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 THE LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 HUMAN AND DIVINE 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 emostheneb . 
 asiest thing 
 
 one's self: 
 
 shes he 
 true." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 The Laws of Friendship 
 Human and Divine 
 
 BY 
 
 gork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1910 
 
 AH rifbtt reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1909. Reprinted 
 April, October, December, 1909. 
 
 Norfaoot) $rss: 
 Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 One questions his right to speak on this 
 holy theme at all. One should have lived 
 and suffered and achieved much to have 
 earned that right. I can only own the 
 presumption and speak as I must. 
 
 In attempting to discuss the laws of 
 friendship, human and divine, before a 
 Haverford College audience, in that region 
 of Friends, where Haver ford's own Pro- 
 fessor Jones had already written on Social 
 Law in the Spiritual World, and so near to 
 the place where Dr. Trumbull wrote his 
 Friendship, the Master Passion, I might 
 well have seemed in superlative degree to 
 be bringing coals to Newcastle. And yet, 
 I felt that perhaps the attempt was not less 
 worth making on these accounts. The 
 greatest questions are never new; we can 
 hardly hope for more, in any case, than the 
 individual outlook; and it seemed as if it 
 might not be without interest to see how 
 the central contention of the Friends is 
 viewed by one quite destitute of either 
 Friend ancestry or Friend environment, but 
 brought up, nevertheless, on the "doctrine 
 of benevolence." 
 
 My own pupils know, too, how prone I 
 am to quote Dr. Edward Everett Hale's 
 
 v 
 
 2130644
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 saying to the effect that the best part of a 
 college education is the fellows you meet 
 there; and how firmly I believe that some 
 of the most permanent and valuable and 
 momentous of the friendships of life are 
 formed in college. College students, too, 
 are still in the natural friendship-making 
 period of life. My theme, thus, seemed 
 doubly appropriate to a student audience. 
 
 Moreover, there was the further per- 
 sonal reason, that in responding to the 
 invitation to give these Haverford College 
 Library Lectures I could hardly help 
 wishing to share with the students of 
 Haverford, in my single opportunity of 
 addressing them, my best that single 
 thought that had been, perhaps, the most 
 helpful and most influential in all my own 
 thinking and living, the conception that 
 unifies and simplifies for me the world and 
 life, as does nothing else. 
 
 And yet, the great reason for my theme 
 was simply that, after all, it is the greatest 
 possible theme for any audience whatso- 
 ever. For the problem of these lectures, 
 as I conceive it, and as I understand the 
 Friends everywhere to conceive it and I 
 envy them their beautiful, significant, and 
 vi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 simple name is not the problem of a mere 
 bit of life, something outside the main rela- 
 tions of life though friendship has been 
 often, perhaps usually, treated in literature 
 as though it were a kind of side issue but 
 it is rather the problem of the whole of life. 
 
 The very fact that the problem is so 
 significant and comprehensive a one, and 
 that the fundamental thought which lies 
 back of these lectures has long been for me 
 a kind of ruling conception, makes it inevit- 
 able that I should be dealing here with 
 themes that I have already partially treated 
 elsewhere. I refer especially to Chapter 
 XI of my Reconstruction in Theology, and 
 to a part of my Letters to Sunday School 
 Teachers. My readers should be fairly 
 warned of the recurrence of the general line 
 of thought of those portions of my previous 
 writing. 
 
 But I have taken advantage of these 
 lectures to do what I had long wished to 
 do, and what I believed deserved to be 
 done to work out in a more thorough- 
 going way, and with somewhat ampler 
 illustration, this conception of life and of 
 religion as friendship, and to disclose, if I 
 might, its great fundamental laws. My 
 
 vii
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 own conviction is that no other analogy of 
 the religious life has so much to contribute 
 to our religious thinking and living; and 
 that, at the same time, it is in the light of 
 the likeness of the human and the divine 
 friendships that our human friendships 
 take on their true glory. I have, therefore, 
 cherished the hope that this little book 
 might help some to a richer and also to a 
 more unified life in both the relation to 
 God and the relation to men. For the 
 human relation suffers as really as the 
 divine from failure to heed its fundamental 
 laws. 
 
 The lecture form has been abandoned, 
 as not best adapted to the development of 
 the theme, There was the greater reason 
 for this, since two of the lectures were given 
 without manuscript, and since considerable 
 material has been added. I greatly regret 
 that the preparation of these lectures for 
 the press has been so long, though un- 
 avoidably, delayed. 
 
 HENRY CHURCHILL KING. 
 OBERLIN COLLEGE, 
 January, 1909. 
 
 Vlll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface v 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. Friendship, the Problem o^ Life 3 
 
 II. The Laws of Friendship, the Laws of 
 
 the Spiritual Life 7 
 
 PART I 
 
 ESTABLISHING THE FRIENDSHIP 
 INTEGRITY, BREADTH, AND DEPTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 III. Significant Personalities 19 
 
 IV. The Purpose to be a True Friend 22 
 
 V. Breadth of Personality 30 
 
 VI. Depth of Personality 37 
 
 VII. The Duty of Growth 42 
 
 DEEP COMMUNITY OF INTERESTS 
 
 VIII. Community in Large not Small Interests 47 
 IX. Abiding Relations with Men and God.. 50 
 
 MUTUAL SELF-MANIFESTATION AND ANSWERING TRUST 
 
 X. Mutual Self-Manifestation 55 
 
 XL Answering Trust 60 
 
 XII. Revelation and Trust in Relation to God 62 
 
 MUTUAL SELF- GIVING 
 
 XIII. The Giving of the Self 73 
 
 XIV. Self-Giving in the Divine Friendship... 77 
 
 
 
 IX
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAGS 
 
 PART II 
 
 DEEPENING THE FRIENDSHIP 
 CHRISTIAN STANDARDS 
 
 XV. The Qualities of the True Friend, as 
 
 Seen by Christ 87 
 
 XVI. Paul's Sketch of the Friendly Life. . 101 
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S MOODS 
 
 XVII. The Self-Forgetful Mood 117 
 
 XVIII. Reverence for the Person 134 
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S WAYS 
 
 XIX. Expression 149 
 
 XX. Personal Association 155
 
 INTRODUCTION
 
 I. FRIENDSHIP, THE PROBLEM 
 OF LIFE 
 
 [ROM the point of view of 
 Christ, the supreme artist 
 in living, our problem is 
 the central, the all-inclu- 
 sive problem. For the 
 problem of friendship is 
 the problem of life itself. 
 He who has learned to love and only 
 he has learned to live. This, I suppose, 
 is to be deliberately, even philosophically 
 said. For, if life is correspondence to 
 environment, the fulfilment of relations, 
 certainly our relations to things are only 
 secondary, a kind of mere preliminary to 
 living; while our relations to persons alone 
 are primary. Here we truly live. And 
 this needs saying in this age of physical 
 science, of mechanism, and of emphasis on 
 things. 
 
 For persons are, after all, the most cer- 
 tain of all facts no philosophy has ever 
 succeeded in seriously questioning them, 
 though philosophy has called into question 
 everything else. Persons are for us, even 
 more manifestly, the most important facts, 
 for it is solely in the personal world that 
 there lie for us the supreme and perennial 
 
 3
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 sources of character, of influence, and of 
 happiness life's greatest gifts and achieve- 
 ments. Character and influence can hardly 
 be conceivably either acquired or shown 
 outside of personal relations. And of our 
 happiness it is not only true that friendship 
 is its chief source; but it will be found on 
 reflection, I think, that even that happiness 
 that we do not think of as primarily per- 
 sonal at all in its origin, like enjoyment of 
 nature or art, still owes a chief part of its 
 charm to three elements, all going back to 
 personal relations: to the fact that in it, 
 whether consciously or not, we are coming 
 into the revelation of the personal life of 
 another God or man; that its pleasure, 
 as Kant long ago pointed out, can be 
 shared; and that at least the social life 
 forms the secure background for it all. 1 
 
 The only eternal things, too, are persons 
 and personal relations. They abide for- 
 ever. "Love never faileth." Men have 
 an instinctive insight here; and e^e 
 who ^^_qrce jjjEgjcened to a 
 
 _ 
 
 selfish love cannot help having a reeling of 
 its eternal quality. 
 
 So that to be a true friend in every rela- 
 
 1 Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 16. 
 
 4
 
 PROBLEM OF LIFE 
 
 tlon seems to be the sum of alL It is hardly 
 possible to put more into the record of any 
 life than is implied in the quaintly tender 
 and beautiful epitaph in the inner court of 
 Westminster Abbey: "Jane Lister Dear 
 Childe." And the charge of treachery, on 
 the other hand, is the most damning accusa- 
 tion against a man that can be made. 
 
 It is not strange, then, that Christ finds 
 the eternal life simply in knowing God. 
 "This is life eternal, that they should know 
 thee only true God, and him whom 
 thou idst send, even Jesus Christ." Here 
 is co? .eived a personal relation to hi n, who 
 is C eatqr and Father of all persons a 
 personal relation, thus, of which it is to 
 state the simple truth when one affirms : It 
 is that relation which gives reality and 
 meaning and value to all the other relations 
 of life a relation so fundamental, that 
 itself once set right, it thereby sets all the 
 other relations right. For no man can be 
 a true child of the Father whom Christ 
 revealed, and not be a true orother to 
 every other child of God. 
 
 The conviction of the love of God, of at 
 least possible friendship with him, is abso- 
 lutely fundamental to life. "It is literally 
 
 5
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 our primal hope. For all our arguments, 
 in defense of all that most concerns us, rest 
 finally on our instinctive immediate assump- 
 tion and conviction, that the world is an 
 honest world, that it is no mockery of the 
 best in us, but a possible sphere of rational, 
 worthy, joyous attainment and living; that 
 is, that there is Love at the heart of things, 
 that a Father's heart beats there. 
 
 Our problem is, thus, the one great hu : 
 man problem individual and social; the 
 problem of ethics, the problem of religion, 
 the problem of life itself. From the Chris- 
 tian viewpoint, it is the problem of the 
 Golden Rule, of "learning to live the life 
 of love," as Paul in one passage puts it, of 
 readiness for that great coming civilization 
 of brotherly men, in which the kingdom of 
 God consists; the problem of Christ's great 
 commandment of love to God and men, of 
 the life of the child of the Heavenly 
 Father, of the life of heaven. For what 
 has even the heavenly life itself to offer 
 more than that one should have learned to 
 give and to get the utmost in the personal 
 relations in which he stands to God and 
 men?
 
 II. THE LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP, 
 THE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 LIFE 
 
 It is a distinctly encouraging, simplify- 
 ing, and unifying note that is coming into 
 our sociological, ethical, and theological 
 writing, in harmony with the fundamental 
 spirit of the Friends, through the increas- 
 ing, though often hidden, recognition of 
 Christ's and Paul's principle of love as 
 fulfilling all righteousness. 1 And great 
 consequences follow. The ethical and re- 
 ligious form one unity. One principle, only 
 one, runs throughout life. The same qual- 
 ities, the same conditions, the same means 
 not different are required for relation 
 to God and relation to men, though we 
 have been singularly slow in recognizing 
 it. 
 
 The thought of friendship becomes, thus, 
 the key to the highest attainments in our 
 direct relation to God. The conditions of 
 a deepening acquaintance with God are 
 those of any deepening acquaintance. All 
 our highest religious or spiritual aspira- 
 tions have here their full conditions. And 
 it will be more useful, more rational, and 
 
 1 Cf. Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Char- 
 acter, p. 121.
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 more in accordance with the dominant New 
 Testament usage, to think of greater near- 
 ness to God, or of "the baptism of the 
 Spirit," in terms of a deepening friendship 
 with God. And we shall so avoid the 
 perils of a false and superstitious mysti- 
 cism, while we keep, at the same time, the 
 assurance, the steady growth, and the joy 
 of a true mysticism. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that, in mak- 
 ing the thought of friendship the key to 
 the religious life, we are not to go off again 
 into a false subjectivism which ignores the 
 fact that, if there is a God at all, he has 
 been manifesting himself objectively in the 
 world and in history, and supremely in 
 Christ. The whole possibility of our going 
 forward hopefully in fulfilling the simple 
 conditions of a growing friendship with 
 God, assumes his love as already made 
 known in many ways, and unmistakably in 
 Christ, and builds continually on our knowl- 
 edge of him as given in Christ. "We love 
 because he first loved us." We are seeking 
 God as concretely manifested, and most of 
 all in Christ, no God of our own mere 
 reasonings or dreams or imaginations. We 
 find the real God in the real world, pre- 
 8
 
 LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 eminently in the historical personality of 
 Christ. And we make progress in our 
 acquaintance with God, especially as the 
 Spirit "takes the things of Christ and shows 
 them unto us." 
 
 It should, of course, be said from the 
 start that God's relation to us is certainly 
 not that external and finite relation in 
 which our friends stand to us. God is the 
 very source of our being. "In him we live 
 and move and have our being." He is 
 immanent in us. His personal will is 
 expressed in our moral constitution. We 
 do not wish, and could not have, that 
 degree or kind of separation from God 
 that we do have (though here, too, within 
 limits) from one another. But the per- 
 sonal relation to God is only the more close 
 on this account, not the less real. 
 
 We know any friend chiefly by some 
 form of manifestation in act. His inner 
 life, as inner, is hidden from us as really as 
 is the mind of God. And we have mani- 
 festations of God in like manner, and from 
 them we may know directly his purpose 
 and spirit, very much as we may know the 
 purpose and spirit of our friend. 
 
 Moreover, it is well worth remembering 
 
 9
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 that most of the best in even our human 
 friendships is contributed in a practically 
 unconscious way. The best results often 
 of a deep friendship we are not conscious 
 of at the time, but only wake up to 
 afterward as having special significance. 
 Neither at the time of their contribution, 
 nor later when we realize our debt, are we 
 able to analyze sharply the exact points of 
 indebtedness to our friend. We cannot 
 draw a sharp line here either between our 
 friend's thought and our own. 
 
 It needs also to be borne in mind that 
 nowhere in our communication with others, 
 even with our closest friends, is there 
 probably a direct and complete transfer of 
 thought from one mind to the other. The 
 most that is possible is that my friend 
 should think his own thought and then in 
 some way try to manifest that thought. 
 The symbols that he uses, I then, in turn, 
 actively interpret, creating another thought 
 in my own mind. This created thought of 
 mine is pretty certainly not exactly the 
 thought of my friend. 
 
 In other words, I am not able, in even 
 the most direct human relations, to dis- 
 criminate infallibly between that in my 
 10
 
 LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 thought which is original and that which 
 is derived from my friend. Even my 
 friend's body cannot secure such certain 
 discrimination. There is no way of avoid- 
 ing this interpreting element even in human 
 relations, so that we need not feel dis- 
 turbed that we find it in relation to the 
 divine. 
 
 In any case, to make concrete application 
 to the precise point in question, it seems to 
 me that we must say with Herrmann, "If 
 God, in bringing Christ near to the indi- 
 vidual soul, gives to that soul the full tid- 
 ings of what is in God's heart, and if he 
 thereby gives the soul clear vision and 
 peace, then he makes that soul feel his own 
 Almighty power, and deals with such a soul 
 in the most direct and intimate way pos- 
 sible. A more immediate contact of the 
 soul cannot be conceived or wished for, 
 save by those who do not think of their 
 God as a Personal Spirit but as an im- 
 personal substance. The Personal Spirit 
 communes with us through manifestations 
 of his inner life, and when he consciously 
 and purposely makes us feel what his mind 
 is, then we feel himself." 
 
 The contention of this book simply is, 
 
 ii
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 that if God is a person and we are persons, 
 then our relation to God must be primarily 
 a personal relation, and that any one who 
 will go forward faithfully fulfilling the 
 conditions upon which any personal rela- 
 tion may deepen will find his relation to 
 God deepening in like manner. The fact 
 of the personal relation will verify itself 
 under trial. Appeal may be made, here, 
 confidently to the teaching, example, and 
 experience of Christ. Indeed, the entire 
 analogy of the "blood covenant" and the 
 "threshold covenant," which so pervades 
 the ancient religious thought of the world, 
 and which Christ himself uses, looks to a 
 personal relation to God of the deepest and 
 most intimate sort. 
 
 Now, this whole thought of the same- 
 ness of the conditions in the human and the 
 divine relations means nothing less than 
 that the full solution of individual and 
 social and religious problems alike would 
 be found in the establishment everywhere 
 of true friendships the ideal toward which 
 every relation is to strive. 
 
 What, now, does such a true friendship 
 involve? How can mutually rewarding 
 and ideal relations of person to person be 
 12
 
 LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 established, maintained, and deepened? 
 Mutually rewarding, I say, for a personal 
 relation in which the love is all on one 
 side however unselfish and beautiful in 
 itself this love may be is not at all an 
 ideal relation, not merely for the one not 
 loved, but even more for the one not loving. 
 
 Henry Drummond made his greatest 
 contribution to his generation, by his insist- 
 ence that there is law in the spiritual world. 
 May we not wisely press Drummond's 
 insistence and its scattered illustrations 
 much further? Can we not be certain 
 not, indeed, that the laws of the natural 
 and the spiritual world are the same, for 
 this the different nature of the elements 
 involved quite forbids but that, so surely 
 as the spiritual world is everywhere a world 
 of personal relations, if there are laws in 
 the spiritual world at all, they are laws of 
 personal relation the laws of a deepening 
 friendship. 
 
 And with this clear insight, thoroughly 
 carried out, comes a great gladdening sense 
 of getting at life's deepest secret; for in the 
 knowledge of life's fundamental laws there 
 is involved freedom and power of self- 
 control. One is left no longer to grope in 
 
 13
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the dark in his deepest life, religious or 
 ethical. He may know the laws and their 
 implied conditions, fulfil those conditions, 
 and count confidently on results. 
 
 Our problem becomes thus simply this: 
 What are the fundamental laws of the per- 
 sonal life? And that is to ask, What are 
 the laws of friendship, involved in the very 
 nature of man? Upon what basis must 
 friendship, human and divine, be estab- 
 lished ? Upon what conditions maintained ? 
 By what motives and means deepened and 
 strengthened ? This is our problem. 
 
