their service and devotion to carry it out.
The distinction is not that a servant pleases his master, and a friend pleases himself. It is that our Lord takes us up into a relationship of love with Himself, and we go out into life inspired with His spirit to work His work. It begins with the self-surrender of love; and love, not fear nor favor, becomes the motive. To feel thus the touch of God on our lives changes the world. Its fruits are joy, and peace, and confidence that all the events of life are suffused, not only with meaning, but with a meaning of love. The higher friendship brings a satisfaction of the heart, and a joy commensurate to the love. Its reward is itself, the sweet, enthralling relationship, not any adventitious gain it promises, either in the present, or for the future. Even if there were no physical, or moral, rewards and punishments in the world, we would still love and serve Christfor His own sake. The soul that is bound by this personal attachment to Jesus has a life in the eternal, which transfigures the life in time with a great joy.
We can see at once that to be the friend of God will mean peace also. It has brought peace over the troubled lives of all His friends throughout the ages. Every man who enters into the covenant, knows the world to be a spiritual arena, in which the love of God manifests itself. He walks no longer on a sodden earth and under a gray sky; for he knows that, though all men misunderstand him, he is understood, and followed with loving sympathy, in heaven. It was this confidence in God as a real and near friend, which gave to Abraham's life such distinction, and the calm repose which made his character so impressive. Strong in the sense of God's friendship, he lived above the world, prodigal of present possessions, because sure of the future, waiting securely in the hope of the great salvation. He walked with God in sweet unaffected piety, and serene faith, letting his character ripen in the sunshine, and living out his life as unto God not unto men. To know the love of God does not mean the impoverishing of our lives, by robbing them of their other sweet relations. Rather, it means the enriching of these, by revealing their true beauty and purpose. Sometimes we are brought nearer God through our friends, if not through their influence or the joy of their love, then through the discipline which comes from their very limitations and from their loss. But oftener the experience has been that, through our union with the Friend of friends, we are led into richer and fuller intercourse with our fellows. The nearer we get to the centre of the circle, the nearer we get to each other. To be joined together in Christ is the only permanent union, deeper than the tie of blood, higher than the bond of kin, closer than the most sacred earthly relationship. Spiritual kinship is the great nexus to unite men. "Who are My brethren?" asked Jesus, and for answer pointed to His disciples, and added, "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven the same is My mother and sister and brother."
We ought to make more of our Christian friendships, the communion of the saints, the fellowship of believers. "They that feared God spake often one with another," said the prophet Malachi in one of the darkest hours of the church. What mutual comfort, and renewed hope, they would get from, and give to, each other! Faith can be increased, and love stimulated, and enthusiasm revived by intercourse. The supreme friendship with Christ therefore will not take from us any of our treasured intimacies, unless they are evil. It will increase the number of them, and the true force of them. It will link us on to all who love the same Lord in sincerity and truth. It will open our heart to the world of men that Jesus loved and gave His life to save.
This friendship with the Lord knows no fear of loss; neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us. It is joy and strength in the present, and it lights up the future with a great hope. We are not much concerned about speculations regarding the future; for we know that we are in the hands of our Lover. All that we care to assert of the future is, that Christ will in an ever fuller degree be the environment of all Christian souls, and the effect of that constant environment will fulfil the aspiration of the apostle, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Communion produces likeness. This even now is the test of our friendship with the Lord. Are we assimilating His mind, His way of looking at things, His judgments, His spirit? Is the Christ-conscience being developed in us? Have we an increasing interest in the things which interest Him, an increasing love of the things that He loves, an increasing desire to serve the purposes He has at heart? "Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," is the test by which we can try ourselves.
Fellowship with Him, being much in His company, thinking of Him, seeking to please Him, will produce likeness, and bring us together on more intimate terms. For, as love leads to the desire for fuller fellowship; so fellowship leads to a deeper love. Even if sometimes we almost doubt whether we are really in this blessed covenant of friendship, our policy is to go on loving Him, serving Him, striving to please Him; and we will yet receive the assurance, which will bring peace; He will not disappoint us at the last. It is worth all the care and effort we can give, to have and to keep Him for our friend who will be a lasting possession, whose life enters into the very fibre of our life, and whose love makes us certain of God.
