offending brother, there are some things which may be said about the
tactics of renewing the broken tie. There is needed a certain tactful
considerateness. In all such questions the grace of the act depends as
much on the _manner_ of it, as on the act itself. The grace of the
fairest act may be hurt by a boorish blemish of manner. Many a
graceful act is spoiled by a graceless touch, as a generous deed can be
ruined by a grudging manner. An air of condescension will destroy the
value of the finest charity. There is a forgiveness which is no
forgiveness--formal, constrained, from the teeth and lips outward. It
does not come as the warm breath which has had contact with the blood
of the heart. The highest forgiveness is so full and free, that it is
forgetfulness. It is complete as the forgiveness of God.
If there is something in the method of the approach, there is perhaps
more in the time of it. It ought to be chosen carefully and
considerately; for it may be that the other has not been prepared for
the renewal by thought and feeling, as the man who makes the advances
has been. No hard and fast rule can be formulated when dealing with
such a complex and varied subject as man. So much depends on temper
and character. One man taken by surprise reveals his true feeling;
another, when taken off his guard, is irritated, and shuts up his heart
in a sort of instinctive self-defence. The thoughtfulness of love will
suggest the appropriate means, but some emphasis may rightly be given
to the phrase in Christ's counsel, "between thee and him alone." Let
there be an opportunity for a frank and private conversation. To
appeal to an estranged friend before witnesses induces to special
pleading, making the witnesses the jury, asking for a verdict on either
side; and the result is that both are still convinced they have right
on their side, and that they have been wronged.
If the fault of the estrangement lies with us, the burden of confession
should rest upon us also. To go to him with sincere penitence is no
more than our duty. Whether the result be successful or not, it will
mean a blessing for our own soul. Humility brings its own reward; for
it brings God into the life. Even if we have cause to suspect that the
offended brother will not receive us kindly, still such reparation as
we can make is at least the gate to reconciliation. It may be too
late, but confession will lighten the burden on our own heart. Our
brother may be so offended that he is harder to be won than a strong
city, but he is far more worth winning; and even if the effort be
unsuccessful, it is better than the cowardice which suffers a bloodless
defeat.
If, on the other hand, the fault was not ours, our duty is still clear.
It should be even easier to take the initiative in such a case; for
after all it is much easier to forgive than to submit to be forgiven.
To some natures it is hard to be laid under an obligation, and the
generosity of love must be shown by the offended brother. He must show
the other his fault gently and generously, not parading his forgiveness
like a virtue, but as if the favor were on his side--as it is. Christ
made forgiveness the test of spirituality. If we do not know the grace
of forgiveness, we do not know how gracious life may be. The highest
happiness is not a matter of possessions and material gains, but has
its source in a heart at peace; and thus it is that the renewing of
friendship has a spiritual result. If we are revengeful, censorious,
judging others harshly, always putting the worst construction on a word
or an act, uncharitable, unforgiving, we certainly cannot claim kinship
with the spirit of the Lord Jesus. St. Paul made the opposite the very
test of the spiritual man: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault,
ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness."
If we knew all, we would forgive all. If we knew all the facts, the
things which produced the petulance, the soreness which caused the
irritation, we would be ready to pardon; for we would understand the
temptation. If we knew all, our hearts would be full of pitiful love
even for those who have wronged us. They have wronged themselves more
than they can possibly wrong us; they have wounded a man to their own
hurt. To think kindly once more of a separated friend, to soften the
heart toward an offending brother, will bring the blessing of the
Peace-maker, the blessing of the Reconciler. The way to be sure of
acting this part is to pray for him. We cannot remain angry with
another, when we pray for him. Offence departs, when prayer comes.
The captivity of Job was turned, when he prayed for his friends.
If we stubbornly refuse the renewing of friendship, it is an offence
against religion also. Only love can fulfil the law of Christ. His is
the Gospel of reconciliation, and the greater reconciliation includes
the lesser. The friends of Christ must be friends of one another.
That ought to be accepted as an axiom. To be reconciled to God carries
with it at least a disposition of heart, which makes it easy to be
reconciled to men also. We have cause to suspect our religion, if it
does not make us gentle, and forbearing, and forgiving; if the love of
our Lord does not so flood our hearts as to cleanse them of all
bitterness, and spite, and wrath. If a man is nursing anger, if he is
letting his mind become a nest of foul passions, malice, and hatred,
and evil wishing, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
If we cannot, at need, even humiliate ourselves to win our brother, it
is difficult to see where our religion comes in, especially when we
think what humiliation Christ suffered, that He might reconcile us to
God, and make us friends again with our heavenly Father, and renew our
broken love. Whatever be our faith and works, and however correct be
our creed and conduct, if we are giving place to anger, if we are
stiffening ourselves in strife and disdain, we are none of His, who was
meek and lowly of heart. We may come to the Sanctuary with lips full
of praises and eyes full of prayers, with devotion in our hearts and
gifts in our hand, but God will spurn our worship and despise our
gifts. It is not a small matter, this renewing of friendship, but is
the root of religion itself, and is well made the very test of
spiritual-mindedness. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy
gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy
brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Misunderstandings and
estrangements will arise, occasions will come when it seems as if not
even love and forbearance can avoid a quarrel, but surely Christ has
died in vain if His grace cannot save us from the continuance of strife.