 To exactly this problem, I suppose, 
 Christ devoted himself in all his teaching, 
 and most definitely and systematically in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, particularly in the 
 Beatitudes. The same theme engages 
 Paul's attention in that priceless bit of his 
 writing, the thirteenth of First Corinthians. 
 And modern psychology has here its plain 
 suggestions. No earnest study of our 
 theme could ignore either the biblical or 
 the psychological material, and the con- 
 ditions of this lectureship naturally call for 
 consideration of both elements.
 
 PART I 
 
 ESTABLISHING THE 
 FRIENDSHIP
 
 INTEGRITY, BREADTH, AND 
 DEPTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 B
 
 III. SIGNIFICANT PERSONALI- 
 TIES 
 
 [ND, first, what must be the 
 basis of any true friend- 
 ship, human or divine? 
 How is an ideal relation- 
 ship between two persons 
 to be established? What 
 are the prerequisites? 
 So far as I can see, the basis must be 
 fourfold: integrity, breadth, and depth of 
 personality; some deep community of in- 
 terests; mutual self-revelation and answer- 
 ing trust; and mutual self-giving. 
 
 The significance of a friendship must 
 depend, first of all, upon the significance 
 of the persons concerned. Neither can 
 give anything essential but himself. That 
 self, then, if one seeks a friendship of real 
 significance, ought to be the best possible. 
 And that requires initial integrity of spirit 
 and clear recognition of the duty of ^teady 
 culture and growth. There is, then, no' 
 way of avoiding the demand for some 
 breadth and depth and integrity of per- 
 sonality for any friendship that is to 
 deserve the name. The addition of two 
 ciphers gives no significant number. After 
 all, in strictness, it is worth remembering 
 
 19
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 that what we call the "relation" has no 
 existence of its own; it is only our way of 
 stating facts that hold only of the sole 
 realities in the case the personalities 
 themselves. If the friendship is to be sig- 
 nificant, the personalities themselves must 
 be significant, that is, have integrity, 
 breadth, and depth. Though this is not 
 to be asserted as if any of these qualities of 
 the self could either concretely exist or be 
 manifested or developed in isolation, apart 
 from personal relations. 
 
 Nor is this to be taken as justifying the 
 all too easy spirit of exclusiveness, or what 
 Bishop Brent calls the "weakness for inter- 
 esting people." For, on the one hand, the 
 man next you is interesting, if you have the 
 wit to sound him; and the great common 
 qualities of men are, after all, the most 
 essential, and the most capable of continu- 
 ous culture and growth. The veins of our 
 private idiosyncracies are both less precious 
 and are sooner worked out. The deepest 
 culture is never the culture of the schools. 
 And, on the other hand, so far as our indi- 
 vidualities are more permanent and signifi- 
 cant, we need the supplement and spur of 
 one another's individualities. And we may 
 20
 
 SIGNIFICANT PERSONALITIES 
 
 not safely spare "one of these least." It 
 is more than probable that our little exclu- 
 sive coterie, of which we are so proud, 
 does not contain all we need. It is not, 
 then, in any exclusive spirit that one must 
 make the first prerequisite of a worthy 
 friendship, integrity, breadth, and depth 
 of personality. 
 
 21
 
 IV. THE PURPOSE TO BE A TRUE 
 FRIEND 
 
 For, first of all, I am afraid it needs to 
 be said, in order to a friendship worthy 
 the name, there must be vital integrity of 
 spirit, the loving purpose itself, the simple 
 intention in this new relation to be a good 
 friend. Where this is lacking, we may 
 call the relation by what name we will, 
 there exists only a thinly veneered selfish- 
 ness. How easily men and women talk 
 of love, where there is no single vestige of 
 it! How perpetually love's holy name is 
 blasphemed, while its praises are sung ! 
 
 And yet, the capacity for love is deep- 
 laid in the very nature of man. 1 In body 
 and mind he is made for personal associa- 
 tion, and he is a creature baffled of his end 
 until he comes into unselfish friendships. 
 Even the body of man bears witness here. 
 Its long infancy, its peculiarly revealing 
 countenance, its capacity for work that ex- 
 presses man's purposes, and its possibilities 
 for speech, all show powers of self-mani- 
 festation, and so of association, far beyond 
 the brutes. Let the inevitable self-defeat- 
 ing logic of a pure egoism alone indicate 
 how surely in mind, too, man is made for 
 
 1 Cf. King, Rational Living, pp. 228 ff., 246 ff. 
 22
 
 PURPOSE TO BE A TRUE FRIEND 
 
 personal association. And intention must 
 match capacity. It is, thus, laid upon man 
 by the inescapable logic of his own being 
 that he must bring to every personal rela- 
 tion the purpose to be true to it. 
 
 No friendship, then, is solidly based, in 
 which there is not present in each friend 
 that wholesome integrity of spirit that can- 
 not endure that performance should not fit 
 perception. Integrity demands that the 
 sense of the meaning of life should carry 
 with it the determination to live it out ; that 
 to every personal relation there should be 
 brought the steadfast purpose to be true 
 to one's own highest vision, and in that 
 light to be true to one's friend. "This," 
 Emerson says and he has no truer word 
 concerning friendship "this is the office 
 of a friend, to make us do what we can." 
 And my love, therefore, may be neither 
 selfish on my own part, nor sentimentally 
 short-sighted for my friend. For the man 
 who believes that only love is true life, 
 must know well that no true love fulfils 
 itself in cultivating selfishness in those 
 loved. 
 
 We may coddle and baby and weaken 
 our friends, as Miss Cobbe points out, in 
 
 23
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 our mistaken anxiety for them. Speaking 
 of the duty of wives, she says suggestively : 
 "The higher moral good of the husband 
 occupies most wives comparatively little; 
 and often a man who starts with a great 
 many lofty and disinterested aspirations 
 deteriorates, year by year, in a deplorable 
 manner under the influence of a sufficiently 
 well-meaning and personally conscientious 
 wife. If you ask, How can this be? the 
 answer is that, the wife's affection being of 
 a poor and short-sighted kind, she con- 
 stantly urges her husband to think of him- 
 self and his own interests rather than of 
 the persons and objects for which he was 
 ready to sacrifice himself. 'Do not go on 
 that charitable errand to-day: you have 
 caught a cold. It will answer as well to- 
 morrow.' 'Do not invite that dull old 
 friend.' 'Do not join that tiresome com- 
 mittee.' 'Pray take a long holiday.' 'By 
 all means, buy yourself a new hunter.' 'Do 
 refrain from confessing your unorthodox 
 opinions.' This kind of thing, dropped 
 every day like the lump of sugar into the 
 breakfast cup of tea, in the end produces 
 a real constitutional change in the man's 
 mind. He begins to think himself, first, 
 24
 
 PURPOSE TO BE A TRUE FRIEND 
 
 somewhat of a hero when he goes against 
 such sweet counsel, and then a Quixote, 
 and then a fool. And a curious reciprocity 
 is also established. The husband cannot 
 do less than return the wife's kindness by 
 begging her not to distress and tire herself 
 by performing any duty which costs a little 
 self-sacrifice ; and she again returns the 
 compliment, and so on and so on, till they 
 nurse each other into complete selfishness. 
 I am sure that many of my audience must 
 have seen this exemplified. But if, on the 
 other hand, the wife from the first cherishes 
 every spark of generous feeling or noble 
 and disinterested ambition in her husband, 
 and he, in his turn, encourages her in every 
 womanly charity and good deed, how they 
 will act and react on each other month 
 after month and year after year, each 
 growing nobler, and loving more nobly, 
 and being more worthy to be loved, till 
 their sacred and blessed union brings them 
 together to the very gates of heaven! 
 That is what marriage ought to be, what 
 it is to a few choice and most happy 
 couples, and what it might be to all." 1 
 
 Love has the double duty of promoting 
 
 1 Duties of Women, pp. 121-123. 
 
 25
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 character and promoting happiness. And 
 Kant reminds us that, while we are in 
 reality primarily responsible for our own 
 character and for the other's happiness, 
 we are quite too prone to reverse this re- 
 lation and regard ourselves as primarily 
 responsible for our own happiness and 
 our friend's character. One need not deny 
 this observation of Kant's; still, if love is 
 the chief source of both character and 
 happiness, the two duties finally lie inevit- 
 ably together; and we shall seek in vain 
 any solid and permanent happiness, either 
 for ourselves or others, apart from unself- 
 ish love. We reason badly, therefore, 
 when, in the case of ourselves or our chil- 
 dren, we think of rewarding unselfish serv- 
 ice with a spell of selfishness. Doubtless 
 there are many kinds of happiness, and the 
 Father rejoices in our every rightful joy; 
 but he would not have us and we would 
 not have our friends satisfied with things 
 and sensations, instead of persons and 
 friendships. 
 
 We are, therefore, to "provoke to love," 
 
 to make our friends "do what they can," 
 
 not to minister continually to the lower 
 
 side. And no friendship can grow in sig- 
 
 26
 
 PURPOSE TO BE A TRUE FRIEND 
 
 nificance and satisfaction where this is 
 not true. The proverb that the way to a 
 man's heart is through his stomach, can be 
 easily overworked; and the unconscious 
 irony of the old-fashioned praise of a man 
 as u a good provider" is a rather bitter 
 reflection on the greatness of his lacks. 
 Set it over against Peter's fine conception 
 of husband and wife, as "joint-heirs of the 
 grace of life." There must be lightning 
 in every true love; like God himself, it is 
 a "consuming fire" that burns up the dross 
 in the one loved. The deepest laid stone 
 in an enduring friendship must be this pur- 
 pose to love truly, to be the friend one 
 ought to be, to make the friendship of such 
 a kind that it shall tend to bring out the 
 absolute best in each, to make it easier for 
 each to believe in truth, in God, in the 
 spiritual world. Even so high is the test 
 of friendship. 
 
 And all this has its counterpart in our 
 relation to God. 
 
 Upon our part, any right relation to God 
 requires from the outset this integrity of 
 spirit honest, faithful intention to be true 
 to the divine friendship, to be faithful to 
 our best vision of its meaning the single- 
 
 27
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 ness of eye of which Christ speaks. And 
 this carries with it the persistent purpose 
 to make supreme this really supreme rela- 
 tion of life. Only so shall we be treating 
 it according to its significance. To bring 
 to the friendship with God, thus, this ini- 
 tial integrity of spirit, involves Christ's 
 demand to make the relation to God abso- 
 lutely supreme and dominant. And this 
 affects inevitably every other relation of 
 life. For just as I cannot keep wholly sat- 
 isfying and unclouded my personal relation 
 to any noble friend, while I am, in other 
 relations, perpetually falling below what I 
 know my friend's ideal for me is; so, still 
 more, does any unclouded relation to God 
 call for a faithful and reverent fulfilment 
 of every other personal relation. So 
 Christ urges leaving the gift at the altar, 
 to be first reconciled to one's brother. 
 
 Upon God's part, this primary condi- 
 tion of a true friendship will explain much 
 in his dealing with us. As he wishes that 
 we should call out the best in others, so he 
 will not coddle us, but will be a "faithful 
 Creator" in seeking to bring us to our 
 highest possibilities. His "consuming fire" 
 is an evidence, not a denial, of his love. 
 28
 
 PURPOSE TO BE A TRUE FRIEND 
 
 He is seeking to bring out in us the image 
 of his Son. He would not be a faithful 
 friend else. Our complaints are often com- 
 plaints of the very faithfulness of God. 
 
 In all this, too, the inevitable limitations 
 of the human drive us to the divine. No 
 human friendship can quite bring the 
 needed insight and fidelity of the perfect 
 love. Only God sees our full need; only 
 God can hold us to it. There is no short- 
 sightedness or weakness in him. Here, too, 
 the soul is made for God, and he only can 
 fill it.
 
 V. BREADTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 For a significant friendship, besides in- 
 tegrity of spirit, there must be breadth of 
 personality. Man is a many-sided crea- 
 ture marked off from the animal world, 
 for one thing, by the greater multitude of 
 his instincts, and the multiplicity of his 
 esthetic and practical interests. 1 This is 
 true of man as man. It is both a psycho- 
 logical and a philosophical commonplace, 
 but its suggestion for friendship is all too 
 little heeded. Any refusal by a man to 
 recognize this broad complexity of his life 
 must narrow every personal relation. For 
 the simple fact is, that the man who means 
 to bring a large, a sane, a free, or an influ- 
 ential personality to his friend, must have 
 breadth of interests; for every one of these 
 qualities depends on such a wide range of 
 interests. And one must wish the same 
 thing for his friend as well. There must 
 be room for the most varied inter-play of 
 mind on mind, if a friendship is to be per- 
 sistently interesting and stimulating. 
 
 To secure such a store of permanent 
 and valuable interests has been truly called 
 one of the main aims of education; it is, 
 not less, one of the largest natural factors 
 
 *Cf. James, Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 343, 441. 
 30
 
 BREADTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 in a rewarding friendship. The man, 
 therefore, who means to be all a friend 
 should be, will recognize the plain duty of 
 steady growth. And many friendships 
 break down at just this point. There has 
 been no earnest effort to retain an interest- 
 ing personality. One needs seriously to 
 ask himself: Am I here making it certain 
 that I deserve this high friendship? For 
 if friendships are to abide, there must be 
 some solid basis for an abiding interest; 
 and few of us have such native gifts as can 
 warrant any neglect of steady culture in 
 some form, that shall insure a breadth of 
 personality that may count in friendship. 
 And then we are to make it count. 
 Y> Much depends upon habit at this point, 
 too. Our most intimate relationships may 
 become almost dumb, simply because we 
 have formed the habit of confining the ex- 
 pression of our love here to one or two 
 lines, and do not share with those closest 
 to us large sections of our life. Even a 
 true marriage cannot well bear such a 
 strain. If a high friendship is to transcend 
 and to outlast the physical basis of mar- 
 riage, it must build, in no small degree, on 
 breadth of personality, and upon a per- 
 
 31
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 sistent sharing of the full extent of one's 
 interests with the other^/-And the principle 
 needs application as well in other family 
 relations, especially in relation to children. 
 And even the most ideal interests, it 
 should be noticed, lose by lack of breadth 
 of vision, by any attempted isolation in the 
 spirit of exclusiveness. Our highest aims, 
 including those of friendship, gain by wide 
 and varied application. Only so can they 
 be significant and dominant in the whole 
 life. High intention is not enough. If we 
 wish, therefore, the highest in us greatly to 
 count in our friendship with another, we 
 may not ignore the breadth either of his na- 
 ture or of our own ; and we must see that no 
 single finite relationship, however precious, 
 can call us out on every side. And that 
 will mean at once that a narrow and selfish 
 jealousy, that would limit my friend to his 
 sole relationship to me, is the blindest folly 
 for us both. Certain relations, of course, 
 have a unique quality that cannot be shared 
 without spoiling them. But that does not 
 at all shut out other friendships of another 
 kind. Even in the most intimate love, 
 therefore, there is need of the frankest 
 32
 
 BREADTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 recognition of other relationships, if it is 
 itself to mean most and be at its best. 
 
 So Lotze says: "This need of others' 
 recognition runs through our whole life; 
 even the most modest love does not wish 
 to hide its joy forever. He who has a 
 friend desires to show his pride in him be- 
 fore the world, and the praise which we 
 receive from another does not please us 
 so much as the consciousness of being 
 honored by it in the presence of some third 
 person." "The drama of life is too tame 
 when it is played by only two persons ; they 
 want at least the chorus to keep them in 
 mind of the inexhaustible fulness of human 
 interests of which only a small portion can 
 be brought into consciousness by their own 
 relations to one another." 1 
 
 In our relation to God, too, this demand 
 for breadth of personality has its manifest 
 and needed applications. 
 
 God's dealing with us does not ignore 
 this many-sidedness of our nature. That 
 many-sided nature, as well as the richly 
 varied environment in the midst of which 
 we are placed, is his own gift. It cannot 
 be his desire to ignore all this in his rela- 
 
 1 Lotze, The Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 92. 
 
 c 33
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 tion to us. Rather such facts must mean 
 that he would have us seek him, not in any 
 single, exclusive way, however great and 
 supreme that may be, but hold ourselves 
 open to him along every avenue of our be- 
 ing, finding him in all, permeating all life 
 and all reality with this sense of our re- 
 lationship to him. So Christ finds God 
 everywhere, in nature, and in daily life, as 
 well as in prayer. The religious life too 
 often lacks this largeness and comprehen- 
 siveness of grasp, and seems, even to the 
 man himself, to concern only a little section 
 of his life. One of the most hopeful 
 signs of our time is the recognition of the 
 need of greater breadth of interest in the 
 religious life. Practically, too, God wishes 
 to bring us out on every side; and just here 
 lies the reason for the "manifold tempta- 
 tions," that we may be "perfect and entire, 
 lacking in nothing." 
 
 And it is not only the breadth of our 
 own natures and of our environment which 
 calls for largeness in the religious life, but 
 the first thought of the infinite resources of 
 the life of God. If we are to come to any 
 adequate knowledge of such a God, we 
 need every side of his manifold revelation 
 34
 
 BREADTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 of himself. Great and continuous growth 
 is possible to us here, especially in a deep- 
 ening knowledge of God in Christ. We 
 have probably only begun to fathom 
 Christ's meaning. And to this greatness 
 of the divine nature we may turn from all 
 the lacks of finite friends. 
 
 God's relation to us, also, it should be 
 noticed, as against much earlier feeling, is 
 never a narrowly and selfishly jealous one. 
 He cannot do otherwise than demand that 
 the relation to him should be the supreme 
 and dominant relation; not because he 
 wishes to exclude other relations on the 
 contrary, it is the faithful loving fulfilment 
 of these relations that he specially seeks 
 from us; but, just because his relation to 
 us is so fundamental a one, the very health 
 of every other relation requires that the 
 relation to God should be made supreme. 
 This is to give it only its true and inevitable 
 place. And any human relation only suf- 
 fers and becomes a monstrosity when it 
 would usurp the place of the relation to 
 God. It does not take on larger meaning 
 by such an attempt; it loses meaning, for 
 it puts every relation of life out of true 
 adjustment. 
 
 35
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 But with this recognition of the suprem- 
 acy of the relation to God, every true 
 human love is a help, not a hindrance, in 
 our strictly religious life. Indeed, every 
 such relation is a part of the divine allot- 
 ment, and part of the divine training. 
 The human and the divine relations con- 
 stantly interplay to the further exalting of 
 both. God is jealous of no true love; he 
 rather rejoices in it.
 
