many practical fruits of friendship to the individual. These may be
classified and subdivided almost endlessly, and indeed in every special
friendship the fruits of it will differ according to the character and
closeness of the tie, and according to the particular gifts of each of
the partners. One man can give to his friend some quality of sympathy,
or some kind of help, or can supply some social need which is lacking
in his character or circumstances. Perhaps it is not possible to get a
better division of the subject than the three noble fruits of
friendship which Bacon enumerates--peace in the affections, support of
the judgment, and aid in all actions and occasions.
First of all there is the _satisfaction of the heart_. We cannot live
a self-centred life, without feeling that we are missing the true glory
of life. We were made for social intercourse, if only that the highest
qualities of our nature might have an opportunity for development. The
joy, which a true friendship gives, reveals the existence of the want
of it, perhaps previously unfelt. It is a sin against ourselves to let
our affections wither. This sense of incompleteness is an argument in
favor of its possible satisfaction; our need is an argument for its
fulfilment. Our hearts demand love, as truly as our bodies demand
food. We cannot live among men, suspicious, and careful of our own
interests, and fighting for our own hand, without doing dishonor and
hurt to our own nature. To be for ourselves puts the whole world
against us. To harden our heart hardens the heart of the universe.
We need sympathy, and therefore we crave for friendship. Even the most
perfect of the sons of men felt this need of intercourse of the heart.
Christ, in one aspect the most self-contained of men, showed this human
longing all through His life. He ever desired opportunities for
enlargement of heart--in His disciples, in an inner circle within the
circle, in the household of Bethany. "Will ye also go away?" He asked
in the crisis of His career. "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" He
sighed in His great agony. He was perfectly human, and therefore felt
the lack of friendship. The higher our relationships with each other
are, the closer is the intercourse demanded. Highest of all in the
things of the soul, we feel that the true Christian life cannot be
lived in the desert, but must be a life among men, and this because it
is a life of joy as well as of service. We feel that, for the founding
of our life and the completion of our powers, we need intercourse with
our kind. Stunted affections dwarf the whole man. We live by
admiration, hope, and love, and these can be developed only in the
social life.
The sweetest and most stable pleasures also are never selfish. They
are derived from fellowship, from common tastes, and mutual sympathy.
Sympathy is not a quality merely needed in adversity. It is needed as
much when the sun shines. Indeed, it is more easily obtained in
adversity than in prosperity. It is comparatively easy to sympathize
with a friend's _failure_, when we are not so true-hearted about his
success. When a man is down in his luck, he can be sure of at least a
certain amount of good-fellowship to which he can appeal. It is
difficult to keep a little touch of malice, or envy, out of
congratulations. It is sometimes easier to weep with those who weep,
than to rejoice with those who rejoice. This difficulty is felt not
with people above us, or with little connection with us, but with our
equals. When a friend succeeds, there may be a certain regret which
has not always an evil root, but is due to a fear that he is getting
beyond our reach, passing out of our sphere, and perhaps will not need
or desire our friendship so much as before. It is a dangerous feeling
to give way to, but up to a certain point is natural and legitimate. A
perfect friendship would not have room for such grudging sympathy, but
would rejoice more for the other's success than for his own. The
envious, jealous man never can be a friend. His mean spirit of
detraction and insinuating ill-will kills friendship at its birth.
Plutarch records a witty remark about Plistarchus, who was told that a
notorious railer had spoken well of him. "I'll lay my life," said he,
"somebody has told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man
living."
For true satisfaction of the heart, there must be a fount of sympathy
from which to draw in all the vicissitudes of life. Sorrow asks for
sympathy, aches to let its griefs be known and shared by a kindred
spirit. To find such, is to dispel the loneliness from life. To have
a heart which we can trust, and into which we can pour our griefs and
our doubts and our fears, is already to take the edge from grief, and
the sting from doubt, and the shade from fear.
Joy also demands that its joy should be shared. The man who has found
his sheep that was lost calls together his neighbors, and bids them
rejoice with him because he has found the sheep that was lost. Joy is
more social than grief. Some forms of grief desire only to creep away
into solitude like a wounded beast to its lair, to suffer alone and to
die alone. But joy finds its counterpart in the sunshine and the
flowers and the birds and the little children, and enters easily into
all the movements of life. Sympathy will respond to a friend's
gladness, as well as vibrate to his grief. A simple generous
friendship will thus add to the joy, and will divide the sorrow.
The religious life, in spite of all the unnatural experiments of
monasticism and all its kindred ascetic forms, is preëminently a life
of friendship. It is individual in its root, and social in its fruits.
