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