 VI. DEPTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 And there must be depth of personal- 
 ity, some sense of the deep and steadily 
 deepening significance of life, through 
 which alone the golden rule grows with 
 the years. For where one's own self has 
 revealed depths unplumbed, and one's own 
 demands upon life have continuously in- 
 creased, there the recognized debt to the 
 other has grown correspondingly. Char- 
 acter can else hardly gain profoundness 
 at all. 
 
 "One part of our conscience," Lotze 
 says, "that which speaks of our reciprocal 
 duties, is soon satisfied, and this the more 
 easily in proportion as the claims on life 
 and enjoyment of all concerned are the less. 
 But that other part of our conscience which 
 enjoins upon us to make very large claims 
 upon existence, can only raise its voice in 
 proportion as insight into the destiny of 
 man and his place in nature increases. 
 This nobler morality is never attained 
 without the most active cooperation of the 
 intellect, indeed never wholly without the 
 cooperation of scientific reflection. Yet 
 indeed never by these alone ; the experience 
 of life itself is indispensable." 1 Here 
 
 1 Lotze, The Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 712. 
 
 37
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 breadth and depth of personality are closely 
 interwoven. The deeper significance of 
 life can only come out through breadth of 
 experience and training. And Lotze's 
 argument here shows impressively how 
 high friendship requires growing lives. 
 
 This sense of the meaning of life has 
 no place for that indifferent, falsely toler- 
 ant folly that puts all values on a dead 
 level that knows no high resolves, no 
 burning enthusiasms, no hot indignations. 
 It is not without insight that Dante makes 
 both heaven and hell reject those who 
 know no decisive choices, who are "neither 
 for God nor for his enemies." And 
 nothing makes more impossible a genuinely 
 significant friendship than the lackadaisical 
 indifference that finds no heights and 
 depths anywhere, that returns the same 
 response of spirit to each appeal, trivial or 
 exalted. One can comprehend the Duke's 
 impatience, though it be harsh, in Brown- 
 ing's My Last Duchess: 
 
 "She had 
 
 A heart how shall I say? too soon made glad, 
 Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere, 
 Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast, 
 
 38
 
 DEPTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 She rode with round the terrace all and each 
 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
 Or blush, at least." 
 
 Browning's Duchess shows that this 
 demand for depth of personality means 
 something more and other than breadth of 
 interest. It is not enough that my friend 
 should be interested in many things. His 
 breadth must be a discriminating breadth. 
 He must see how deeply significant certain 
 interests are. He must have power of 
 selection and of emphasis. He must see 
 things in their true proportions and care 
 greatly for the great things, and take on 
 greatly great purposes. He must have 
 waked up to the deep meaning of human 
 life. Otherwise, however wide his interest, 
 he remains shallow and fickle, unable to 
 satisfy me in my deepest needs. And this 
 that I demand from my friend he must 
 demand from me in like manner. No 
 high friendship is possible on lower terms. 
 It is here that the sometimes broadly edu- 
 cated "man of the world" often so 
 grievously fails. It is simply not in him to 
 
 39
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 give a deep response in friendship. He 
 believes in nothing very much, not much 
 in men, not much in friendship. 
 
 Now, it is precisely at this point above 
 all that religion has its great contribution 
 to make. The great fundamental convic- 
 tions that give undying meaning to life be- 
 long to it. It feels the greatness of man 
 and of his destiny a destiny that means 
 no less than that in endless development 
 one may share the life of God himself. 
 The very possibility of friendship with 
 God transfigures life. The religious con- 
 victions, thus, tend inevitably to deepen 
 every human friendship, to make it vastly 
 more significant. And it is difficult to see 
 how, apart from these great religious con- 
 victions, a friendship can come to its best. 
 If I cannot believe that my friend has with- 
 in him "the power of the endless life," and 
 that he is by very nature a child of God, of 
 priceless value in the sight of God, the 
 meaning of my friendship is vastly changed. 
 In the unconscious, instinctive response of 
 my spirit to his spirit, I may forget for a 
 moment the transitoriness and utter result- 
 lessness of our relations each to the other, 
 but the dark fact remains to embitter all 
 40
 
 DEPTH OF PERSONALITY 
 
 our association. Human friendship can 
 least of all spare the hopes of religion. 
 The human cries out irresistibly for the 
 support of the divine. 
 
 In the friendship with God, too, the 
 recognition of the need of depth of per- 
 sonality is paramount. Indeed, it might 
 almost be said to be the very essence of 
 religion that it sees and feels the depth and 
 meaning of life. God's demand upon us, 
 as ours upon one another, is that we re- 
 spond with some depth of conviction and 
 purpose, seeing life's high meaning as he 
 sees it, making the supreme things truly 
 supreme. The "shallow ground" men, to 
 Jesus' thought, "have no root in them- 
 selves." And against this essential friv- 
 olousness of purpose, God and every 
 true friend must protest. The demand is 
 for the note of Christ for that basic 
 earnestness of spirit that, while it is neither 
 narrow nor hysterical, cannot be essentially 
 frivolous. And every high human friend- 
 ship, I suppose, in its own proportion, re- 
 quires something very like this. Here too, 
 thus, the conditions of the human and of 
 the divine friendship are quite akin. There 
 must be depth of personality. 
 
 41
 
 VII. THE DUTY OF GROWTH 
 
 When we survey, now, this initial de- 
 mand of every worthy friendship for in- 
 tegrity, breadth, and depth of personality, 
 we cannot fail to see that at every point it 
 carries with it the imperative duty of 
 growth. There may be in any relation a 
 short-sighted self-sacrifice that defeats it- 
 self. One fears sometimes that mothers, 
 for example, so give themselves to their 
 children as to forbid all growth for them- 
 selves; and that only means, that the time 
 hastens on apace when, with the growth of 
 the children, the mothers will not have the 
 self to give that then is needed. If you 
 would not cut yourself off from later serv- 
 ice of your friend, you must grow with his 
 growth. So Jowett wrote to Stanley: "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." 1 
 
 And in our relation to God, the same 
 need is not less imperative. For God him- 
 
 1 Quoted by Black, Friendship, p. 152. 
 4 2
 
 THE DUTY OF GROWTH 
 
 self and the relation to him cannot steadily 
 grow to mean more to us without our own 
 growth. It is not enough that one should 
 begin his religious life with an initial right 
 purpose, and maintain that. His purpose 
 itself should grow on him in breadth and 
 depth and delicacy of application. 1 Our 
 religious life greatly needs the use of a 
 spiritual imagination, consummate skill, 
 and persistent ambition. We are all too 
 ready to let it slip into meaning only a kind 
 of routine keeping up of two or three 
 things. And yet, Christ's conception is 
 always that that to which he calls is life, 
 abundant life, even "a hundredfold now 
 in this time." "We are ambitious" Paul 
 says, "to be well-pleasing unto him." We 
 need to be sure that our religious lives are 
 constantly enriching, reaching out to per- 
 meate the world for us. 
 
 1 Cf. King, Rational Living, pp. 118-120. 
 
 .43
 
 DEEP COMMUNITY OF INTER- 
 ESTS
 
 VIII. COMMUNITY IN LARGE 
 NOT SMALL INTERESTS 
 
 Into this solid basis underlying every 
 friendship worthy the name, there must 
 enter also some deep community of inter- 
 ests. Let friendship, Emerson says, "be 
 an alliance of two large, formidable 
 natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, 
 before yet they recognize the deep identity 
 which beneath these disparities, unites 
 them." The recognition of identity natur- 
 ally follows the sense of the significance of 
 the persons concerned. And that deep 
 identity there must be, if the friendship is 
 to be of the highest. 
 
 There need not be likeness, truly, 
 whether of disposition, temperament, or 
 education. One can hardly doubt that 
 Aristotle demanded too much at this point. 
 Indeed, the most genuine unity must be of 
 that organic kind that is possible only 
 where differences exist, and are gladly 
 recognized and welcomed. 
 
 Nor need the community be in lesser 
 matters of whims or fancies, or even 
 tastes or occupations. Much is often made 
 of these likenesses; but it is quite probable 
 that the friendship may be finally more 
 
 47
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 satisfying and more fruitful, where there 
 are differences in all these respects. 
 
 But yet, deep down under all these more 
 superficial likenesses or differences, there 
 must be community in the great funda- 
 mental moral and spiritual ideals and pur- 
 poses of life, if there is not to be tragic 
 failure in the friendship. No friendship 
 is so poverty stricken, so fatally defective, 
 as that in which there is no sympathy in 
 the highest moments. This, undoubtedly, 
 is Paul's thought in his exhortation to the 
 Corinthians to "be not unequally yoked to- 
 gether with unbelievers." He is not seek- 
 ing, as seems sometimes thought, to put 
 some narrowing limit upon their lives, 
 shutting them out from rich experiences. 
 Rather, it is as though he said, I would 
 save you, if I might, from the bitterness of 
 finding yourselves bound up in the most 
 intimate relations of life with those who 
 can have no sympathy with you in your 
 highest aims and aspirations. 
 
 One may well pray to be saved from 
 such close and intimate relation with those 
 who can never share his best, upon whom 
 he must turn his back when he would be 
 absolutely true to his best vision. There 
 48
 
 COMMUNITY IN LARGE INTERESTS 
 
 is small promise surely of a satisfying love, 
 where each despises the ideals of the other. 
 Has life any direr tragedy than this deep 
 sundering of souls closely bound together? 
 
 49
 
 IX. ABIDING RELATIONS WITH 
 MEN AND GOD 
 
 Men wonder if they shall recognize their 
 friends in heaven. They need hardly 
 wonder. Are the ties that bind them of 
 the eternal kind? That is the real ques- 
 tion. What Trumbull says of marriage 
 holds of every intimate personal relation: 
 "Those who are united in marriage ought 
 to be united also in friendship [a purely 
 unselfish love] ; but unless marriage in- 
 cludes this union of souls, marriage must 
 end with the life that is." If one seeks 
 personal relations that will abide, that is 
 to say, the relation itself must have eternal 
 quality; it must be built upon community 
 in interests and ideals that are themselves 
 enduring. 
 
 There can be, thus, no permanent friend- 
 ship without deep community of interests. 
 True friends must be able to say to each 
 other, "I love what thou West, and hate 
 what thou hatest. The interests which are 
 supreme for thee shall be supreme for me. 
 And these supreme interests may bind us 
 ever, for they are eternal." 
 
 One of the alluring promises of the 
 future is that, in the on-going of the king- 
 dom of God, as men come more and more 
 50
 
 to take on the largest interests and the 
 great purposes and causes, this deep com- 
 munity of interests between friends will 
 become more possible for all, and in in- 
 creasing degree. They will truly and fully 
 share each other's permanent, dominant 
 interests. 
 
 Now, it is exactly this deep identity in 
 commanding interests that the Heavenly 
 Father seeks with his child. No possible 
 sentiments or experiences may take its 
 place. The great aims of the man must 
 agree with the great aims of God, if there 
 is to be any harmonious relation between 
 them. God cannot give up his righteous 
 and loving purposes for all men; the man 
 must come to share them. The interests of 
 God's kingdom must become the man's 
 really dominating interests. For any close 
 and satisfying and abiding relation with 
 God, as with men, one must and one may 
 say: "The interests which are supreme for 
 Thee shall be supreme for me." What 
 else but this is the very keynote of the 
 prayer that Jesus meant should character- 
 ize his disciples : "Thy kingdom come, thy 
 will be done"? 
 
 And it is no hard condition. Rather it 
 
 51
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 is the zest and glory of life that it is given 
 us thus intelligently and voluntarily to be 
 co-workers with God in his marvelous 
 plans. What is the aim of the whole new 
 science of sociology, but to enable us thus 
 to work intelligently and effectively into 
 the plan of God? And just as in the 
 human friendship, the beauty and the joy 
 of the divine friendship cannot fully come 
 out except in this glad identity of interests. 
 For the prayer, "Thy will be done," is not 
 some fearful spell certain to bring evil; it 
 is the prayer, rather, that the best that the 
 love and the wisdom of the infinite Father 
 can devise may be done in and for me, and 
 for all men. It is no prayer, therefore, to 
 shrink from, but to take on rejoicingly, 
 although like any true love, God's love will 
 not choose for us simply the immediately 
 easiest.
 
 MUTUAL SELF-MANIFESTATION 
 AND ANSWERING TRUST
 
 X. MUTUAL SELF-MANIFESTA- 
 TION 
 
 If for any true friendship there must 
 be in the friends themselves integrity, 
 breadth, and depth of personality, and 
 some deep community of interests; be- 
 tween them there must be, even more man- 
 ifestly, honest mutual self-revelation and 
 answering trust, and mutual self-giving. 
 These are equally basic with the other 
 qualities. How can there be any friend- 
 ship without them? 
 
 Certainly there must be honest mutual 
 self-revelation and answering trust. No 
 acquaintance is possible at all without real 
 mutual self-disclosure. Otherwise the re- 
 lation is only an imaginary one, and there 
 is no true ground for trust. The self- 
 revelation may take place in most diverse 
 manners, by every mode of manifestation, 
 subtle or outspoken, but take place it must, 
 or the personalities will remain hidden from 
 each other, and no genuine acquaintance 
 result. 
 
 Honest, of course, the revelation must 
 be; how should it be revelation else? 
 Emerson makes truth one of the two 
 sovereign elements in friendship; and he 
 even defines a friend as "a person with 
 
 55
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 whom I may be sincere." "Before him I 
 may think aloud." Pretense hurts every- 
 where. And essential falseness makes 
 friendship simply impossible. 
 
 I suppose the desire to avoid every 
 possible pretense is the key to the Friends' 
 meeting, with their sitting in silence. It 
 wishes no manifestation that is not plainly 
 from God, and is not a kind of inevitable 
 revelation of the inner life of the speaker. 
 Reality is the supreme end sought. The 
 method has its own dangers, but the goal 
 is a great one. 
 
 Certainly we cannot build on pretense in 
 any relation. If fundamental truth is 
 lacking, one has neither an honest self to 
 give, nor can he bear honest witness, either, 
 concerning those values that he conceives 
 himself most to prize. He is certain, there- 
 fore, to fail in the two greatest services 
 that any man can render another. 
 
 Not less manifestly must the self-revela- 
 tion be mutual, if the relation is not to be 
 altogether defective. The spirit of faith- 
 ful, unselfish love on the part of one may 
 be maintained, no doubt, though the other 
 quite fail; but the friendship as a mu- 
 tual relation breaks down. For friendship 
 56
 
 MUTUAL SELF-MANIFESTATION 
 
 involves the sharing of selves. And one 
 of the greatest aspects, certainly, of love 
 is "joy in personal life." Each friend 
 must be able to give that joy and to enter 
 into it. 
 
 And the intimacy of the friendship de- 
 pends on the extent of the mutual self- 
 revelation. One can almost classify his 
 friendships by this test alone. There are 
 many with whom one hardly gets farther 
 than to talk about the weather; there is 
 practically no revelation of the personality, 
 except a casual good will. And there are 
 all gradations of acquaintance, from this 
 weather degree to the completest revela- 
 tion that it is possible for one soul to make 
 to another in the closest relations of life. 
 
 The many-sidedness of some person- 
 alities is such that they probably reveal 
 themselves but very partially in any one 
 relation. The full meaning of such a life 
 can be disclosed only as the self-revelations 
 in many different relations are made to 
 supplement each other. And it is one of 
 the delightful surprises of the thought- 
 ful and sympathetic to find unlooked-for 
 depths even in persons thought quite com- 
 monplace. Even the human spirit can 
 
 57
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 hardly be plumbed with a button and a 
 string. The phenomena of multiple per- 
 sonality and of subliminal consciousness, 
 and even of the characteristics of many of 
 our dreams, may well suggest the possibil- 
 ity of many unplumbed depths in us all. 
 And a creature like man, capable of endless 
 development, can hardly be essentially 
 shallow. Where this seems to be the case, 
 we have probably simply not yet found the 
 key to the hidden treasures. 
 
 Even self-knowledge is but a gradually 
 growing thing; and friendship is one of its 
 chiefest helps. A mind as great even as 
 Leibnitz' seemed always to need the provo- 
 cation of another mind to give out its best. 
 Goethe and Schiller consciously helped 
 each other not only to better work, but not 
 less to completer self-understanding, to 
 which the best work must go back. Every 
 true teacher knows how much he owes here 
 to his pupils. "As in water face answereth 
 to face, so in the heart man answers to 
 man." 
 
 Matthew Arnold has pointed out, 
 thus, how high a service friendship may 
 render, in revealing our deepest selves to 
 ourselves. 
 58
 
 MUTUAL SELF-MANIFESTATION 
 
 "Only but this is rare 
 
 When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 
 When, jaded with the rush and glare 
 
 Of the interminable hours, 
 Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, 
 When our world-deafened ear 
 Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed, 
 A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again, 
 The eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain, 
 And what we mean, we say, and what we would, 
 
 we know ; 
 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow, 
 And hears the winding murmur, and he sees 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze." 
 
 59
 
 XL ANSWERING TRUST 
 
 And yet, even mutual self-revelation is 
 of no avail for friendship, without answer- 
 ing trust. Not trust without revelation, 
 but trust upon revelation. A true friend- 
 ship has no need to make terms. Where 
 need is felt for many preliminary settle- 
 ments, there it is demonstrated that the 
 basis for a true friendship does not yet 
 exist. "Perfect love casteth out fear." 
 "Men can do nothing with each other 
 without a certain minimum of trust," an- 
 other has said. Even civilization goes 
 forward only as trust deepens. And one 
 may be sure that unless this trust becomes 
 deep and strong, no really worthy friend- 
 ship can be possible. 
 
 Men pride themselves so much on never 
 being deceived by any meanness of men, 
 that they are likely quite to forget the 
 beauty and the priceless value of the unsus- 
 picious spirit. The suspicious and cynical 
 may discover all the pettiness of men; but 
 the nobleness of men is quite hidden from 
 them. Suspicion breeds the realization of 
 its own fears. And trust calls out the very 
 qualities in which it believes, and can alone 
 accomplish the greatest aims with men. 
 We probably follow Christ less closely in 
 60
 
 ANSWERING TRUST 
 
 his matchless faith in men, even, than in 
 his faith in God. "Faith In man is essen- 
 tial to faith in God." "The great miracle 
 of friendship with its infinite wonder and 
 beauty may be denied to us, and yet we 
 may believe in it. To believe that it is 
 possible is enough, even though in its 
 superbest form it has never come to us. To 
 possess it, is to have one of the world's 
 sweetest gifts." 1 
 
 The trust that underlies a worthy friend- 
 ship must be twofold trust in the charac- 
 ter and trust in the love of one's friend. 
 A true friend is no longer "on probation." 
 You can trust him where you cannot see. 
 He does not need to give account of all his 
 goings, or explain his every mood. You 
 believe in him in his character and in his 
 love, and you rest in that in comfort and 
 peace. Where such trust is lacking, the 
 relation is only one of unrest and torment, 
 for "fear hath torment." 
 