It is when two or three are gathered together that religion becomes a
fact for the world. The joy of religion will not be hid and buried in
a man's own heart. "Come, see a man that told me all that ever I did,"
is the natural outcome of the first wonder and the first faith. It
spreads from soul to soul by the impact of soul on soul, from the
original impact of the great soul of God.
Christ's ideal is the ideal of a Kingdom, men banded together in a
common cause, under common laws, serving the same purpose of love. It
is meant to take effect upon man in all his social relationships, in
the home, in the city, in the state. Its greatest triumphs have been
made through friendship, and it in turn has ennobled and sanctified the
bond. The growth of the Kingdom depends on the sanctified working of
the natural ties among men. It was so at the very start; John the
Baptist pointed out the Christ to John the future Apostle and to
Andrew; Andrew findeth his own brother Simon Peter; Philip findeth
Nathanael; and so society through its network of relations took into
its heart the new message. The man who has been healed must go and
tell those who are at home, must declare it to his friends, and seek
that they also should share in his great discovery.
The very existence of the Church as a body of believers is due to this
necessity of our nature, which demands opportunity for the interchange
of Christian sentiment. The deeper the feeling, the greater is the joy
of sharing it with another. There is a strange felicity, a wondrous
enchantment, which comes from true intimacy of heart, and close
communion of soul, and the result is more than mere fleeting joy. When
it is shared in the deepest thoughts and highest aspirations, when it
is built on a common faith, and lives by a common hope, it brings
perfect peace. No friendship has done its work until it reaches the
supremest satisfaction of spiritual communion.
Besides this satisfaction of the heart, friendship also gives
_satisfaction of the mind_. Most men have a certain natural diffidence
in coming to conclusions and forming opinions for themselves. We
rarely feel confident, until we have secured the agreement of others in
whom we trust. There is always a personal equation in all our
judgments, so that we feel that they require to be amended by
comparison with those of others. Doctors ask for a consultation, when
a case becomes critical. We all realize the advantage of taking
counsel. To ask for advice is a benefit, whether we follow the advice
or no. Indeed, the best benefit often comes from the opportunity of
testing our own opinion and finding it valid. Sometimes the very
statement of the case is enough to prove it one thing or the other. An
advantage is reaped from a sympathetic listener, even although our
friend be unable to elucidate the matter by his special sagacity or
experience. Friends in counsel gain much intellectually. They acquire
something approaching to a standard of judgment, and are enabled to
classify opinions, and to make up the mind more accurately and
securely. Through talking a subject over with another, one gets fresh
side-lights into it, new avenues open up, and the whole question
becomes larger and richer. Bacon says, "Friendship maketh daylight in
the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts: neither
is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man
receiveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is,
that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and
understanding do clarify and break up in the communicating and
discoursing with another; he tosseth his thoughts more easily; he
marshalleth them more orderly; he seeth how they look when they are
turned into words; finally he waxeth wiser than himself; and that more
by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation."
We must have been struck with the brilliancy of our own conversation
and the profundity of our own thoughts, when we shared them with one,
with whom we were in sympathy at the time. The brilliancy was not
ours; it was the reflex action which was the result of the communion.
That is why the effect of different people upon us is different, one
making us creep into our shell and making us unable almost to utter a
word; another through some strange magnetism enlarging the bounds of
our whole being and drawing the best out of us. The true insight after
all is love. It clarifies the intellect, and opens the eyes to much
that was obscure.
Besides the subjective influence, there may be the great gain of honest
counsel. A faithful friend can be trusted not to speak merely soft
words of flattery. It is often the spectator who sees most of the
game, and, if the spectator is at the same time keenly interested in
us, he can have a more unbiased opinion than we can possibly have. He
may have to say that which may wound our self-esteem; he may have to
speak for correction rather than for commendation; but "Faithful are
the wounds of a friend." The flatterer will take good care not to
offend our susceptibilities by too many shocks of wholesome
truth-telling; but a friend will seek our good, even if he must say the
thing we hate to hear at the time.
This does not mean that a friend should always be what is called
plain-spoken. Many take advantage of what they call a true interest in
our welfare, in order to rub gall into our wounds. The man who boasts
of his frankness and of his hatred of flattery, is usually not
frank--but only brutal. A true friend will never needlessly hurt, but
also will never let slip occasions through cowardice. To speak the
truth in love takes off the edge of unpleasantness, which so often is
found in truth-speaking. And however the wound may smart, in the end
we are thankful for the faithfulness which caused it. "Let the
righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it
shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head."
In our relations with each other, there is usually more advantage to be
reaped from friendly encouragement, than from friendly correction.
