Then you reduce religion to a common Friendship? A common
Friendship--who talks of a _common_ Friendship? There is no such thing
in the world.
On earth no word is more sublime. Friendship is the nearest thing we
know to what religion is. God is love. And to make religion akin to
Friendship is simply to give it the highest expression conceivable by
man. But if by demurring to "a common friendship" is meant a protest
against the greatest and the holiest in religion being spoken of in
intelligible terms, then I am afraid the objection is all too real.
Men always look for a mystery when one talks of sanctification, some
mystery apart from that which must ever be mysterious wherever Spirit
works. It is thought some peculiar secret lies behind it, some occult
experience which only the initiated know. Thousands of persons go to
church every Sunday hoping to solve this mystery. At meetings, at
conferences, many a time they have reached what they thought was the
very brink of it, but somehow no further revelation came. Poring over
religious books, how often were they not within a paragraph of it; the
next page, the next sentence, would discover all, and they would be
borne on a flowing tide forever. But nothing happened. The next
sentence and the next page were read, and still it eluded them; and
though the promise of its coming kept faithfully up to the end, the
last chapter found them still pursuing.
Why did nothing happen? Because there was nothing to happen--nothing
of the kind they were looking for. Why did it elude them? Because
there was no "it." When shall we learn that the pursuit of holiness is
simply