 And revelation and trust deepen each 
 other. They grow continually together. 
 
 1 Black, Friendship, pp. 24, 25. 
 
 6l
 
 XII. REVELATION AND TRUST 
 IN RELATION TO GOD 
 
 Now, we often think of revelation and 
 trust as peculiarly religious terms. But 
 this is so far from being true that, as we 
 have seen, there is no single worthy human 
 relation into which we enter that is not 
 fundamentally built on these two elements 
 revelation and trust; and every step into 
 still better relations is a step taken by 
 virtue of a fuller revelation and an answer- 
 ing fuller trust. 
 
 Our relation to God is not different. 
 God's self-revelation calls out our trust. 
 He asks no faith on other terms. A faith 
 not based on revelation of the person to be 
 trusted is presumption, not faith. Because 
 God's personal self-revealing in Christ is 
 sufficient to call out absolute trust, Christ 
 becomes for us inevitably the supreme 
 person of history. With full moral self- 
 consciousness, we can commit ourselves to 
 a God so revealed without reserve. And 
 we turn away from the one sure road to a 
 real relation to the real God, when we 
 neglect his great crowning self-revelation 
 in Christ. A significant personal relation 
 must be built upon personal revelation. 
 
 And upon our side, while doubtless God 
 62
 
 IN RELATION TO GOD 
 
 does not need information concerning us, 
 and in that sense there can be no revelation 
 of ourselves to God, still his deep rever- 
 ence everywhere for the person of his 
 children, his unbroken refusal anywhere to 
 override either their freedom or their per- 
 sonality, makes it certain that he will await 
 that deepest self-manifestation which voices 
 our consent to him. We shall hardly un- 
 derstand or possess our own will while it 
 remains quite unexpressed. This expres- 
 sion is needed for our own sakes, thus. 
 That measure, therefore, of self-manifesta- 
 tion, at least, which is involved in our full 
 consent, is necessary even in our relation 
 to God. 
 
 Prayer is not information for God, 
 doubtless; but prayer is our opening the 
 door to his knocking at the various recesses 
 of our life real communion of spirit with 
 spirit. There is no added knowledge for 
 God. But now he knows and he comes into 
 our inmost life, by our own full consent. 
 The logic of Christ is not, Your Father 
 doth not know what ye have need of, there- 
 fore pray that he may know a helpless 
 God; nor yet the over-wise counsel of 
 many moderns God knows, therefore do 
 
 63
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 not pray; but rather, Your Father know- 
 eth, therefore you may pray. You may 
 review fearlessly all your life and need in 
 his presence, and commune with him con- 
 cerning it. 
 
 And in this light it becomes no strange 
 thing that Christianity should be preemi- 
 nently a religion of faith. For, in the first 
 place, we are concerned here with the 
 greatest of all self-revelations of the great- 
 est personality. Its only answer must be 
 an unmatched trust. And, in the second 
 place, while trust is essential in any friend- 
 ship, it is demanded in unique degree in 
 relation to God. For, if we are to have 
 any freely developing moral life of our 
 own, there must not be exerted upon us the 
 overpowering pressure of an inescapable 
 God. For our very life's sake, therefore, 
 God's relation to us must be unobtrusive. 
 We need "the invisible God." And our 
 relation to him, therefore, must be one of 
 faith. "We walk by faith not by sight." 
 
 Nor is it true that Christ asks alone that 
 we should trust God; God trusts us in 
 matchless degree. It is the very mark of 
 the religion of the New Testament that it 
 is not a religion of rules and prescriptions. 
 64
 
 IN RELATION TO GOD 
 
 The appeal of Christ to his disciples leaves 
 all to their own sense of loyalty and love. 
 In effect he says, "I ask but one thing; do 
 only what loyal love for me suggests ; what 
 that shall be I leave to you to decide. I 
 trust you." It takes a high spirit to be 
 worthy of such trust. 
 
 The priceless interests of the Kingdom 
 he came to form, moreover, he commits to 
 the feeble hands of a little group of dis- 
 ciples, whose greatest fitness lay simply in 
 this that Christ trusted them. God calls 
 us into cooperation with himself. Trust 
 cannot be shown more strongly. 
 
 And in every hour of peculiar trial, of 
 experience we cannot fathom or even par- 
 tially understand, God trusts us. Just 
 there, where we cannot see at all, he gives 
 us in special degree opportunity to prove 
 our trust, and, like Job, to become for men 
 "Jehovah's Champion." "In the dark 
 night of faith, when every step has to be 
 taken in absolute dependence upon God, 
 and assurance that the vision was truth and 
 no lie" there God is showing his highest 
 trust in us. 1 God trusts us. Such experi- 
 ences are God's saying to us, "You do not 
 
 * Rendel Harris, Union with God, p. 109. 
 E 65
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 need that I should explain myself at every 
 point. I trust your trust in me." 
 
 And it is not merely true that the con- 
 ditions here of our relation to God are 
 precisely like those which hold in our best 
 friendships with men; and that we may 
 therefore know and use the laws so re- 
 vealed. It is also true that the inevitable 
 limitations in both revelation and trust in 
 the human relations drive us for full satis- 
 faction to the relation with God. 
 
 The experience of life makes it only too 
 plain that our capacity for self-disclosure, 
 in the first place, is greatly limited. The 
 inescapable isolation of the self grows upon 
 us. "The heart knoweth its own bitter- 
 ness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle 
 with its joy." Even to the nearest and 
 dearest we do reveal, we can reveal, but a 
 fraction of ourselves. Into the deepest 
 sources of either our joy or our sorrow, 
 our victory or our defeat, our good or our 
 evil, we cannot admit them, though we 
 would. 
 
 The very possibility, indeed, of a worth- 
 ful personality, that should make friend- 
 ship of value, depends on the carefully 
 guarded sanctity of the separate individu- 
 66
 
 IN RELATION TO GOD 
 
 ality with its own unique quality, its own 
 individual responsibility. In its deepest 
 depth how profound is the solitude of the 
 human soul, in the very midst of the com- 
 plexities of our social life, even in the 
 quietness of our closest intimacies! "This 
 rigid and necessary isolation of the human 
 heart, along with such a deep-rooted desire 
 for sympathy, is one of the most perplex- 
 ing paradoxes of our nature; and though 
 we know well that it is a fact, we are 
 constantly rediscovering it with a fresh 
 surprise." 1 
 
 And these facts simply mean that our 
 finite powers, both of self-disclosure and 
 of understanding of others, fail us, and 
 we cry out for an understanding of our- 
 selves by others that surpasses our power 
 to give, and for a personal revelation from 
 others that we can trust without reserve. 
 We are driven to God. We are brought 
 back again to Augustine's deep confession, 
 "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our 
 hearts are restless until they find rest in 
 Thee." 
 
 And both because of this limitation in 
 possible human revelation, and because of 
 
 1 Horton, The Expositor's Bible, Vol. Ill, p. 196. 
 
 6 7
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the limitations of these finite personalities, 
 even so far as we can understand them, 
 our deepest trust is baffled in the human 
 relations. "The childlike spirit," Herr- 
 mann says in a passage I have quoted often, 
 "can only arise within us when our experi- 
 ence is the same as a child's ; in other words, 
 when we meet with a personal life which 
 compels us to trust it without reserve. 
 Only the person of Jesus can arouse such 
 trust in a man who has awakened to moral 
 self-consciousness. If such a man surren- 
 ders himself to anything or anyone else, he 
 throws away not only his trust but him- 
 self." 1 
 
 In all this we are made for God. Our 
 claim on life is too great for the finite to 
 satisfy it. And with clear sense of our 
 own limitations as well as those of our 
 friends, we must say even to our dearest: 
 
 "Alas! I can but love thee. 
 
 May God bless thee, my beloved, may God bless thee ! 
 Can I love thee, my beloved, can I love thee? 
 
 And is this like love, to stand 
 
 With no help in my hand, 
 
 1 Herrmann, Communion of the Christian with God, 
 P- 97- 
 
 68
 
 IN RELATION TO GOD 
 
 When strong as death I fain would watch above thee? 
 
 My love-kiss can deny 
 
 No tears that fall beneath it: 
 
 Mine oath of love can swear thee 
 
 From no ill that comes near thee, 
 
 And thou diest while I breathe it, 
 
 And I 7 can but die! 
 May God love thee, my beloved, 
 
 May God love thee!" 
 
 6 9
 
 MUTUAL SELF-GIVING
 
 XIII. THE GIVING OF THE SELF 
 
 Once more, at the basis of every worthy 
 friendship there must be mutual self-giving. 
 It is the one law for every relation, human 
 or divine. Perhaps the best definition we 
 can give of love is simply this : the giving 
 of self. And if one starts from another 
 definition of love, as "joy in personal life," 
 he will as certainly reach the fundamental 
 need of mutual self-giving. We do not 
 enter fully into one another's personality 
 by any other route. To know about my 
 friend is not enough; even that he should 
 himself tell me does not suffice. Not 
 knowledge about my friend, but acquaint- 
 ance with him is the aim. I am not seek- 
 ing information simply, nor a certain kind 
 of treatment, still less the things of my 
 friend, but my friend himself; and unless 
 there is in his self-revelation that indefin- 
 able inner self-communication that desires 
 and purposes a kind of intermingling of 
 personalities, I am still on the outside, a 
 spectator only, not a participator, and 
 know myself to be such. And it is no 
 satisfaction of love that my friend not 
 wishing really to give himself should 
 be even unusually punctilious in infor- 
 mation and treatment and gifts. All 
 
 73
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 these for love are trash, without the self. 
 
 No doubt self-giving presupposes self- 
 revelation and trust. You cannot wholly 
 surrender where you do not trust. No 
 doubt, also, self-revelation in all its degrees 
 may be a true manifestation of self-giving, 
 and the answering trust at its best may be 
 such a self-giving on the other side. And 
 the common New Testament use of faith 
 is made to involve such self-commitment, 
 so that either term may be used indiffer- 
 ently. For only he truly trusts who is 
 willing to follow up his faith by self-com- 
 mitment. But at its center love is best 
 expressed by mutual self-giving; and this 
 involves all the rest the sharing of all our 
 best, withholding from the service of our 
 friend nothing that we may rightly give, 
 oneness of will, and not merely of knowl- 
 edge, and so essential community of in- 
 terests. 
 
 Here, then, even more than in revela- 
 tion and trust, the depth of the friendship 
 is measured by the completeness of the self- 
 giving; the worth of the friendship by the 
 richness of the self given. And no man 
 truly loves, who would not by persistent 
 culture, by steady submission to life's dis- 
 74
 
 GIVING OF THE SELF 
 
 cipline, and by continual growth, bring to 
 his friend a constantly enriching self. Nor 
 can any friendship deepen, where the 
 mutual self-giving does not go forward, 
 in ever new and larger sharing and serv- 
 ing; the best vision and faith and inspi- 
 ration and courage of each provoking in 
 the other his best. 
 
 And every man who has even partially 
 awakened to the meaning of a truly unself- 
 ish friendship certainly every true father, 
 however faulty knows that in all this de- 
 mand of the close relations of life for self- 
 giving, we have, in RitschPs words, "not 
 a weakening denial of self, but a strength- 
 ening affirmation." We dreamed of giving, 
 and lo! the bounds of life have been 
 pushed out for us, and all life enlarged. 
 We thought of losing life; we never found 
 life before. And so, in one way or another, 
 in the midst of the providential relations 
 of life, we seem almost to stumble as by 
 accident upon the sole riches of unselfish 
 love, that in our selfishness we could not 
 have insight enough to choose for its own 
 sake. And then we know what a friend, 
 what love, means. And we are ready to 
 say with Rendel Harris, "I never ask God, 
 
 75 1
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 or hardly ever, for outward things; I do 
 not know that I ever asked Him for glory 
 or honour, and I hope I never shall; and 
 I very seldom ask Him for material things 
 apart from the kingdom; but I sometimes 
 say things like this, that if God will give 
 me three or four good friends, I think I 
 can manage to continue to the end, because 
 love is the machinery of life and the 
 motive power." 
 
 It is in these highest and purest relations 
 of life that we first learn the true meaning 
 of sacrifice and balk not at it, but wonder- 
 ingly begin to discover with Hinton that 
 "all pains may be summed up in sacrifice, 
 and sacrifice is the instrument of joy." We 
 do not begrudge our friend the pains or 
 trouble we take on his behalf; we are glad 
 of the opportunity to serve him, to show 
 our love; and the heavier the service, the 
 greater the opportunity and the joy. And 
 in the joyful, sacrificial spirit, self-giving 
 reaches its full culmination.
 
 XIV. SELF-GIVING IN THE DI- 
 VINE FRIENDSHIP 
 
 When, then, one turns from the human 
 relations, thus deeply understood, to the 
 relation to God, he must see at once that 
 religion's demand for self-surrender, self- 
 denial, self-giving, complete commitment 
 is no demand peculiar to God, is no demand 
 made arbitrarily by God. 
 
 God asks here precisely what in our 
 measure we ask from one another. And 
 you can be the friend of God on precisely 
 the same terms on which you can be the 
 friend of another man. No true friend- 
 ship, no satisfying personal relation, could 
 be possible otherwise. God cannot truly 
 give himself to us, except In the proportion 
 in which we give ourselves to him. Even 
 in our human relations, the calculating, 
 self-withholding friend is necessarily shut 
 out from the best his unselfish friend would 
 give him; he simply cannot understand 
 it, share it, or enter into it. He lacks the 
 capacity even to receive his friend's best 
 blessing. That could come only as his own 
 self responded to the dominant note of his 
 friend. Still more must this be true in our 
 relation to God, where the limitations of 
 
 77
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 our human friends do not come in to mar 
 the result. 
 
 In the light of our experience in our 
 best human relations, it is passing strange 
 that these demands for self-giving in rela- 
 tion to God still have for us so harsh and 
 hard a sound. Every human relation truly 
 fulfilled is crowded with proofs of the 
 priceless contribution of an unselfish love, 
 of our surpassing joy in personal life. We 
 may trust the law to the end and be sure 
 that in like surrender to God we shall find 
 life, and here alone the largest life. The 
 first and second commandments of Christ 
 thus inevitably fall together and reveal but 
 a single law; and the second looks to the 
 first to complete it. 
 
 Here, too, the human limitations drive 
 to God; the human friendship trains for 
 the divine. There are two opposite in- 
 stincts in men the instinct for unlimited 
 self-devotion and the instinct of insatiate 
 thirst for love. There is only one relation 
 in which both may be absolutely unchecked. 
 As God alone can call out absolute trust, 
 so to him alone may we give ourselves 
 unstintedly; in him alone find our thirst 
 fully quenched. There is something closely 
 78
 
 GIVING OF THE SELF 
 
 akin to blasphemy in much modern praise 
 of love between men and women. "I would 
 rather be broken by you than caressed by 
 another," a modern novelist makes the 
 heroine say to the hero. But I suppose we 
 may never so absolutely give ourselves in 
 any human relation. There are plain limits 
 here beyond which we may not go and 
 maintain the integrity of our spirit or our 
 self-respect. To transgress these limits 
 means only damage both to our friends and 
 to ourselves. But where we can trust abso- 
 lutely, we can submit absolutely; and find 
 ourselves, moreover, most fully in this com- 
 pletest surrender of ourselves to God. 
 The law of life through surrender, thus, 
 reaches only here its logical fulfilment. 
 
 In all these fundamental prerequisites to 
 a high friendship, integrity, breadth, and 
 depth of personality, some deep community 
 of interests, honest mutual self-revelation 
 and answering trust, and mutual self-giv- 
 ing, religion proves its inevitable kinship 
 with the rest of life not only because its 
 demands are the same, not different, but 
 also because it thus becomes clear that the 
 religious life is not shut off in a sphere of 
 mystery, but has as its laws the laws of the 
 
 79
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 highest life everywhere laws that we may 
 know and fulfil. 
 
 Nor is this all. We have seen, too, that 
 the logical climax in all these prerequisites 
 to highest friendship is to be found only 
 in the relation to God. Here alone is that 
 richest self which we everywhere seek; 
 here alone the highest community of inter- 
 ests; here alone the perfect self-revelation 
 and absolute trust; here alone complete 
 self-giving. And that is to say, that along 
 all the highest lines of his being, the nature 
 of man points unvaryingly to God. 
 
 In no sentimental sense at all, then, but 
 in recognition rather of what is deepest and 
 most essential in us, we must say with the 
 Psalmist, "As the hart panteth after the 
 water brooks, so panteth my soul after 
 thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, 
 for the living God; when shall I come and 
 appear before God?" Our life is fulfilled 
 only in God. It is this deepest fact of all 
 our life that Matheson voices: 
 
 "O Love that wilt not let me go, 
 
 I rest my weary soul in Thee; 
 I give Thee back the life I owe, 
 That in Thine ocean depths its flow 
 
 May richer, fuller be. 
 80
 
 GIVING OF THE SELF 
 
 "O Light that followest all my way, 
 I yield my flickering torch to Thee; 
 My heart restores its borrowed ray, 
 That in Thy sunshine's blaze its day 
 May brighter, fairer be. 
 
 "O Joy that seekest me through pain, 
 
 I cannot close my heart to Thee; 
 I trace the rainbow through the rain, 
 And feel the promise is not vain 
 That morn shall tearless be. 
 
 "O Cross that liftest up my head, 
 I dare not ask to fly from Thee; 
 
 I lay in dust life's glory dead, 
 
 And from the ground there blossoms red 
 Life that shall endless be." 
 