Such renewing of love, done with this high motive, will indeed bring an
added joy, as the poets have declared. The very pain will give zest to
the pleasure. We will take the great gift of friendship with a new
sense of its beauty and sacredness. We will walk more softly because
of the experience, and more than ever will tremble lest we lose it.
For days after the reconciliation, we will go about with the feeling
that the benediction of the peace-makers rests on our head and clings
round our feet.
But more than any personal joy from the renewed friendship, we will
have the smile of God on our life. We will know that we have done what
is well pleasing in His sight. Sweeter than the peace which comes from
being at one with men, is the peace which comes from being at one with
God. It settles on the soul like the mist on the mountains, enveloping
and enswathing it. It comes to our fevered life as a great calm. Over
the broken waters there hovers the golden glory of God's eternal peace.
And more even than all that, we will have gained a new insight into the
love of the Father, and into the sacrifice of the Son. We will
understand a little more of the mystery of the Love which became poor,
which gladly went into the wilderness to seek and to save the lost.
The cross will gain new and rich significance to us, and all the world
will be an arena in which is enacted the spectacle of God's great love.
The world is bathed in the love of God, as it is flooded by the blessed
sun. If we are in the light and walk in love, our walk will be with
God, and His gentleness will make us great. There is intended an ever
fuller education in the meaning, and in the life of love, until the
assurance reaches us that nothing can separate us from love. Even
death, which sunders us from our friends, cannot permanently divide us.
In the great Home-coming and Reunion of hearts, all the veils which
obscure feeling will be torn down, and we shall know each other better,
and shall love each other better.
But every opportunity carries a penalty; every privilege brings with it
a warning. If we will not live the life of love, if we harden our
heart against a brother offended, we will find in our need even the
great and infinite love of God shut against us, harder to be won than a
strong city, ribbed and stockaded as the bars of a castle. To the
unforgiving there is no forgiveness. To the hard, and relentless, and
loveless, there is no love. To the selfish, there is no heaven.
The Limits of Friendship
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice
thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, thou shalt not
consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, but thine hand shall be first
upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people;
because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God.
DEUTERONOMY.
Yet each will have one anguish--his own soul,
Which perishes of cold.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
The Limits of Friendship
Friendship, at its very best and purest, has limits. At its beginning,
it seems to have no conditions, and to be capable of endless
development. In the first flush of new-born love it seems almost an
insult to question its absolute power to meet every demand made upon
it. The exquisite joy of understanding, and being understood, is too
keen to let us believe, that there may be a terminal line, beyond which
we may not pass. Friendship comes as a mystery, formless, undefined,
without set bounds; and it is often a sore experience to discover that
it is circumscribed, and limited like everything human. At first to
speak of it as having qualifications was a profanation, and to find
them out came as a disillusionment.
Yet the discovery is not all a loss. The limitless is also the vague,
and it is well to know the exact terms implied in a relationship. Of
course we learn through experience the restrictions on all intimacy,
and if we are wise we learn to keep well within the margin; but many a
disappointment might have been saved, if we had understood the inherent
limitations of the subject. These are the result of personality. Each
partner is after all a distinct individual, with will, and conscience,
and life apart, with a personal responsibility which none can take from
him, and with an individual bias of mind and heart which can never be
left out of account.
As is to be expected, some of the limits of friendship are not
essential to the relation, but are due to a _defect_ in the relation,
perhaps an idiosyncrasy of character or a peculiarity of temper. Some
of the limits are self-imposed, and arise from mistake of folly. A
friend may be too exacting, and may make excessive demands, which
strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of
selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous
of other interests. Jealousy is usually the fruit, not of love, but of
self-love. Life is bigger than any relationship, and covers more
ground. The circles of life may intersect, and part of each be common
to the other, but there will be an area on both sides exclusive to
each; and even if it were possible for the circles to be concentric, it
could hardly be that the circumference of the two could be the same;
one would be, almost without a doubt, of larger radius than the other.