True criticism does not consist, as so many critics seem to think, in
depreciation, but in appreciation; in putting oneself sympathetically
in another's position, and seeking to value the real worth of his work.
There are more lives spoiled by undue harshness, than by undue
gentleness. More good work is lost from want of appreciation than from
too much of it; and certainly it is not the function of friendship to
do the critic's work. Unless carefully repressed, such a spirit
becomes censorious, or, worse still, spiteful, and has often been the
means of losing a friend. It is possible to be kind, without giving
crooked counsel, or oily flattery; and it is possible to be true,
without magnifying faults, and indulging in cruel rebukes.
Besides the joy of friendship, and its aid in matters of counsel, a
third of its noble fruits is the direct _help_ it can give us in the
difficulties of life. It gives strength to the character. It sobers
and steadies through the responsibility for each other which it means.
When men face the world together, and are ready to stand shoulder to
shoulder, the sense of comradeship makes each strong. This help may
not often be called into play, but just to know that it is there if
needed is a great comfort, to know that if one fall the other will lift
him up. The very word friendship suggests kindly help and aid in
distress. Shakespeare applies the word in _King Lear_ to an inanimate
thing with this meaning of helpfulness,--
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
Some _friendship_ will it lend you 'gainst the tempest.
Sentiment does not amount to much, if it is not an inspiring force to
lead to gentle and to generous deeds, when there is need. The fight is
not so hard, when we know that we are not alone, but that there are
some who think of us, and pray for us, and would gladly help us if they
get the opportunity.
Comradeship is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces
in life. A mere strong man, however capable, and however singly
successful, is of little account by himself. There is no glamour of
romance in his career. The kingdom of Romance belongs to David, not to
Samson--to David, with his eager, impetuous, affectionate nature, for
whom three men went in the jeopardy of life to bring him a drink of
water; and all for love of him. It is not the self-centred,
self-contained hero, who lays hold of us; it is ever the comradeship of
heroes. Dumas' Three Musketeers (and the Gascon who made a greater
fourth), with their oath, "Each for all, and all for each," inherit
that kingdom of Romance, with all that ever have been tied in bands of
love.
Robertson of Brighton in one of his letters tells how a friend of his
had, through cowardice or carelessness, missed an opportunity of
putting him right on a point with which he was charged, and so left him
defenceless against a slander. With his native sweetness of soul, he
contents himself with the exclamation, "How rare it is to have a friend
who will defend you thoroughly and boldly!" Yet that is just one of
the loyal things a friend can do, sometimes when it would be impossible
for a man himself to do himself justice with others. Some things,
needful to be said or done under certain circumstances, cannot be
undertaken without indelicacy by the person concerned, and the keen
instinct of a friend should tell him that he is needed. A little
thoughtfulness would often suggest things that could be done for our
friends, that would make them feel that the tie which binds us to them
is a real one. That man is rich indeed, who possesses thoughtful,
tactful friends, with whom he feels safe when present, and in whose
hands his honor is secure when absent. If there be no loyalty, there
can be no great friendship. Most of our friendships lack the
distinction of greatness, because we are not ready for little acts of
service. Without these our love dwindles down to a mere sentiment, and
ceases to be the inspiring force for good to both lives, which it was
at the beginning.
The aid we may receive from friendship may be of an even more powerful,
because of a more subtle, nature than material help. It may be a
safeguard against temptation. The recollection of a friend whom we
admire is a great force to save us from evil, and to prompt us to good.
The thought of his sorrow in any moral break-down of ours will often
nerve us to stand firm. What would my friend think of me, if I did
this, or consented to this meanness? Could I look him in the face
again, and meet the calm pure gaze of his eye? Would it not be a blot
on our friendship, and draw a veil over our intercourse? No friendship
is worth the name which does not elevate, and does not help to nobility
of conduct and to strength of character. It should give a new zest to
duty, and a new inspiration to all that is good.
Influence is the greatest of all human gifts, and we all have it in
some measure. There are some to whom we are something, if not
everything. There are some, who are grappled to us with hoops of
steel. There are some, over whom we have ascendency, or at least to
whom we have access, who have opened the gates of the City of Mansoul
to us, some we can sway with a word, a touch, a look. It must always
be a solemn thing for a man to ask what he has done with this dread
power of influence. For what has our friend to be indebted to us--for
good or for evil? Have we put on his armor, and sent him out with
courage and strength to the battle? Or have we dragged him down from
the heights to which he once aspired? We are face to face here with
the tragic possibilities of human intercourse. In all friendship we
open the gates of the city, and those who have entered must be either
allies in the fight, or treacherous foes.