 81
 
 PART II 
 
 DEEPENING THE FRIEND- 
 SHIP
 
 CHRISTIAN STANDARDS
 
 XV. THE QUALITIES OF THE 
 TRUE FRIEND AS SEEN BY 
 CHRIST 
 
 |N any discussion of friend- 
 ship that aims to bring 
 out its higher significance, 
 it would be quite unpar- 
 donable to neglect the two 
 greatest portrayals of the 
 loving life that the world 
 has seen Christ's and Paul's. For no 
 friendship can reach its highest attainment 
 that falls below the ideals of the Beatitudes 
 and of the thirteenth of First Corinthians. 
 In the Beatitudes Christ is giving the 
 basic qualities of character, of influence, 
 and of happiness those qualities that he 
 believes must characterize every man who 
 is to be a true citizen of "the civilization 
 of the brotherly man." These qualities of 
 the Beatitudes, as basic qualities, have an 
 indispensable contribution to make in every 
 personal relation. For their possession 
 means, inevitably, that one has a better 
 self to give in friendship, is better able to 
 receive from his friend, better able to call 
 out the best in his friend, and has better 
 learned the secrets of an increasing joy in 
 personal life. Every one of these qualities
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 will make a friendship richer; the lack of 
 any one will detract from its strength and 
 beauty. 
 
 Moreover, since Christ holds that the 
 all-embracing virtue is love, he thinks of 
 these qualities as elements of that love, or 
 steps of progress toward love's culminat- 
 ing quality of courageous self-sacrifice. 
 Whether, therefore, these qualities are 
 regarded as basic qualities of character, 
 influence, and happiness, as elements of the 
 loving life, or as steps toward an ideal, 
 self-giving love, the Beatitudes are, in any 
 case, Christ's statement of the fundamental 
 qualities of a true friend, and their sug- 
 gestions are needed in all true personal rela- 
 tions; and they deserve brief individual 
 consideration. 
 
 In other words, it may be said that 
 Christ here contends that the true friend 
 will be characteristically teachable, peni- 
 tent, self-controlled, genuinely earnest in 
 the pursuit of the highest, sympathetic 
 with men, reverent toward men, promoting 
 love among men, sacrificing for men. This 
 is no chance list of qualities. Every one is 
 essential to a true friendship. 
 
 And the life of the true friend is natu-
 
 QUALITIES OF THE TRUE FRIEND 
 
 rally characterized first of all as teachable, 
 humble, open-minded. 
 
 For no quality so certainly assures that 
 steady growth, without which, as we have 
 seen, a constantly enriching friendship is 
 impossible. A genuine friend must ever 
 desire to have a worthy self to give in his 
 friendship, and a self continually enlarging 
 and enriching. For that end, the condi- 
 tions of growth must be steadily fulfilled; 
 and no condition is so imperative as that 
 of the teachable, open-minded spirit. 
 
 The very idea of a worthy friendship 
 implies that the friends need and desire 
 each other; are sure that each has much to 
 give to the other; and so are continuously 
 receptive and eager for the other's gift. 
 There can be no desire in a true personal 
 relation simply to force the ideas of one 
 on the other. Each is ready to take sug- 
 gestions from the other, and to enter into 
 the other's point of view, and to be grate- 
 ful for the enlargement of his own experi- 
 ence and vision which may so come. The 
 teachable spirit, therefore, is essential, if 
 one is to get the most in any personal 
 relation. Unteachableness shuts one off 
 from his friend's best gift.
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Moreover, conceit on my part is likely 
 to call out the unreceptive attitude in my 
 friend, and so to make it impossible for me 
 to do for him what I would. 
 
 The continuing joy in personal relation, 
 too, must depend, in no small part, on the 
 certainty that the friendship is a deepening 
 and increasingly rewarding one. And this 
 can only be true where conditions are pres- 
 ent for the steady growth of each. The 
 conceited, arrogant, domineering spirit, 
 thus, tends to spoil the friendly relation 
 in every aspect of it, whether one is think- 
 ing of what the friendship may mean in 
 character, or in influence, or in happiness. 
 Surely humility is an essential quality of 
 the true friend. 
 
 The penitent spirit, too, the quality of 
 the second beatitude, the spirit that is 
 ready frankly to recognize its own failures 
 and to face and conquer them grows im- 
 mediately out of the teachable spirit. It 
 is ready to see its fault, to regret it, 
 and to forsake it. It is hardly possible to 
 have a truly adjusted personal relation 
 to another, where this frank, clear spirit 
 of penitence is wanting. The secret, lower 
 attitude taken in some other relation clouds 
 90
 
 inevitably the friendship with one of 
 higher spirit. Persistent sensitiveness of 
 conscience can alone keep one's personal 
 relations sensitively true and fine. One has 
 not waked up to the significance of a high 
 friendship, who does not feel the ambition 
 to bring to it his best self; in whom the 
 friendship does not become the motive for 
 laying off all that is unworthy. A genuine 
 love, thus, inevitably provokes to penitence, 
 that one may be worthy of the high friend- 
 ship on which he has entered. 
 
 A friendship is immediately lowered, in 
 which the friends settle back contentedly 
 upon their lower selves, or upon their 
 present attainment. This gives only the 
 prospect of a further steady lowering. 
 There must be genuine penitence for past 
 unworthiness, the earnest desire for a new 
 and better man, if better things are in 
 store in the friendship itself. No other 
 attitude is ever safe, if friendship is to 
 grow, to strengthen, and to better. Only 
 this penitent spirit, too, will make one 
 patient, and not intolerant with the faults 
 of his friend, at the same time that he 
 does not foster them. Only this spirit is 
 likely to enable one to help his friend out 
 
 91
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 of his faults ; a condition of constant exas- 
 peration is else likely to ensue. The peni- 
 tent spirit is fundamental m friendship. 
 
 And friendship needs, not less, the self- 
 control of meekness. Perhaps there is no 
 better definition of meekness than that of 
 Beecher, who says, "It is the best side of 
 a man, under provocation maintaining 
 itself in the best mood, and controlling all 
 men." This is the quality that puts a man 
 in possession of himself, and enables him 
 to use all his resources, all his opportuni- 
 ties, to the full, and therefore to be his full 
 self in his relation to his friend, to make 
 friendship count at every point, and in 
 every situation. It is in truth a kingly 
 quality, as it has been called. 
 
 And no quality is more essential in a 
 personal relation, none has a larger serv- 
 ice to render at the critical times in these 
 relations. How many friendships have 
 been maimed or destroyed because of its 
 lack! Bickerings and mutual recrimina- 
 tions become impossible, when both friends 
 are humble, penitent, and self-controlled. 
 
 The self-control of meekness, thus, 
 makes certain that no brute qualities can 
 come in to spoil the friendship. And it 
 92
 
 QUALITIES OF THE TRUE FRIEND 
 
 makes possible great achievement for both. 
 
 Two self-mastered spirits, in the mood 
 of self-mastery, can be, and count, and 
 enjoy, in all their relations, what could not 
 otherwise be possible. To take the road 
 of "letting oneself go," just because it is 
 in the direction of insanity and of brute- 
 hood, ultimately limits, not enlarges, even 
 the joy of the relation; for it finally secures 
 only self-contempt, and mutual contempt, 
 however disguised. The pleasure that one 
 may take with full self-approval has a 
 quality that no illicit ecstasy can match, 
 since this has its bitter sting of self-con- 
 tempt; for we know that the partial, the 
 lower, the selfish, has prevailed, and that 
 we have not mastered our pleasures, but 
 our pleasures have mastered us. Even the 
 joy of friendship thus demands "the soul 
 in the majesty of self-possession." Self- 
 control is, then, fundamental to friendship. 
 
 And a penitent and self-mastered spirit 
 will naturally develop, as has been already 
 implied, persistent eagerness for the best, 
 Christ's "hungering and thirsting for right- 
 eousness." The true man wants real 
 attainment, not the name of it. He wants 
 to be and to do more, not simply to have 
 
 93
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 his -own way. He wants the absolutely 
 right thing in this personal relation to his 
 friend, and in all; and he can't help, there- 
 fore, being in just so far reasonable, candid, 
 honest, and faithful. He will be ambi- 
 tious for the utmost in the friendship in 
 which he finds himself. He must say, 
 "Less than this persistent eagerness for 
 the best would not be worthy of the self I 
 would bring; less than this would not be 
 worthy of my friend. I am failing to be 
 what I ought to be in this relation, if this 
 is not true." A high friendship should 
 insure that, with the progress of the days, 
 each brings to the other a better, stronger, 
 higher, richer self. Nothing else really 
 makes the friendship what it ought to be. 
 A high friendship, thus, requires great am- 
 bitions for growth into the best. 
 
 It would seem hardly to need saying that 
 a true friend will be merciful, sympathetic 
 with his friend. For the very foundation 
 of any friendship must be at least a partial 
 sympathy. Real sympathy sees the point 
 of view of the other, appreciates his situa- 
 tion, understands his struggle. It has 
 leisure from itself, is ready to take the 
 time to give the thought and attention 
 94
 
 QUALITIES OF THE TRUE FRIEND 
 
 necessary, to use its imagination in the 
 understanding of its friend. And the 
 highest are ever the most merciful, because 
 they judge their friends out of their own 
 experience of struggle. They know what 
 honest endeavor means, and recognize the 
 earnest fight where victory may seem still 
 unachieved. 
 
 Elsewhere in his teaching, Christ shows 
 that a true mercy toward another seems to 
 him to forbid not simply uncharitable 
 judgment, but the attitude of judging at 
 all. A friend is the brother, side by side 
 with his friend; not the judge set above 
 him. The close relations of intimate 
 friendship call everywhere for this quality 
 of inner mercy, for willingness to enter 
 faithfully and understandingly into the 
 experience of others, for the attitude not of 
 stern judgment, but of tender mercy. How 
 can friendship exist at all without such 
 sympathy? Even in the closest relations 
 of life, we are to remember the call to be 
 "pitiful," to be "courteous," to be merciful 
 in the inner spirit. Indeed, it is hardly 
 too much to say that friendship shows itself 
 in nothing more than in a deepening, almost 
 unconscious, silent understanding and syn> 
 
 95
 
 pathy. You have entered into your friend's 
 life and thought and experience; you feel 
 with him. "Oh, the comfort the inex- 
 pressible comfort of feeling safe with a 
 person having neither to weigh thoughts 
 nor measure words, but pouring them all 
 right out, just as they are, chaff and grain 
 together; certain that a faithful hand will 
 take and sift them, keep what is worth 
 keeping and with the breath of kindness 
 blow the rest away." 
 
 Christ indicates, also, that the true 
 friend will be characterized by purity in 
 heart, that inner sense of the value and 
 sacredness of the person of oneself and of 
 others, that can hold in check even funda- 
 mental passions. This steady recognition 
 of the other, as in himself a child of God, 
 holy and priceless, not to be estimated as 
 anything less, and never to be used as a 
 mere means to an end, is essential to the 
 highest friendship. 
 
 It is perhaps not too much to say, as will 
 be later developed, that this spirit indicates 
 the deepest condition of all in high per- 
 sonal relations. For it seems to carry with 
 it the fulfilment of all other conditions. 
 On the other hand, the spirit of contempt 
 96
 
 QUALITIES OF THE TRUE FRIEND 
 
 is fatal to any endurable personal relations 
 to another, and every approach to this 
 spirit is an obstacle to a bettering relation. 
 It is the worst of mistakes, therefore, to 
 suppose that, as one's friendships become 
 more intimate, they may become less truly 
 reverent. The intimacy of friendship is 
 not measured by the number of privacies 
 insolently invaded; and even the closest 
 life relation may not spare the spirit of 
 genuine respect and deference. The real 
 friend will not demand ; he only asks. The 
 very highest fruit of friendship can hardly 
 be withheld from the genuinely reverent 
 spirit, whereas every trace of contempt 
 embitters and degrades. 
 
 The disciple of the loving life, Jesus is 
 certain also, will be a peacemaker. And 
 in every personal relation it is not enough 
 that one should merely keep the peace; he 
 must help to make it, must steadily pro- 
 mote it. It is not enough that one should 
 avoid, in his personal relations, the pro- 
 voking attitude, the nagging and annoying 
 spirit; there must be a definite seeking of 
 those things that make for peace, the 
 seeking of agreements, the seeking sympa- 
 thetically to understand, the seeking to see 
 G 97
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the other's point of view, rather than to 
 make a point against him. The peace- 
 maker brings in the spirit of love; he 
 recognizes that ultimately there is nothing 
 that can be done with any man but to love 
 him. The final service of the best labors 
 of men has even been that they have loved 
 men into their own best. Nothing is so 
 powerful in the realm of personal relations 
 as such an unconquerable love. 
 
 And the friendly spirit must ultimately 
 be a self -sacrificing spirit, for this is, after 
 all, only love itself at its highest; it is only 
 that completest giving of self which is the 
 very essence of love. It is the climax and 
 goal of all the other qualities, and the 
 quality into which, in turn, they naturally 
 come. But it is not a spirit to be reserved 
 simply for great occasions. Our common 
 friendships need, even more, that this spirit 
 should be shown in small things and in 
 what seem slight exigencies. As Black 
 puts it, "Attention to detail is the secret of 
 success in every sphere of life, and little 
 kindnesses, little acts of considerateness, 
 little appreciations, little confidences, are 
 all that most of us are called upon to per- 
 form, but they are all that are needed to 
 98
 
 QUALITIES OF THE TRUE FRIEND 
 
 keep a friendship sweet." 1 This willing- 
 ness to sacrifice in little things is indeed the 
 one incontestable proof of a persistent love. 
 Nor is there any way by which friendship 
 may be so certainly deepened as by way of 
 mutual self-sacrifice. A love that is not 
 ready for persistent, courageous self-sacri- 
 fice is not adequate to the demands of a 
 friendship of the highest order. 
 
 It is impossible to review these qualities 
 for which Christ calls in the Beatitudes, 
 and not see that where these qualities are 
 present, a worthy and steadily growing 
 friendship is certain. Where friends are 
 teachable, quick to recognize their own 
 defects, having the meekness of self-con- 
 trol, and persistent eagerness for the best 
 that friendship may bring; where inner 
 sympathy and deep reverence for the per- 
 son of themselves and others are present; 
 where each is a promoter of peace, and 
 each is ready to sacrifice for the other 
 there is a friendship that it is hardly pos- 
 sible to wreck. It has something of the 
 eternity of the nature of God himself. 
 There is no personal relation of any kind 
 in the life of any man where these great 
 
 1 Friendship, p. 49. 
 
 99
 
 qualities have not their peculiar and ines- 
 timable contribution to make. Even where 
 they are found in only one person in the 
 relation, they can hardly help proving con- 
 tagious, if the person who seeks to embody 
 these qualities does not allow himself to be 
 provoked out of them. 
 
 And these qualities which are so vital in 
 our relations to our fellow men, are not 
 less vital in our relations to God, as the 
 promises of the Beatitudes make clear. 
 And to come into these qualities is to come 
 into the life of love, and that is to come 
 into the sharing of God's own life. We 
 find God in these true relations to others. 
 
 And as the great road to character is 
 always the way of personal association 
 with the best, so there is no way so certain 
 into the possession of these qualities as 
 staying in the atmosphere of a life like 
 Christ's that embodies them. In such re- 
 sponse to his spirit, the relation to God 
 himself steadily deepens. "Every one that 
 loveth is begotten of God and knoweth 
 God." And no one has described more 
 accurately than Christ, in the Beatitudes, 
 the elements of the loving life, the basic 
 qualities in friendship. 
 100
 
 XVI. PAUL'S SKETCH OF THE 
 FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 It is worth remembering that Paul's im- 
 mortal sketch of the friendly life is no 
 mere literary tour de force, but stands in 
 the midst of one of the most concrete and 
 practical of his writings, as the natural out- 
 come of all that has preceded. Because 
 the grace of God had wrought out this 
 spirit, which he attempts to describe, in his 
 own heart, Paul could be so undaunted, so 
 hopeful, so divinely patient, so faithful in 
 his dealing with his Corinthian friends. 
 This famous thirteenth chapter is thus at 
 once a sketch of their needs, and, to no 
 small degree, of his own life. 
 
 When compared with the Beatitudes, 
 this chapter is a freer sketch of the loving 
 life, with emphases called out by the special 
 circumstances, in an order psychological 
 rather than logical; but, because fitting so 
 perfectly the circumstances for which Paul 
 wrote, fitting us all. 
 
 The thought of the chapter is wrought 
 into a close unity. In his praise of love 
 Paul first asserts the worthlessness of all 
 spiritual gifts without love, then character- 
 izes love, and finally shows how, out of 
 
 101
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 such characteristics, it must follow that love 
 is the one eternal thing. 
 
 For Paul, as for Christ, there is no 
 possible discharge from the duty of love, 
 no substitute for it. Other things, even 
 so-called spiritual gifts, are not only no sub- 
 stitutes, but themselves are worthless with- 
 out love. No speaking with tongues, with 
 its accompanying ecstatic emotional state 
 most highly prized of all the spiritual gifts 
 of his time is of any value without genu- 
 ine love. No mystery-solving knowledge, 
 no wonder-working faith can possibly 
 profit, if there is not love in the life. No 
 magnificent acts of liberality, Paul con- 
 tinues, no heights of ascetic torture, even 
 unto death, without love, are of the slight- 
 est avail. God's whole redemption is to a 
 life like his own, to sharing his life; and 
 that life is love. 
 
 From this insistence that love is the one 
 absolute essential, Paul then turns to that 
 which specially concerns us, his wonder- 
 ful characterization of the loving life, in 
 the central verses of this great chapter. In 
 this characterization there is to be noted a 
 fivefold grouping of the qualities, and also 
 how naturally, by association of ideas, one 
 
 IO2
 
 PAUL'S SKETCH OF FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 quality suggests the next. The order, as 
 already noted, is psychological rather than 
 logical. 
 
 Paul begins with two positive qualities, 
 "Love is long-suffering, and kind;" and 
 out of these all the other qualities may be 
 said to grow. 
 
 A second, consequent, group consists of 
 four negative and closely related charac- 
 teristics: "Love is never envious, never 
 boastful, never conceited, never behaves 
 unbecomingly." 
 
 A third group of three characteristics 
 follows naturally : "Love is never self-seek- 
 ing, never provoked, never reckons up her 
 wrongs." 
 
 The fourth step in his praise of love is 
 found in the two qualities: "Love never 
 rejoices at evil, but rejoices in the triumph 
 of Truth." 
 
 And there follows, in the fifth place, as 
 the result of all: "Love bears with all 
 things," and therefore is "ever trustful, 
 ever hopeful, ever patient." 
 