It is not identity which is the aim and the glory of friendship, but
unity in the midst of difference. To strive at identity is to be
certain of failure, and it deserves failure; for it is the outcome of
selfishness. A man's friend is not his property, to be claimed as his
exclusive possession. Jealousy is an ignoble vice, because it has its
roots in egotism. It also destroys affection, since it is an evidence
of want of trust, and trust is essential to friendship.
There are physical limits to friendship, if nothing else. There are
material barriers to be surmounted, before human beings really get into
touch with each other, even in the slightest degree. The bodily
organs, through which alone we can enter into communication, carry with
them their own disabilities. The senses are at the best limited in
their range, and are ever exposed to error. Flesh stands in the way of
a complete revelation of soul. Human feet cannot enter past the
threshold of the soul's abode. The very means of self-revelation is a
self-concealment. The medium, by which alone we know, darkens, if it
does not distort, the object. Words obscure thought, by the very
process through which alone thought is possible for us; and the fleshly
wrappings of the soul hide it, at the same time that they make it
visible.
And if there are physical limits to friendship, there are greater
mental limits. The needs of living press on us, and drive us into
different currents of action. Our varied experience colors all our
thought, and gives a special bias to our mind. There is a personal
equation which must always be taken into account. This is the charm of
intercourse, but it is also a limitation. We do not travel over the
same ground; we meet, but we also part. However great the sympathy, it
is not possible completely to enter into another man's mind, and look
at a subject with his eyes. Much of our impatience with each other,
and most of our misunderstandings, are caused by this natural
limitation. The lines along which our minds travel can at the best be
asymptotic, approaching each other indefinitely near, but never quite
coinciding.
The greatest limit of friendship, of which these other are but
indications, is the spiritual fact of the separate personality of each
human being. This is seen most absolutely in the sphere of morals.
The ultimate standard for a man is his own individual conscience, and
neither the constraint of affection, nor the authority of numbers, can
atone for falseness there. One of the most forceful illustrations of
this final position of all religion is to be found, in the passage of
terrific intensity from the Book of Deuteronomy, which we have
transcribed as a preface to this chapter. The form of the passage of
course gets its coloring from the needs of the time and the temper of
the age. The Book of Deuteronomy is so sure that the law of God is
necessary for the life of Israel, and that departure from it will mean
national ruin, that it will shrink from nothing needed to preserve the
truth. Its warnings against being led away to idolatry are very
instant and solemn. Every precaution must be taken; nothing must be
allowed to seduce them from their allegiance, not the most sacred ties,
nor the most solemn authority. No measure of repression can be too
stern. In that fierce time it was natural that apostasy should be
thought worthy of death; for apostasy from religion meant also treason
to the nation: much more those who used their influence to seduce men
to apostasy were to be condemned. The passage is introduced by the
assertion that if even a prophet, a recognized servant of God,
attesting his prophecy with signs and wonders, should solicit them to
leave the worship of Jehovah, in spite of his sacred character, and in
spite of the seeming evidence of miracles, they must turn from him with
loathing, and his doom should be death. And if the apostasy should
have the weight of numbers and a whole city go astray, the same doom is
theirs. If the tenderest relationship should tempt the soul away, if a
brother, or son, or daughter, or wife, or friend, should entice to
apostasy, the same relentless judgment must be meted out.
The fact that this stern treatment is advocated in this Book, which is
full of the most tender consideration for all weak things, shows the
need of the time. Deuteronomy has some of the most beautiful
legislation in favor of slaves and little children and birds and
domestic animals, some of it in advance of even our modern customs and
practices, permeated as these are by Christian sentiment. And it is in
this finely sensitive Book that we find such strong assertion of the
paramount importance of individual responsibility.
The influence of a friend or near relative is bound to be great. We
are affected on every side, and at every moment, by the environment of
other lives. There is a spiritual affinity, which is the closest and
most powerful thing in the world, and yet in the realm of morals it has
definite limits set to it. At the best it can only go a certain
length, and ought not to be allowed to go further than its legitimate
bounds. The writer of Deuteronomy appreciated to the full the power
and attraction of the near human relationships. We see this from the
way he describes them, adding an additional touch of fondness to each,
"thy brother the son of thy mother, the wife of thy bosom, thy friend
who is as thine own soul." But it sets a limit to the place even such
tender ties should be allowed to have. The most intimate of relatives,
the most trusted of friends, must not be permitted to abrogate the
place of conscience. Affection may be perverted into an instrument of
evil. There is a higher moral law than even the law of friendship.
The demands of friendship must not be allowed to interfere with the
dictates of duty. It is not that the moral law should be blindly
obeyed, but because in obeying it we are choosing the better part for
both; for as Frederick Robertson truly says, "the man who prefers his
dearest friend to the call of duty, will soon show that he prefers
himself to his dearest friend." Such weak giving in to the supposed
higher demand of friendship is only a form of selfishness.