All the fruits of friendship, be they blessed or baneful, spring from
this root of influence, and influence in the long run is the impress of
our real character on other lives. Influence cannot rise above the
level of our lives. The result of our friendship on others will
ultimately be conditioned by the sort of persons we are. It adds a
very sacred responsibility to life. Here, as in other regions, a good
tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil
fruit.
The Choice of Friendship
If thou findest a good man, rise up early in the morning to go to him,
and let thy feet wear the steps of his door.
THE APOCRYPHAL BOOK OF ECCLESIASTICUS.
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type,
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives with God.
TENNYSON.
The Choice of Friendship
Our responsibility for our friendships is not confined to making sure
that our influence over others is for good. We have also a duty to
ourselves. As we possess the gift of influence over others, so we in
turn are affected by every life which touches ours. Influence is like
an atmosphere exhaled by each separate personality. Some men seem
neutral and colorless, with no atmosphere to speak of. Some have a bad
atmosphere, like the rank poisonous odor of noxious weeds, breeding
malaria. If our moral sense were only keen and true, we would
instinctively know them, as some children do, and dread their company.
Others have a good atmosphere; we can breathe there in safety, and have
a joyful sense of security. With some of these it is a local delicate
environment, sweet, suggestive, like the aroma of wild violets: we have
to look, and sometimes to stoop, to get into its range. With some it
is like a pine forest, or a eucalyptus grove of warmer climes, which
perfumes a whole country side. It is well to know such, Christ's
little ones and Christ's great ones. They put oxygen into the moral
atmosphere, and we breathe more freely for it. They give us new
insight, and fresh courage, and purer faith, and by the impulse of
their example inspire us to nobler life.
There is nothing so important as the choice of friendship; for it both
reflects character and affects it. A man is known by the company he
keeps. This is an infallible test; for his thoughts, and desires, and
ambitions, and loves are revealed here. He gravitates naturally to his
congenial sphere. And it affects character; for it is the atmosphere
he breathes. It enters his blood and makes the circuit of his veins.
"All love assimilates to what it loves." A man is moulded into
likeness of the lives that come nearest him. It is at the point of the
emotions that he is most impressionable. The material surroundings,
the outside lot of a man, affects him, but after all that is mostly on
the outside; for the higher functions of life may be served in almost
any external circumstances. But the environment of other lives, the
communion of other souls, are far more potent facts. The nearer people
are to each other, and the less disguise there is in their
relationship, the more invariably will the law of spiritual environment
act.
It seems a tragedy that people, who see each other as they are, become
like each other; and often it is a tragedy. But the law carries as
much hope in it as despair. If through it evil works havoc, through it
also good persists. If we are hindered by the weakness of our
associates, we are often helped by their goodness and sweetness.
Contact with a strong nature inspires us with strength. Some one once
asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life, and he
answered, "I had a friend." If every evil man is a centre of
contagion, every good man is a centre of healing. He provides an
environment in which others can see God. Goodness creates an
atmosphere for other souls to be good. It is a priestly garment that
has virtue even for the finger that touches it. The earth has its
salt, and the world has its light, in the sweet souls, and winsome
lives, and Christ-like characters to be found in it. The choice of
friends is therefore one of the most serious affairs in life, just
because a man becomes moulden into the likeness of what he loves in his
friend.
From the purely selfish standard, every fresh tie we form means giving
a new hostage to fortune, and adding a new risk to our happiness.
Apart from any moral evil, every intimacy is a danger of another blow
to the heart. But if we desire fulness of life, we cannot help
ourselves. A man may make many a friendship to his own hurt, but the
isolated life is a greater danger still. _Societas est mater
discordiarum_, which Scott in his humorous pathetic account of the
law-suits of Peter Peebles _versus_ Plainstanes in "Redgauntlet,"
translates, Partnership oft makes pleaship. Every relationship means
risk, but we must take the risk; for while nearly all our sorrows come
from our connection with others, nearly all our joys have the same
source. We cannot help ourselves; for it is part of the great
discipline of life. Rather, we need knowledge, and care, and
forethought to enable us to make the best use of the necessities of our
nature. And foremost of these for importance is our choice of friends.
We may err on the one side by being too cautious, and too exclusive in
our attachments. We may be supercilious, and disdainful in our
estimate of men. Contempt always blinds the eyes. Every man is
vulnerable somewhere, if only like Achilles in the heel. The true
secret of insight is not contempt, but sympathy. Such disdain usually
means putting all the eggs into one basket, when a smash spells ruin.