 Such a love, the chapter naturally con- 
 cludes, "never fails." It is equal to all 
 circumstances, at all times, belongs to the 
 eternal things of God. 
 
 103
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 The experience which Paul had had with 
 the Corinthians could hardly fail to sug- 
 gest first of all that a true friend, who 
 means to be faithful to the very end in 
 bringing his friend through to his absolute 
 best, must be long-suffering, infinitely pa- 
 tient; must have a love that simply will 
 not let the other go, that bears up against 
 persistent injury, and that does not merely 
 endure, but is positively kind. There is a 
 martyr-like endurance often put on by 
 those who are themselves in the wrong, 
 that is not only immeasurably exasperating 
 in any professed friend, but betrays a well- 
 nigh hopeless condition, that makes a satis- 
 fying friendship impossible. It is no such 
 long-suffering that Paul praises as a quality 
 of love. Paul elsewhere urges those to 
 whom he writes to forgive, even as God 
 for Christ's sake has forgiven them; and 
 it is plain that the one adequate revelation 
 of the long-suffering and kindness of which 
 he here speaks, is that shown in God's own 
 seeking of us in Christ. Paul himself 
 made much of this simple persistent kind- 
 ness, and often revealed it. The thought- 
 ful kindness of his letters, and the delicacy 
 of their feeling, illustrate the qualities for 
 104
 
 PAUL'S SKETCH OF FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 which he here calls as characterizing first 
 of all the truly loving life. Love is long- 
 suffering, and positively, practically, per- 
 sistently, thoughtfully, attentively kind. 
 Love blossoms out in inevitable countless 
 kindnesses. 
 
 And Paul is certain that, in proportion 
 as one really loves, he cannot envy. Envy 
 has no place in a genuine friendship. If 
 one really loves another, he will begrudge 
 him no good, but he would rather bestow 
 more if he could. The envious spirit can- 
 not be kind, and the really kind spirit 
 cannot be envious. And because one loves 
 he will not boast. What he might say in 
 boasting might be true, but he will not run 
 the risk of hurting another. Love holds 
 him back from this self-vaunting. He has 
 no wish to vaunt himself over another, or 
 to gloat over the other's supposed lower 
 estate. As love does not envy, it will feel 
 no need to boast. And in its thorough 
 appreciation of its friend it will be free 
 from conceit, not puffed up. Conceit 
 implies being so constantly occupied with 
 the thought of oneself as not to be able to 
 recognize others' worth and claims. The 
 "puffed up" of the old version is very sug- 
 
 105
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 gestlve, as indicating the danger of getting 
 uplifted over comparatively slight things. 
 And he who is not self-conceited, self- 
 centered, and self-satisfied, will not behave 
 unbecomingly. For the conceited man, even 
 with much intended kindness, is constantly 
 sinning against love. He is quite uncon- 
 sciously behaving unbecomingly, taking all 
 done for him as of right and for granted, 
 naively claiming everything, perfectly 
 ready to advise those of far more wisdom 
 and experience, unable to see what is really 
 due to others, and having no power to grow 
 in loving ministry, because already satisfied. 
 The man that is puffed up with his own 
 conceit is in danger, also, of feeding on 
 praise, of getting where he must have it, 
 and where, therefore, he indirectly seeks it, 
 of being able to talk of nothing but himself 
 and his own doings. Conceit is forgetful 
 of the needs and rights of others, is not 
 willing to give the time and thought neces- 
 sary to enter sympathetically into the 
 thoughts and plans and work of others, 
 but must hurry back to the thought and 
 the talk of its own plans. If one's work 
 has some real importance, there is all the 
 greater danger of this absorbing selfish- 
 106
 
 PAUL'S SKETCH OF FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 ness ; and yet the greatest of all work is to 
 love. 
 
 These four characteristics of love, there- 
 fore, belong together, and naturally follow 
 one another. For the envious man is the 
 boastful man; and the boastful, conceited; 
 and the conceited makes a fool of himself. 
 
 And Paul adds to his praise of love, 
 "Love seeketh not its own; is not pro- 
 yoked; taketh not account of evil." For 
 the unseemly behavior of which he has just 
 spoken, reaches its height in a complete 
 self-seeking, in its countless forms. Paul 
 thus sets the loving life over against the 
 self-conscious, the self -centered, the self- 
 absorbed, the self-seeking life. The spirit 
 that advertises and pushes itself and jostles 
 others aside is the very antithesis, in Paul's 
 thought, of the loving spirit. Love loses 
 itself in its object, seeks his good, his hap- 
 piness, and forgets itself. It finds its own 
 greatest happiness in its sacrifices for love's 
 sake. 
 
 And because it seeks not its own, it is 
 not provoked. It is the man who has con- 
 stantly in mind his own precious self, his 
 own dignity, and is wrapped up in himself, 
 who feels all the slights, who feels the need 
 
 107
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 of always standing on his dignity, who 
 "carries," in our common phrase, "a chip 
 on his shoulder," and "bristles up" at 
 once. And so Paul is virtually suggesting 
 to the Corinthians, "If you had been less 
 selfish and self-centered, you would have 
 been less sensitive, and little petty things 
 would have affected you less; it is the fact 
 that you are so self-seeking that makes you 
 so easy to take offense." This not being 
 provoked is Drummond's characteristic of 
 "good temper," which is not only no small 
 personal achievement, but has a great con- 
 tribution to make to the happiness of oth- 
 ers ; for the spirit that is not provoked does 
 not need constantly to be smoothed down. 
 With such a person one does not need to 
 watch every word and act, for fear of 
 offense. How much one "touchy" person 
 can do to spoil a gathering or any personal 
 relation; how much one of imperturbable 
 good temper can do to make all go 
 smoothly ! 
 
 And the spirit that is not provoked will 
 also naturally be unsuspicious, taking not 
 account of evil; or, as one has put it, "love 
 does not reckon up her wrongs," does not 
 dwell on, and make much of, and recapitu- 
 108
 
 late them. Rather, it argues as to some 
 wrong: "It is a small matter at the most. 
 It is better simply to let it go. Probably no 
 offense was meant, and I will give the per- 
 son the benefit of the doubt. There is no 
 reason, in any case, why I should be the 
 sole one considered. Moreover, it is un- 
 worthy of me to dwell on it, even if the 
 slight was intended; for is it not a man's 
 glory to pass over a fault?" The other 
 tendency gives a jaundiced vision, and 
 takes the best out of life. Filling one's 
 memory with the petty meannesses of 
 other men is a poor way to get material for 
 a large, rich life, or for any friendship. 
 Drop the thought of a slight as soon as you 
 can. Don't cultivate a good memory for 
 wrongs and slights. 
 
 The natural result of dwelling on wrongs 
 is either to gloat over the fall of others, or 
 to justify any kind of opposition to them. 
 And this result is indicated in Paul's next 
 characterization of love, as "rejoicing not 
 in unrighteousness;" or, as it has been 
 translated, "having no sympathy with 
 deceit." 
 
 On the one hand, then, the connection 
 may be that in the reckoning up of one's 
 
 109
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 wrongs, one may be tempted to be well- 
 nigh glad of some new fault discovered in 
 the other to gloat over and talk over, to 
 justify one's prejudiced opinion and hate 
 and opposition. The faults of one's op- 
 posers are likely to become one's stock in 
 trade. But if one really loved, every dis- 
 covery of unrighteousness would be a grief 
 and pain, and no cause for rejoicing. 
 
 But Paul's thought may be, also, that 
 the loving spirit has no sympathy with any 
 deceit, in any tricky or unfair methods of 
 winning one's way. As it does not reckon 
 up the wrongs of another, so also, on its 
 side, it approves of no questionable means 
 of getting one's end, and will be party to 
 none, but has full sympathy only with the 
 true, and open, and square. If this is the 
 thought, Paul probably has in mind the un- 
 derhanded ways of partisan strife, the 
 low-lived methods into which one may 
 allow himself to be betrayed when he gets 
 into factional contentions. The truly lov- 
 ing spirit has no sympathy with deceit, but 
 has full sympathy with the truth, "rejoices 
 with the truth." Love, real love, needs no 
 underhanded methods and will resort to 
 none itself, and will approve of none in 
 no
 
 PAUL'S SKETCH OF FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 others, even in its own party, but rejoices 
 only "in the triumph of Truth." 
 
 A love thus free from the partisan spirit, 
 that seeks not a selfish triumph, but the 
 triumph of truth and love, can hardly fail 
 to deserve Paul's further characterization, 
 that it "bears with all things," or, bears 
 up against all things, is proof against all. 
 It is equal to any emergency, because it 
 loves and always loves; it never gives up. 
 It is "always trustful, always hopeful, al- 
 ways patient." 
 
 A love that is proof against all must be 
 always trustful; for an abiding love 
 grounds in trust. There can be no per- 
 sistent, glad sacrifice for men without faith 
 in men, in their possibilities, in their future. 
 A love that abides must trust. And it is 
 only such trust, too, that can get the best 
 from men. A cynical spirit cannot do 
 much for men or with men. He who 
 would greatly serve men, or greatly lead 
 them in a great cause, must believe in them. 
 Here, again, Christ is the great exemplar. 
 He believes in men, builds on them, com- 
 mits to them the most precious interests of 
 his kingdom. The love that beareth all 
 things is always trustful. The full pos- 
 
 II II
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 sibilitles of friendship are to be only so 
 achieved. 
 
 And because trustful, love is always 
 hopeful. Such hope grows directly out of 
 belief in men and in their possibilities. It 
 looks always for something better to come. 
 It expects growth, is confident of new 
 developments, keeps its hope as to men, 
 and it persists in its loving service, because 
 of its undying hope. 
 
 The enduring love is, thus, once more, 
 always patient. And with this closing char- 
 acteristic, Paul returns in his praise of love, 
 like perfect music to its first note, to the 
 long-suffering with which he began. The 
 spirit of complaint in any personal relation 
 is easy enough; but the love that can con- 
 quer all must be able to endure, must be 
 always patient. No treatment can break 
 down this love of which Paul speaks; it still 
 holds on; bears with everything; and 
 finally wins, most of all on this very 
 account. Its triumph is like the triumph 
 of God himself, in the seeking, suffering 
 love of Christ that never gives men up. 
 
 A love so characterized, Paul feels, can- 
 not be temporary. Prophecies will be done 
 away, tongues cease, and knowledge be- 
 112
 
 PAUL'S SKETCH OF FRIENDLY LIFE 
 
 come out of date; but such love can never 
 fail. It is of the very nature of the Eter- 
 nal, the one abiding thing; for no time can 
 come when love is not of the very essence 
 of life. In those abiding personal rela- 
 tions, in the fulfilment of which life itself 
 consists, faith will always be needed, 
 faith in God and in man. And hope there 
 will always be, the thought of eternal 
 growth for oneself and for others, the in- 
 spiration of a constantly expanding life 
 that can never exhaust the riches of God's 
 own being. And love there must always 
 be; and of these three ever-abiding things, 
 faith, hope, and love love is the great- 
 est of all, for it really includes both faith 
 and hope, as Paul has himself already de- 
 clared in the seventh verse of the chapter. 
 God's love is for Paul, as plainly as for 
 John, the source of all. "We love because 
 he first loved us." And the sharing of 
 God's life, the eternal life, is made, thus, 
 to have no vagueness in Paul's thought. 
 It means just these particulars upon which 
 he has been dwelling. This it is to live 
 God's own life. This is the most genuine 
 and complete union and communion with 
 him. Right where one is, with these peo- 
 H 113:
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 pie one does not like, that seem unattract- 
 ive and exasperating, commonplace and 
 crude, right here one may show a love 
 characterized by these qualities named by 
 Paul, and so live the life of God. 
 
 This is Paul's sketch of the friendly life. 
 The true friend will be long-suffering and 
 kind. He will be neither envious, nor 
 boastful, nor conceited, and therefore will 
 not behave unbecomingly in even life's 
 closest relations. He will not be self-seek- 
 ing, and so not be provoked, nor reckon up 
 his wrongs. And, freed thus from the 
 selfish and partisan spirit, he will never 
 rejoice at evil, but rejoice rather only in 
 the triumph of Truth. His love will be 
 proof against all things, always trustful, 
 always hopeful, always patient. A friend- 
 ship so characterized cannot fail ; and there 
 is no single personal relation, into which 
 men can be brought one to the other, in 
 which these qualities would not conquer. 
 Like the Beatitudes of Christ himself, this 
 chapter portrays an ideal of the friendly 
 life to which he, who would live worthily, 
 needs often to come back. No discussion 
 of friendship can afford not to face defi- 
 nitely these Christian standards. 
 114
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S MOODS
 
 XVII. THE SELF-FORGETFUL 
 MOOD 
 
 I have elsewhere expressed my convic- 
 tion, on psychological grounds, that the 
 two greatest means in true living are work, 
 in which one can express his best self, and 
 personal association with worthy lives; and 
 that the two greatest corresponding condi- 
 tions in the fine art of living are the mood 
 of work, the objective and self-forgetful 
 mood; and the highest condition of fine 
 personal relations, reverence for person- 
 ality. These great means and conditions 
 seem to me naturally, therefore, to suggest 
 the fundamental moods and fundamental 
 ways of friendship. And they find cor- 
 roboration in the two matchless studies of 
 friendship from which we have just turned. 
 
 For the Beatitudes fall naturally into 
 two groups of four each, the first group 
 personal, the second social. In the first 
 group it is perhaps not too much to say 
 that the central quality is that of the self- 
 control of meekness, which involves the 
 qualities of the Beatitudes preceding, and 
 insures that of the fourth Beatitude im- 
 mediately following. And true self-control 
 is not negative, the mere holding of 
 oneself back in restraint from the evil, but 
 
 117
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the complete mastery of one's powers for 
 positive achievement in good, for the larg- 
 est and finest expression of oneself in 
 action. 
 
 In the second, social, group the central 
 quality, I think, may be said to be that of 
 purity of heart, in the sense of that deep 
 reverence for the person out of which all 
 true inward purity grows. For this deep 
 sense of the value and sacredness of the 
 individual person as a child of God will 
 carry with it mercy and peace-making and 
 self-sacrifice. It makes possible, that is, 
 the highest personal associations. 
 
 The Beatitudes, thus, in other words, 
 seem to me to group about these two main 
 moods of the loving life, the self- forget- 
 ful mood and the mood of reverence for 
 the person; and about the two great ways 
 of friendship, the way of expression in 
 action, and the way of persistent personal 
 association. 
 
 And Paul's sketch, in like manner, in 
 its opening and closing emphasis on the 
 long-suffering quality of love, builds just 
 as unmistakably on the sense of the infinite 
 value and sacredness of every man as a 
 child of God, worthy, therefore, of such 
 118
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 love as Paul describes. And the descrip- 
 tion makes it unmistakably clear that the 
 love of which he thinks is no passive, 
 merely emotional, state, but a love that is 
 prepared to express itself in self-sacrificing 
 action to the very end. It bears up against 
 all things ; it never fails. Here, again, are 
 emphases like those in the Beatitudes. 
 
 We have some right, therefore, to hope 
 that, in speaking of the self-forgetful mood 
 and of reverence for the person, and of 
 the ways of expression and personal asso- 
 ciation, we shall be dealing with friend- 
 ship's fundamental and all-inclusive moods 
 and ways. 
 
 And first of all, the mood of friendship 
 must be the objective and self -forgetful 
 mood. It may seem a strange requirement 
 in so inner a matter as friendship that one 
 should insist upon the objective mood as 
 fundamental. And yet, that the best may 
 result, even in personal relations, one must 
 be delivered from engrossing self-conscious- 
 ness. The basis of friendship, as we have 
 seen, implies and demands such objectivity. 
 Just because an established friendship is 
 no longer on probation, just because true 
 friends trust one another and are surren- 
 
 119
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 dered one to the other, they need not be 
 introspective, either concerning themselves 
 or the attitude of their friend. 
 
 And the mood necessary to our best 
 work and best achievement means, too, the 
 mood necessary to that best self that we 
 need always to give in friendship. No 
 doubt the insistence on the objective mood 
 is not to be pressed to the extreme. A 
 wise self-knowledge is always important, 
 and should continue throughout. Never- 
 theless, the true friend is not to be occupied 
 with himself or with his own moods. The 
 introspective habit, in this sense, is a real 
 hindrance in the life either with men or 
 with God. For love is certainly self-for- 
 getful, losing itself in the one loved. It 
 desires to express itself in active service, 
 and so loses itself in its work. It covets 
 ability to bring the best self, and so must 
 seek achievement of the highest order, that 
 cannot come with the divided mind. 
 
 This change of emphasis from the intro- 
 spective to the objective mood is a modern 
 change, justly built upon psychology's new 
 insistence upon the central importance of 
 will and action, and contains sure promise 
 of fresh achievement in both the moral 
 120
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 and religious life, in the development of 
 every personal relation. For no friendship 
 may be to me what it ought to be, to which 
 I do not bring my best self. And, as has 
 just been indicated, for that best self, this 
 objective mood is necessary. I shall only 
 bring my best self, not by thinking too 
 much of myself, or of the relations in which 
 I stand, but by following rather the call of 
 the great interests, the great personalities, 
 the great causes and motives, and respond- 
 ing to them. As Carlyle says : "How were 
 Friendship possible? In mutual devoted- 
 ness to the Good and True: otherwise im- 
 possible, except as Armed Neutrality, or 
 hollow Commercial League." I need to be 
 able to lose myself in the greatness of the 
 great objective interests that call forth my 
 powers. 
 
 For the best help of my friend, too, 
 whether this help be direct or indirect, this 
 self-forgetful mood is not less necessary. 
 Here, surely, I need leisure from myself. 
 And that I may count most with my friend, 
 he, too, needs to be able to believe that I 
 have forgotten myself. Our friendship 
 will grow, and the value of it, for us both, 
 not by introspection, but unconsciously, in 
 
 121
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 our union in great interests, in our common 
 devotion to great persons and great causes. 
 
 For the joy of the personal relation, also, 
 the objective mood is vital. If the best 
 love and best work are those naturally 
 objective and ^self-forgetful, then surely 
 the joy of which love and work are the two 
 great sources, needs the objective mood. 
 If I am to be happy myself, and to make 
 my friend happy, I must not be engaged 
 with my own moods. 
 