Friendship is sometimes too exacting. It asks for too much, more than
we have to give, more than we ever ought to give. There is a tyranny
of love, making demands which can only be granted to the loss of both.
Such tyranny is a perversion of the nature of love, which is to serve,
not to rule. It would override conscience, and break down the will.
We cannot give up our personal duty, as we cannot give up our personal
responsibility. That is how it is possible for Christ to say that if a
man love father, or mother, or wife more than Him, he is not worthy of
Him. No human being can take the place of God to another life; it is
an acted blasphemy to attempt it.
There is a love which is evil in its selfishness. Its very exclusive
claim is a sign of its evil root. The rights of the individual must
not be renounced, even for love's sake. Human love can ask too much,
and it asks too much when it would break down the individual will and
conscience.
The hands that love us often are the hands
That softly close our eyes and draw us earthward.
We give them all the largesse of our life--
Not this, not all the world, contenteth them,
Till we renounce our rights as living souls.
We cannot renounce our rights as living souls without losing our souls.
No man can pay the debt of life for us. No man can take the burden of
life from us. To no man can we hand over the reins unreservedly. It
would be cowardice, and cowardice is sin. The first axiom of the
spiritual life is the sacredness of the individuality of each. We must
respect each other's personality. Even when we have rights over other
people, these rights are strictly limited, and carry with them a
corresponding duty to respect their rights also. The one intolerable
despotism in the world is the attempt to put a yoke on the souls of
men, and there are some forms of intimacy which approach that
despotism. To transgress the moral bounds set to friendship is to make
the highest forms of friendship impossible; for these are only reached
when free spirits meet in the unity of the spirit.
The community of human life, of which we are learning much to-day, is a
great fact. We are all bound up in the same bundle. In a very true
sense we stand or fall together. We are ever on our trial as a
society; not only materially, but even in the highest things, morally
and spiritually. There is a social conscience, which we affect, and
which constantly affects us. We cannot rise very much above it; to
fall much below it, is for all true purposes to cease to live. We have
recognized social standards which test morality; we have common ties,
common duties, common responsibilities.
But with it all, in spite of the fact of the community of human life,
there is the other fact of the singleness of human life. We have a
life, which we must live _alone_. We can never get past the ultimate
fact of the personal responsibility of each. We may be leaves from the
same tree of life, but no two leaves are alike. We may be wrapped up
in the same bundle, but one bundle can contain very different things.
Each of us is colored with his own shade, separate and peculiar. We
have our own special powers of intellect, our own special experience,
our own moral conscience, our own moral life to live. So, while it is
true that we stand or fall together, it is also true--and it is a
deeper truth--that we stand or fall alone.
In this crowded world, with its intercourse and jostling, with its
network of relationships, with its mingled web of life, we are each
alone. Below the surface there is a deep, and below the deep there is
a deeper depth. In the depth of the human heart there is, and there
must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with
another. We never completely open up our nature to even our nearest
and dearest. In spite of ourselves something is kept back. Not that
we are untrue in this, and hide our inner self, but simply that we are
unable to reveal ourselves entirely. There is a bitterness of the
heart which only the heart knoweth; there is a joy of the heart with
which no stranger can intermeddle; there is a bound beyond which even a
friend who is as our own soul becomes a stranger. There is a Holy of
Holies, over the threshold of which no human feet can pass. It is safe
from trespass, guarded from intrusion, and even we cannot give to
another the magic key to open the door. In spite of all the complexity
of our social life, and the endless connections we form with others,
there is as the ultimate fact a great and almost weird solitude. We
may fill up our hearts with human fellowship in all its grades, yet
there remains to each a distinct and separated life.
We speak vaguely of the mass of men, but the mass consists of units,
each with his own life, a thing apart. The community of human life is
being emphasized to-day, and it is a lesson which bears and needs
repetition, the lesson of our common ties and common duties. But at
the same time we dare not lose sight of the fact of the singleness of
human life, if for no other reason than that, otherwise we have no
moral appeal to make on behalf of those ties and duties. In the region
of morals, in dealing with sin, we see how true this solitude is.
There may be what we can truly call social and national sins, and men
can sin together, but in its ultimate issue sin is individual. It is a
disintegrating thing, separating a man from his fellows, and separating
him from God. We are alone with our sin, like the Ancient Mariner with
the bodies of his messmates around him, each cursing him with his eye.
In the last issue, there is nothing in the universe but God and the
single human soul. Men can share the sinning with us; no man can share
the sin. "And the sin ye do by two and two, ye must pay for one by
one." Therefore in this sphere of morals there must be limits to
friendship, even with the friend who is as our own soul.