We ought to use our faith in this friendship to bless our lives. To have an earthly friend, whom we trust and reverence, can be to us a source of strength, keeping us from evil, making us ashamed of evil. The dearer the friend and the more spiritual the friendship, the keener will be this feeling, and the more needful does it seem to keep the garments clean. It must reach its height of intensity and of moral effectiveness in the case of friendship with God. There can be no motive on earth so powerful. If we could only have such a friendship, we see at once what an influence it might have over our life. We can appreciate more than the joy, and peace, and comfort of it; we can feel the power of it. To know ourselves ever before a living, loving Presence, having a constant sense of Christ abiding in us, taking Him with us into the marketplace, into our business and our pleasure, to have Him as our familiar friend in joy and sorrow, in gain and loss, in success and failure, must, in accordance with all psychological law, be a source of strength, lifting life to a higher level of thought, and feeling, and action. Supposing it were true and possible, it would naturally be the strongest force in the world, the most effective motive that could be devised: it would affect the whole moral outlook, and make some things easy now deemed impossible, and make some things impossible now to our shame too easy. Supposing this covenant with God were true, and we knew ourselves to have such a Lover of our soul, it would, as a matter of course, give us deeper and more serious views of human life, and yet take away from us the burden and the unrest of life.
Unless history be a lie, and experience a delusion, itistrue. The world is vocal with a chorus of witness to the truth of it. From all sorts and conditions of men comes the testimony to its reality—from the old, who look forward to this Friend to make their bed in dying; from the young, who know His aid in the fiery furnace of temptation; from the strong, in the burden of the day and the dust of the battle, who know the rest of His love even in the sore labor; from the weak, who are mastered by His gracious pity, and inspired by His power to suffer and to bear. Christ's work on earth was to make the friendship of God possible to all. It seems too good to be true, too wondrous a condescension on His part, but its reality has been tested, and attested, by generations of believers. This covenant of friendship is open to us, to be ours in life, and in death, and past the gates of death.
The human means of communication is prayer, though we limit it sadly. Prayer is not an act of worship merely, the bending of the knee on set occasions, and offering petitions in need. It is an attitude of soul, opening the life on the Godward side, and keeping free communication with the world of spirit. And so, it is possible to pray always, and to keep our friendship ever green and sweet: and God comes back upon the life, as dew upon the thirsty ground. There is an interchange of feeling, a responsiveness of love, a thrill of mutual friendship.
You must love Him, ere to youHe shall seem worthy of your love.
The great appeal of the Christian faith is to Christian experience. Loving Christ is its own justification, as every loving heart knows. Life evidences itself: the existence of light is its own proof. The power of Christ on the heart needs no other argument than itself. Men only doubt when the life has died out, and the light has waned, and flickered, and spent itself. It is when there is no sign of the spirit in our midst, no token of forces beyond the normal and the usual, that we can deny the spirit. It is when faith is not in evidence that we can dispute faith. It is when love is dead that we can question love. The Christian faith is not a creed, but a life; not a proposition, but a passion. Love is its own witness to the soul that loves: communion is its own attestation to the spirit that lives in the fellowship. The man who lives with Jesus knows Him to be a Lover that cleaves closer than a brother, a Friend that loveth at all times, and a Brother born for adversity.
It does not follow that there is an end of the question, so far as we are concerned, if we say that we at least do not know that friendship, and cannot love Him. Some even say it with a wistful longing, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him." It is true that love cannot be forced, that it cannot be made to order, that we cannot love because we ought, or even because we want. But we can bring ourselves into the presence of the lovable. We can enter into Friendship through the door of Discipleship; we can learn love through service; and the day will come to us also when the Master's word will be true, "I call you no longer servant, but I call you friend." His love will take possession of us, till all else seems as hatred in comparison. "All lovers blush when ye stand beside Christ," says Samuel Rutherford; "woe unto all love but the love of Christ. Shame forevermore be upon all glory but the glory of Christ; hunger forevermore be upon all heaven but Christ. I cry death, death be upon all manner of life but the life of Christ."
To be calledfriendsby our Master, to know Him as the Lover of our souls, to give Him entrance to our hearts, is to learn the meaning of living, and to experience the ecstasy of living. The Higher Friendship is bestowed without money and without price, and is open to every heart responsive to God's great love.
'T is only heaven that is given away,'T is God alone may be had for the asking.