 And this insistence upon the need of the 
 objective, self- forgetful mood in human 
 friendships, holds not less in our relation 
 to God, in spite of the strong trend to the 
 contrary which is to be found in much re- 
 ligious literature and practice, especially of 
 a generation back. 
 
 There would seem to be the strongest 
 reasons why our relation to God should be 
 objective rather than subjective and intro- 
 spective. If our relation to him is real at 
 all, a relation to fact and not one of our 
 own imagination, it is plain that its reality 
 cannot depend simply upon any striving or 
 straining of our own, but must be largely 
 God's work, and our own plain response to 
 his revelation. Our chief anxiety, there- 
 122
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 fore, must be not the production of certain 
 emotional states in ourselves, but only hon- 
 est response to objective fact. It is not our 
 business to create the realities of the spir- 
 itual world, but simply to fulfil those plain 
 conditions upon which these realities may 
 make their legitimate impression. The 
 emotional element is necessarily variable, 
 and in no case can be the main evidence of 
 assured relation to God. 
 
 As to the presence of emotion in the 
 religious life,, as in all other departments 
 of life, there are great differences with dif- 
 ferent dispositions. The emotional re- 
 sponse, therefore, in the relation to God 
 will necessarily vary with different persons. 
 Our very constitutions, too, both physical 
 and mental, in all cases forbid the possi- 
 bility of an absolutely unvarying emotional 
 state ; and the attempt to secure such a state 
 by constant strain can result only in ab- 
 normality and disaster. No situation in 
 life, and no personal relation, can stand 
 constant introspection. The reality of all 
 values best verifies itself not by continuous 
 inquiry on our part as to our emotional 
 response, but by simply and objectively 
 giving these great values opportunity with 
 
 123
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 us. If in these spheres of value there is 
 reality at all, it will vindicate itself upon 
 opportunity; it is our part simply to make 
 sure that the great value has this oppor- 
 tunity. The mood of health, whether phy- 
 sical, mental or spiritual, is preeminently 
 the objective mood, not the subjective or 
 introspective mood. 
 
 It is not only true that our first introduc- 
 tion to some great sphere of value usually 
 comes through the touch of some other life 
 that has already found its way into appre- 
 ciation of the value; but also, our best 
 growth in such appreciation often comes 
 through the sharing of another's vision. 
 Just as our acquaintance with any great 
 man may be deepened through seeing what 
 others have received from him, so our ac- 
 quaintance with God may deepen through 
 others' knowledge of him. It is rare that 
 any one person enters into complete under- 
 standing of a many-sided nature; different 
 sides of a great personality are revealed to 
 different persons. To know the home life, 
 the table-talk, the letters, the intimate 
 friends, of a great man, even though one 
 has his friendship himself, is to add much 
 to the significance of that friendship. A 
 124
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 revelation of a person to any is a revelation 
 in some measure to all; and it would be 
 greatly to limit our vision if we insisted on 
 confining the significance of any personal 
 relation simply to that which we ourselves 
 have discovered at first hand. We shall 
 be greatly helped in our acquaintance with 
 God by knowing the friends of God. 
 Much of the best that God has for us of 
 self-revelation comes thus intermediately 
 through others' lives. No friendship, in- 
 deed, has yet rendered its best until the 
 friends have made it more easy for each 
 other to believe in God and the spiritual 
 world. God is most easily incarnate in 
 human souls, and the deepest secret of 
 many a life must be found in the simple 
 answer which Charles Kingsley is said once 
 to have made to Mrs. Browning's question, 
 "What is the secret of your life? Tell me, 
 that I may make mine beautiful, too." He 
 replied, "I had a friend.'* 
 
 And so Martineau can say: "If we can- 
 not live at once and alone with Him, we 
 may at least live with those who have lived 
 with Him; and find, in our admiring love 
 for their purity, their truth, their goodness, 
 an intercession with His pity on our behalf. 
 
 125
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 To study the lives, to meditate the sorrows, 
 to commune with the thoughts, of the great 
 and holy men and women of this rich 
 world, is a sacred discipline, which deserves 
 at least to rank as the forecourt of the 
 temple of true worship, and may train the 
 tastes, ere we pass the very gate of heaven. 
 . . . We forfeit the chief source of dig- 
 nity and sweetness in life, next to the direct 
 communion with God, if we do not seek 
 converse with the greater minds that have 
 left their vestiges on the world." 
 
 All this is in exact line with Paul's idea 
 of the Church as an organic body, in which 
 each member needs every other; and it 
 rightly lays emphasis on the value of that 
 fellowship in all high things for which the 
 Church should stand. In the appreciation 
 of all great interests and great personali- 
 ties, we need constantly the correction of 
 others. Our own view is necessarily par- 
 tial and narrow. We need that greater 
 breadth and greater assurance of objective 
 reality, that can come only when we have 
 supplemented our own experience by that 
 of the great community of those who share 
 in the same life. And it must be plain 
 that the infinite riches of the infinite God 
 126
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 can be even approximately revealed to us 
 only so. 
 
 And it is just at this point that the Bible 
 has its greatest contribution to make to our 
 life. We know God as we know other 
 persons, by what he does; and the Bible 
 is the supremest record the world contains 
 of God's dealings with men. We are 
 helped, too, in our own life, by others' 
 experiences, and the Bible is such an 
 unmatched record of men's reaching out 
 after God. And as a god-like life is the 
 divinest proof that a man can give of the 
 being of a God, God specially speaks to us 
 in those lives that have sought to live the 
 god-like life; and there is no such record 
 of these lives as is to be found in this most 
 personal of all books. The men who write 
 here, too, are the world's great seers. We 
 share their insights and aspire in their 
 aspirations. We need them for any ade- 
 quate view of God. And, as we tarry in 
 the presence of these great and varied per- 
 sonalities, with their many-sided visions of 
 God, God can actually best speak to us; 
 far more than in our own unaided medita- 
 tion, is there here opportunity for growth 
 and broadening. And all these possibili- 
 ty
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 ties reach their climax in the supreme con- 
 crete presentment of God in Christ. In 
 him, above all, may we know God, see his 
 spirit, feel his love, understand his char- 
 acter, be drawn toward him, under the 
 spell of the contagion of Christ's life. 
 Christ becomes, thus, in supreme degree, 
 the way to God, the truth of God, the life 
 of God. 
 
 The objective mood is the normal mood 
 of friendship, whether with men or with 
 God. 
 
 It is only in the light of such considera- 
 tions as these that one can properly measure 
 the place of the emotional element in 
 friendship. And yet, many will be inclined, 
 doubtless, to urge still the question, Are 
 not our human friendships chiefly emo- 
 tional? It is worth while to look the facts 
 squarely in the face; for, in insisting upon 
 the fact that religion may be best conceived 
 as friendship with God, one does not wish 
 simply to sentimentalize. 
 
 It is doubtless true that friendship is the 
 chief source even of happiness ; but the real 
 amount and value of this happiness cannot 
 be measured by the number of emotional 
 thrills experienced. In most of the best 
 128
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 and most influential friendships of life, I 
 judge, we are not thinking primarily of 
 feeling. Feeling is allowed to take care of 
 itself; otherwise it is likely to become hys- 
 terical, and to take on the form of sham or 
 strained emotion. After all, the greatest 
 joy of friendship is joy in the revelation of 
 personal life, and in the deepening mean- 
 ing of life so given. In Phillips Brooks' 
 words, "There is as yet no culture, no 
 method of progress known to men, that is 
 so rich and complete as that which is min- 
 istered by a truly great friendship." It is 
 a great education to live with a soul per- 
 ennially fresh and absolutely honest; and 
 no mere emotion can sum up the signifi- 
 cance of such a friendship. 
 
 When one thinks, again, of the necessary 
 basis of a friendship worthy the name, 
 integrity, breadth and depth of personality, 
 deep community of interests, mutual self- 
 manifestation and answering trust, and 
 mutual self-giving, he cannot forget that 
 in all these there is much more than feeling, 
 though feeling is naturally involved. If 
 emotion is made the one standard and aim, 
 the friendship will soon go to pieces, even 
 in the most intimate possible relations of 
 I 129
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 life. If the friendship is to be an endur- 
 ing one, there must come to be a deep, 
 abiding satisfaction (with likely enough 
 much less of emotional thrill), that never- 
 theless brings one in the course of years to 
 feel that he begins to see what love is, and 
 makes him look back with a kind of pity 
 upon his first ideals of the meaning of 
 friendship. The world holds few things 
 so wonderful as the wonder of the growth 
 of a genuine love between two souls, deep- 
 ening, broadening, intertwining all their 
 lives, growing quite unconsciously, and in 
 
 v spite of full recognition of all limitations 
 and imperfections, bringing a sense of the 
 unity of the lives, of the necessity of one 
 
 "'\o the other. Such friendships are per- 
 haps the fcest proof the world affords of 
 love at the very heart of the universe. In 
 any friendship that deserves the name, the 
 whole man must be revealed. True emo- 
 tion, of course, will come here and there, 
 unsought, as a sort of natural outgrowth, 
 reflecting the unity of life already there; 
 but the sham emotion that must be manu- 
 factured, and concerning which one must 
 be anxious, is only an enemy of friendship, 
 neither a help to health nor a sign of health. 
 130
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 No, even our human friendships are not 
 chiefly emotional. Joy is there, deep, abid- 
 ing, and growing; but it is there not chiefly 
 as a reflection of itself, but as the out- 
 growth of a relation much more significant 
 than its emotional sign. No attempt to 
 measure the strength of our emotions can 
 reveal the true significance of any genuine 
 friendship. In like manner, no emotional 
 test will adequately measure what the reve- 
 lation of God in Christ means to the 
 thoughtful man. He who has truly built 
 his life upon the foundation of that reve- 
 lation knows that all the springs of his life ; 
 are in Christ; and he will best understand 
 what Christ really means to him not by the 
 emotional response he thinks he can dis- 
 cern, but by some glimpse of the barren- 
 ness that would come into his life if all of 
 thought and purpose and hope and aspira- 
 tion that have gathered about Christ were 
 withdrawn. 
 
 In every department of life, thus, the 
 only feeling that is of value is that which 
 comes spontaneously, which is not manu- 
 factured nor strained after. We may re- 
 joice rightly in the uplift of such emotion, 
 but it is not an experience to be striven after
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 for its own sake. Feeling is, after all, a 
 symptom and a sign of the normal life. If 
 joyful emotion is abnormally absent in the 
 religious life, its absence should lead us to 
 look for the cause, not to try artificially to 
 work up the feeling itself, which can result 
 only in injury and self-deception. The 
 abnormal absence of feeling may be due 
 to bodily conditions. It may be due to real 
 failure in duty, to disobedience to known 
 light. It may be due most of all simply 
 to failure to put ourselves, with time and 
 thought, in the presence of the great per- 
 sonalities, and the great truths. One does 
 not want the symptoms of health, but 
 health; and with health, the symptoms of 
 health will come. The only way, there- 
 fore, to right feeling in the religious life, 
 is through right conduct and right think- 
 ing. The control of feeling is not directly 
 'within our power; we train feeling by 
 obedience and by putting ourselves in the 
 presence of the great .objects that natu- 
 rally call out feeling. The great sources, 
 therefore, of our religious life, with its 
 appropriate emotional response, are not 
 introspective exercises, but sharing in the 
 insights and experiences and truth of others,
 
 THE SELF-FORGETFUL MOOD 
 
 putting ourselves in the presence of the 
 great objective forces that make for char- 
 acter and the spiritual life, entering into 
 large and comprehensive views of the Bible 
 as the greatest spiritual record of the race; 
 above all, living in the presence of the su- 
 preme self-revelation of God in Christ with 
 honest response to his spirit. By this 
 objective route life will grow, and feeling 
 will come therewith so far as it needs to 
 come. 
 
 133
 
 XVIII. REVERENCE FOR THE 
 PERSON 
 
 The highest condition of fine personal 
 relations, and therefore the most essential 
 condition for every friendship worthy the 
 name, is a deep sense of the value and 
 sacrednfss of the individual person, one's 
 own and that of his friends. 
 
 A high friendship requires, first of all, 
 self-respect, which is not conceit nor any 
 lack of true humility; for humility means 
 no underestimate of oneself or contempt 
 for oneself, but the grateful recognition of 
 the indispensable value and message of the 
 other, along with one's own value and mes- 
 sage. It is not only no virtue, but may be 
 a great source of weakness and failure that 
 one should think too meanly of himself. 
 Character, influence, and happiness, alike, 
 all require a fundamental respect for one- 
 self. How much seems to you to foe due 
 to you? How great a claim do you your- 
 self make on life? How thoroughly are 
 you persuaded that you are called to an 
 "imperishable work in the world" ? These 
 are the questions that determine in large 
 measure one's own attainment, his ability 
 to help others, and his joy in living. 
 
 For the only measure that we have for 
 134
 
 the significance of the life of others is the 
 thought of the significance of our own self. 
 The Golden Rule grows in breadth and 
 depth of application according to the mean- 
 ing that we put into the phrase "Whatso- 
 ever ye would that men should do unto 
 you." The sense of your obligation to 
 others, that is, will depend directly upon 
 your sense of the claim that you yourself 
 may rightly make upon life. How great 
 are you? How much must life bring you, 
 if you are to feel that your deepest needs 
 are satisfied? 
 
 No bare altruism, therefore, can suffice. 
 Every deepening of the sense of the signifi- 
 cance of oneself is a deepening at the same 
 time of thfc sense of the significance of 
 others, also. Every lowering of your own 
 claim upon life is a lowering at the same 
 time of your recognition of the claim of 
 others upon you. A man must therefore 
 be true to himself, to his own individuality, 
 to his peculiar contribution, to the sense of 
 his own calling, if he is to be at all what he 
 ought to be to others. As one of our Ger- 
 man philosophers has naively suggested, 
 if two of us are exactly alike, one of us 
 can be spared. For one's own character, 
 
 135
 
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 therefore, one must vehemently resist all 
 those tendencies, from whatever source, 
 that tend to draw him down from funda- 
 mental self-respect. 
 
 "The hands that love us often are the hands 
 That softly close our eyes and draw us earth-ward. 
 We give them all the largess of our life 
 Not this, not all the world, contenteth them, 
 Till we renounce our rights as living souls." 
 
 And, as Black says, "we cannot renounce 
 our rights as living souls without losing 
 our souls." In the ranks of one's professed 
 friends, it is not impossible that one should 
 find, in some one's deft phrase, "exploiters 
 of souls;" and one may not allow his life 
 and personality simply to be exploited by 
 another. He has a quality, a value, a mes- \ 
 sage, and a mission, that are solely, indi- 
 vidually his own, and for these he must 
 stand; from the realization of these he can- 
 not be excused; and he must resist even the 
 hands that love him if they would draw 
 him away from his real self. There is no 
 sin against friendship so grave as that 
 which allows irreverent associations to take 
 the place of the best. For one's own soul's 
 sake, therefore, one must have self-rever- 
 
 136
 
 REVERENCE FOR THE PERSON 
 
 ence, reverence for the self that God meant 
 him to be. 
 
 And if one is to have much to give in 
 any personal relation, he needs to remem- 
 ber, once again, that ultimately he has only 
 himself to give. If he does not value that 
 individual self, but falls into mere imita- 
 tion, he has practically no gift to make. 
 The great discovery of life is the finding 
 of oneself, the discovery of that message 
 that one can believe has been given to him 
 to stand for. That which men need from 
 us is not the echo of some other, but the 
 net result of our own experience, that 
 which means something to us, which we 
 can say with conviction, and speak out with 
 joy. The larger, therefore, our own claim 
 on life, the larger must be the self that we 
 have to give in friendship. My friend 
 needs, quite as much as I, that I should j 
 have true self-reverence. 
 
 Moreover, it is impossible that that deep 
 revelation of one's self which is essential 
 to intimate friendship should ever be made 
 where the spirit of the other is essentially 
 profane and blasphemous. He, who can 
 consent to tattle as an idle tale that sacred 
 bit of your life which you have opened up 
 
 137
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 to him in the hope of giving help at a time 
 of mortal peril, can never be your friend. 
 From such you must shut yourself. You 
 have no other recourse. You have cast 
 your pearls before swine and they have 
 trampled them under their feet and turned 
 again to rend you. 
 
 And the joy of living, too, that I may 
 bring into friendship, requires this funda- 
 mental self-respect. Nothing can give such 
 meaning to life as to know that one has a 
 part, a real part, his own unique part, the 
 part of a son of God, to play in life, that 
 he has his own individual flavor that no 
 other soul can exactly reproduce. He has 
 the joy of a divine calling, of a divinely 
 given individuality, and the joy of giving 
 this in those personal relations in which he 
 is placed. 
 
 That reverence for the person that is the 
 highest condition of fine personal relations 
 requires first of all, then, self-reverence. 
 
 And no friendship may yield its best 
 without a corresponding reverence for 
 others, for both their liberty and their per- 
 sonality. For respect for the liberty of the 
 other is essential if one is not himself to 
 become a slave, as Fichte long ago pointed 
 138
 
 REVERENCE FOR THE PERSON 
 
 out. Character inevitably deteriorates 
 where one has the petty desire to play 
 tyrant, to show his own power. Few men 
 can stand the test of irresponsible power, 
 though probably all men desire such power. 
 But the peril of it is to be resisted for one's 
 life's sake. For no man may lord it over 
 another, and himself remain true man. 
 
 Nor is It possible to win your friend to 
 his own best while you take this dominat- 
 ing attitude toward him. Neither child 
 nor adult can come to character where there 
 is no chance for choice. There is no moral 
 victory through a simple conflict of wills 
 and the final compelled subjection of one 
 to the other. There is character only 
 where the right purpose is taken on will- 
 ingly and gladly. Every relation of the 
 family, as every relation in the more pub- 
 lic life, suffers where a man forgets his 
 respect for the liberty of the other. You 
 may not, therefore, choose for your friend 
 in any relation of life. You may not lay 
 your will in insistent dominance upon his 
 will. You may not even save him, in spite 
 of himself, from his own blunders. For 
 you can save him from no wrong so deep 
 as the wrong of violating essentially the 
 
 139
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 center of his own being. Even in the case 
 of a child, there are plain limits within 
 which your choices for him must be made. 
 
 And happiness requires that a man 
 should have a sphere of action of his own, 
 a chance for decision and choice. And no 
 elaborate devices for making others happy 
 can furnish any substitute for the simple 
 willingness to allow them room for their 
 own choices, for their own self-expression. 
 Joy in friendship requires this abundant 
 room for the liberty and the individuality 
 of your friend. It is impossible that he 
 should give you what it is in him to give, 
 while you seek to dominate his will. Even 
 capacity for work decreases where there is 
 no joy in the work, and joy in work re- 
 quires freedom. 
 
 And respect for my friend means, even 
 more than respect for his liberty, a rev- 
 erence for his personality, the sense of his 
 sacredness and inestimable value, that he 
 is a child of God, with an inner holy of 
 holies into which no one, not even the 
 parent, may force his way. To fail here 
 in our personal relations is to fail at the 
 center. The highest test of a man or of a 
 civilization is the measure of respect for 
 140
 
 REVERENCE FOR THE PERSON 
 
 the person. For our own sake, therefore, 
 even in the most intimate relations of life, 
 we must not override the personality of 
 others. We force no doors in friendship, 
 but, like the Christ in Revelation, we stand 
 reverently at the door without, to knock. 
 And only if the door be opened from with- 
 in, may we come in to sup with our friend 
 and he with us. There are those who 
 count that a measure of the intimacy of 
 their friendships which is rather a measure 
 of the degree in which they have degraded 
 them; for the highest friendship preserves, 
 always, this deep sense of reverence. 
 
 And as certainly as one cannot come to 
 his own best without this sense of the value 
 and sacredness of the person, so certainly 
 is it impossible for him to bring to another 
 what he ought without this same reverence. 
 Far beyond the influence of the words we 
 speak, is the influence of the spirit that 
 quite unconsciously we manifest. Even the 
 very meaning of influence changes for one 
 who has entered into the significance of this 
 highest requirement of friendship the 
 reverence for the personality of one's 
 friends. For to influence another is not to 
 dominate him; that is only tyranny, only 
 
 141
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the putting him in bondage. The only in- 
 fluence that the man of high ideals may 
 covet is the influence that leads another, 
 not to act under the mere impelling force 
 of his personality, but that draws him to 
 choose for himself what in his own highest 
 moments he knows he ought to choose. It 
 is a gross betrayal of trust when the" older 
 and wiser man, from his vantage ground 
 of trusted authority, imposes his will upon 
 another, or leads him to action which he 
 will vainly regret when the spell of the 
 superior presence is removed. It is poor 
 business for any true man to be making 
 disciples in the sense of securing a body of 
 followers who are content passively to imi- 
 tate and to echo him, instead of helping 
 them to come to the realization of their 
 own true selves. The naturally strong 
 willed have grave need constantly to guard 
 against the sin of tyranny, of overriding, 
 for their own pleasure or success, the per- 
 sonalities of those gathered about them. 
 In the very name of affection the greatest 
 injuries are sometimes so wrought. There 
 are fathers and mothers, husbands and 
 wives, and friends of every degree, who 
 are not willing that those about them should 
 142
 
 REVERENCE FOR THE PERSON 
 
 have the opportunity to live out their own 
 lives. 
 
 It is not less true that there is no condi- 
 tion of happiness in friendship so great as 
 this same reverence for the person as such. 
 The heedless insistence that people shall be 
 happy in the way in which you please, and 
 not in their own way, may not always pro- 
 voke rebellion, but it makes genuine happi- 
 ness impossible. There are some appar- 
 ently smooth-running households that are 
 smooth-running, not because the relations 
 are what they ought to be, but simply be- 
 cause five people in the home have decided 
 that the only way to have peace is to allow 
 the sixth to have his own way. And this 
 sixth person may very likely think of him- 
 self as peculiarly devoted to the happiness 
 of the other inmates of the house. But 
 his stPxidpoint is that he knows far better 
 thaii any of them what is good for them, 
 and they shall have what he thinks is good 
 for them, whether they like it or not. He 
 is able, thus, with good conscience, to main- 
 tain his intolerant self-will, and at the same 
 time to seem to himself devoted to the hap- 
 piness of his household. These benevolent 
 tyrants, who have a fully developed plan 
 
 143
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 for every soul they meet, and are even 
 ready to go to considerable lengths of self- 
 sacrifice of a sort, if they may only be al- 
 lowed to carry out their own plan, may 
 well be reminded of those suggestive words 
 of Charlotte Yonge, that none of us are 
 likely to take too deeply to heart, "It is a 
 great thing to sacrifice; it is a greater to 
 consent not to sacrifice in one's own way." 
 Nor is it true, as seems often so care- 
 lessly and disastrously assumed, that the 
 reverent spirit is needed at the beginning 
 of our friendships, but may easily be dis- 
 carded later. I suppose the world knows 
 nowhere such blasphemous desecrations as 
 sometimes take place within the limits of 
 a close personal relation, where perchance 
 to the eye of a possible observer no law, 
 human or divine, would seem to have been 
 violated, and where the violator himself, 
 in his insolent assurance that his will must 
 be necessarily the best for all concerned, 
 might even pride himself on the justness 
 and integrity of his purposes. The inner 
 cruelties of conscious rectitude seem to me 
 sometimes to be even more full of anguish 
 than the wrongs wrought by the merely 
 brutal; for it is only those who have gone 
 144
 
 REVERENCE FOR THE PERSON 
 
 some distance in the road toward friend- 
 ship to whom are exposed the highest sanc- 
 tities of life. I think it is hardly possible 
 for one to cultivate, in this matter, too deli- 
 cate and sensitive a conscience. Certainly 
 the best in friendship can come only to the 
 reverent. 
 
 For that best self that I would bring to 
 my friendship, for that best service for my 
 friend that I would render, for the joy in 
 friendship that I would feel and help him 
 to know, there is no condition, then, so 
 deep-going as this of reverence for the per- 
 son, one's own and that of the other. 
 
 And that reverence cannot be partial. 
 The spirit that is required in any friendship 
 is the spirit of reverence for the person as 
 such, and one may not confine its true 
 manifestation to a single relation, or to a 
 single person. He cannot show it at its 
 best anywhere, unless he feel it every- 
 where. We vainly cheat ourselves when 
 we dream that we can be, even in our best 
 friendship, all we ought, while in any other 
 relation we still cherish the spirit of selfish 
 contempt. 
 
 And it is this fact of the unity of our 
 J
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 spiritual lives, and of the deep-going nature 
 of this spirit of reverence for the person, 
 that makes it so certain to Christ that there 
 is no surer road to the vision and the ac- 
 quaintance of God himself. It is the pure 
 in heart to whom it is promised that they 
 shall "see God." The highest manifesta- 
 tion of the loving life is to be found in this 
 spirit of reverence, and at no point in char- 
 acter does one so surely share in the very 
 life of God. And if this deep persistent 
 spirit of reverence is needed in all our 
 human relations, much more must it be 
 demanded in this relation to God. The 
 completest personal self-revelation, whether 
 of men or of God, can be made only to the 
 reverent. We all need to lay to heart 
 Herrmann's words : "There can be no com- 
 munion with God without awe under the 
 sense of the holy power of goodness; when 
 that awe ceases, communion with God 
 ceases also." 1 The very atmosphere of the 
 life of the disciple of Christ is reverence, 
 his first petition to the Father in Heaven, 
 "Hallowed be thy name." 
 
 For friendship, human and divine, rev- 
 erence is a supreme condition. 
 
 1 Communion viith God, p. 272. 
 146
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S WAYS
 
 XIX. EXPRESSION 
 
 Emerson says somewhere that there is 
 more love than is expressed; and one cer- 
 tainly hopes that he may be right. For it 
 seems clear enough that there is no such 
 expression of love as there ought to be; 
 that in very many of even the fairly close 
 relations of life there is great lack of ex- 
 pressed appreciation, all too little recogni- 
 tion of service done, and much needless 
 heart-hunger. And yet friendship cannot 
 ignore the fundamental psychological law 
 that no desire, feeling or aspiration, no 
 thought of any kind, is fully ours until we 
 have expressed it, and is the more com- 
 pletely ours the more perfect the expres- 
 sion. From this law friendship cannot be 
 absolved, and the results of disobedience 
 to the law will register themselves inevit- 
 ably in the greater poverty of the personal 
 relation. 
 
 What is the expression needed if a true 
 friendship is to grow as it ought ? Perhaps 
 it might well be summed up in simply say- 
 ing that if a friendship is to deepen, the 
 friends must simply and steadily fulfil the 
 conditions that make this deepening pos- 
 sible. And as one thinks of the basis that 
 we have seen must be laid for any worthy 
 
 149
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 friendship, he cannot help seeing that the 
 deepening of the friendship must mean that 
 the friends do not forget that on each side 
 integrity, breadth, and depth of personal- 
 ity are to be preserved ; that they are to go 
 forward into a still completer community 
 of interest; that there must be increasing 
 self-revelation and its natural growing re- 
 sponse in trust; and that in their mutual 
 self-giving there must be an enlarging gift. 
 One is not fulfilling the conditions for a 
 deepening and enriching friendship where 
 these requisites to significant personal rela- 
 tions are ignored; and the kind of expres- 
 sion, first of all, for which the deepening 
 friendship calls, is, then, this steady, per- 
 sistent fulfilling of fundamental conditions. 
 It may also be said, that the expression 
 called for in a true friendship only corre- 
 sponds to that positive self-control, for 
 which we found that both the psychological 
 and Christian standards called. For that 
 basic self-control does not merely ask that 
 in a friendship the friends should simply 
 keep themselves from bad things, but it 
 asks rather for that maintenance of them- 
 selves at their best that sets them naturally 
 forward in union in high purpose and in 
 150
 
 EXPRESSION 
 
 great and worthy enterprise. Those who 
 would be true friends can least of all allow 
 themselves to forget the truth so nobly 
 phrased by Beecher: "Men are free in pro- 
 portion to the number of spheres of obedi- 
 ence that they can fill. Laws are not 
 shackles to impede, but tools and harnesses 
 to assist human force. The peculiarity of 
 our early ancestry was not that they loved 
 liberty; everything in heaven, on earth and 
 in the sea does that; but they discerned the 
 royal thought, which others had missed 
 who threw off law to find liberty, that by 
 taking on law men are made free. Obedi- 
 ence to God's law is the highest liberty to 
 which humanity may ever reach." That 
 maintenance of oneself at his best even 
 under provocation, that having one's pow- 
 ers fully in hand for great achievement, 
 that meekness of positive self-control, de- 
 mands, then, for its realization in friend- 
 ship, expression, expression of one's best 
 self in one's best work. 
 
 And the objective mood, too, which we 
 have found to be in preeminent degree the 
 requisite mood for friendship, looks to such 
 outward expression of the friendly life. 
 However intimate a friendship may be,
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the friends may not forget that they do 
 not exist simply for each other, that they 
 have ideals to which they must be true, 
 and worthy work to do; and those ideals 
 they must objectively realize, and that wor- 
 thy work they must do, or else be less 
 worthy of each other. 
 
 The law of expression, thus, in any per- 
 sonal relation, means much more than that 
 one should simply tell his love, say what 
 the relation means. Adequate expression, 
 even in such word, is important and 
 needed, and all too rare. But the law goes 
 beyond this, as we have seen. For one is 
 not really expressing his love in a worthy 
 friendship if he is not putting, in every 
 way, his best self into that friendship, and 
 that must mean that he is seeking such 
 service and work as will enable him to 
 express his best self. For the need of 
 expression in this deepest sense in any 
 friendship may be seen in this, that a 
 friend must wish to give the largest pos- 
 sible service that one soul can do for 
 another. And there seem to be just two 
 services of prime significance that can be 
 so rendered: one may be, first of all, the 
 man he ought to be, and lay daily the un- 
 152
 
 conscious impress of a high and noble 
 character upon his friend; and he may 
 share with his friend his own best vision, 
 the vision of those ideals and motives and 
 personalities by which he himself most of 
 all lives. Beyond these two services, there 
 is nothing of prime significance that one 
 man may do for another. But it is impos- 
 sible to render either of these services 
 without expression, in high activity. Speech 
 has its place, no doubt, in both, and an 
 important place; but the expression in ac- 
 tion speaks louder than any words can 
 speak, and the true friend may not fail in 
 this expression. 
 
 But one may not leave the discussion 
 of friendship's way of expression, without 
 remembering in particular that the love 
 itself, to which the friendship bears wit- 
 ness, needs manifestation in many common 
 ways. Many friendships, many homes, 
 many other more or less intimate relations 
 of life, suffer from undue repression; and 
 one needs to be reminded that love needs 
 expression in word, in care to please in 
 little matters, in spoken gratitude, in the 
 willingness mutually to share burdens, in 
 glad sacrifice one for the other. We cheat 
 
 153
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 ourselves in our friendships, when any of 
 these modes of expression are wanting. 
 And of these varied expressions of friend- 
 ship, none perhaps deserves greater em- 
 phasis than the possibilities of expression, 
 or failure in expression, in small matters. 
 In the words of another, "When we look 
 back on this life from the heights of the 
 heavenly world, we shall doubtless marvel 
 that the dearest friends, who would have 
 died for one another if need be, could con- 
 sent to give each other so much pain with 
 little unkindnesses. How strange it will 
 seem then that we were so exacting in mat- 
 ters so unimportant; that we were so care- 
 less of the sensitive places in a fond heart 
 and touched them so roughly ; that we were 
 so ready to answer an impatient word with 
 a more impatient one; that we were so 
 forgetful of the little ministries of love that 
 are worth so much more when unsolicited." 
 
 As I have elsewhere pointed out, 1 there 
 is no one of these simple and common 
 things that has not a large service to render 
 in making more real, more strong, and 
 more tender our relation to God, as well 
 as to men. 
 
 1 Letters to Sunday School Teachers, pp. in ff. 
 154
 
 XX. PERSONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 One has not reached the heart of friend- 
 ship until he recognizes that, after all has 
 been said, its one great means is personal 
 association. It sometimes seems as if the 
 single, all-inclusive counsel that one need 
 ever care to give to another might be 
 summed up in the sentence, Stay persistently 
 in the presence of the best in the sphere In 
 which you seek attainment. All the rest 
 will take care of itself. Hear persistently 
 the best in music. See persistently the best 
 in art. Read persistently the best in litera- 
 ture. Stay persistently in the presence of 
 the best in character. Results must follow 
 such association with the best. Disciple- 
 ship in this sense is of the very essence of 
 growth in life. And the law holds pre- 
 eminently for attainment in real living, for 
 achievement In character and influence and 
 happiness. The world knows no means so 
 powerful and persuasive, no road so cer- 
 tain, into any of the higher achievements of 
 life, as this way of personal association. 
 
 And he who would grow into larger and 
 richer friendships must recognize first of 
 all that, if his friend is in truth worthy of 
 such a friendship as he seeks, the great way 
 is by personal association. One cannot 
 
 155
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 grab up and hurry off with the fine fruits 
 of friendship. No friendship that counts 
 for much with either men or God can be- 
 come one's own without the giving of 
 time, of thought, of attention, of honest 
 response. In Emerson's words : "The laws 
 of friendship are austere and eternal, of 
 one web with the laws of nature and of 
 morals. But we have aimed at a swift and 
 petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. 
 We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole 
 garden of God, which many summers and 
 many winters must ripen." No friendship 
 is so high, so fine, or so assured that it does 
 not need that the friends should take time 
 to be together, that they should be willing 
 to think enough to enter with some appre- 
 ciation into the thought and experience of 
 each other, and that they should make 
 honest response to the best in each other's 
 character and in each other's vision. 
 
 And neither in our human relations, nor 
 in our relations to God, can we safely for- 
 get the special value of occasional longer 
 times together. It is very easy, after all, 
 to fall into ruts even in what we think our 
 best friendships, and in our most intimate 
 home relations. We keep putting off the 
 
 156
 
 PERSONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 time for a fuller understanding, for a more 
 intelligent sympathy, and, even if with some 
 misgiving, we allow ourselves to stay on 
 the surface of each other's lives. We can 
 make no sudden dive into the depths of 
 another life. It takes time and thought, 
 the leisure of that occasional longer time 
 that friendship greatly needs. It seems 
 possible that two lives may be, as it were, 
 welded by the impact of a common daily 
 environment into a kind of unity that is 
 not to be underestimated; but one may 
 doubt whether the deeper, tenderer inter- 
 penetration of lives can so come. It seems 
 a small thing that the husband and wife, 
 the father and son, the two friends and 
 companions in work should have the two 
 or three weeks practically alone, shut up to 
 each other; and yet, great results in enrich- 
 ment of life may turn on so small a cause. 
 The daily few minutes in the presence of 
 the thought and life of Christ have very 
 much to give to any life; but the occasional 
 hours may bring a vision of the meaning 
 of Christ that no few minutes can ever 
 give. ^ 
 
 It is this law of personal association, 
 then, that shows at once how great may be 
 
 157
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 the significance in the relation to God of 
 the daily use of the Bible and of prayer. 
 They are no magical means for getting 
 mysterious results. If this law of personal 
 association holds at all in our relation to 
 God, they stand among the most natural 
 of all means for growth into the divine 
 friendship. It is plain good sense so to 
 recognize them. 
 
 But it should be still more plainly said 
 that the personal association for which 
 friendship, human or divine, calls, is no 
 mere passive being together, but involves 
 rather, if it is ever to come to its best, 
 active sharing in the riches of one anoth- 
 er's lives, sharing in great experiences, 
 sharing in dominant interests, sharing in 
 service of great causes, sharing in sacrifices 
 for great common ends, sharing in great 
 common personal loyalties and friendships. 
 
 And it needs hardly to be pointed out 
 that this needed community of life is even 
 more requisite in our relation to God than 
 in our relation to men. And the very 
 greatest service that the Bible has to offer 
 to men is this opportunity of sharing in 
 just these ways in the wide range and deep- 
 going significance of Christ's life. In 
 158
 
 PERSONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 Phillips Brooks' words : "Surely there is no 
 more beautiful sight to see in all this 
 world full as it is of beautiful adjust- 
 ments and mutual ministrations than the 
 growth of two friends' natures who, as they 
 grow old together, are always fathoming 
 with newer needs deeper depths of each 
 other's life, and opening richer veins of 
 one another's helpfulness. And this best 
 culture of personal friendship is taken up 
 and made in its infinite completion, the 
 gospel method of the progressive saving of 
 the soul by Christ." 
 
 159
 
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