Page images
PDF
EPUB

"no speech could be found more hostile to friendship than this;" and his responding question was: "In what manner can any one be a friend to him to whom he thinks he may possibly become an enemy?"

How can friendship find a place for distrust? An out-going limitless love forbids and bars an incoming limiting doubt. The only unrest of a love that rests in the truth of one's truer other self, is the ceaseless craving to love more, and to be more true in loving.

"The deepest hunger of a faithful heart

[merged small][graphic]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

NE need not go outside of the Bible record for proof that friendship's love has a place above all other loves; although the concurrent testimony of the ages, earlier and later than that record, is to the same effect. A truth like this could hardly fail of recognition in the Book of books.

When Moses is warning the children of Israel of the temptations to idolatry which will beset them in the land of Canaan, he names the possible tempters to evil in the order of their relative importance, and to a "friend" he assigns the place highest of all. "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 life, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods; . . . thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him." And everything in the Old Testament history and teachings would go to show that this was the true climax of affections from the earliest ages of the

world-friendship transcending all loves; which is only another way of saying that a love which is absolutely and devotedly unselfish is superior to a love which has in it any measure or taint of self-interest.

The loves competing with friendship are conjugal love and kinship love. David bore witness to a friend's love as "passing the love of women;" and Solomon affirmed unhesitatingly, "There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

It is a pregnant fact that in all the Old Testament story only one human being is ever referred to as a friend' of God. The Lord is referred to as "Father" of all, and as "Husband" of his entire people; but only Abraham is designated as the Lord's "friend." Once, indeed, in our English version, it is mentioned that "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend;" but this is clearly an allusion to the manner of the intercourse on that occasion between Moses and the Lord; not a reference to the peculiar relation in which they two stood to each other. In fact, the Hebrew word here translated "friend" has no such suggestion of a loving intimacy as the word which is applied to Abraham's relation to God: it is a word more commonly rendered "neighbor." From first to last it is "Moses my servant," of whom the Lord speaks. It is "Abraham, my friend"-and only Abraham.

So clearly was the uniqueness of this relation of Abraham with the Lord recognized in the Oriental mind, that, after twenty centuries had gone by, the Apostle James pointed back to that uplifting of the Father of the Faithful, saying: "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned

unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God." And now, after wellnigh twenty centuries more, that one patriarch is still known in all the East-known by Jew, Muhammadan, and Christian-as “Ibraheem elKhaleel," "Abraham the friend."

True it is that, under the new dispensation, when Jesus would honor above all precedent the disciples who had trusted hiin unswervingly, he said, as he was parting with them for a season: "No longer do I call you servants : . . . but I have called you friends." But this also was a recognition of the truth that no other relation can be nearer and dearer than friendship; hence the love which transcends all loves was fittingly given that name. Friendship is the love of loves, by the Bible standard.

It can hardly be supposed that it is of carelessness, or without intention, that in both the Old Testament and the New a distinction is repeatedly marked between the mere marriage tie and the highest attainment of friendship; whereby the former is counted of the flesh-the life here in the flesh; while the later is counted of the soul-the very life itself. It is Moses who records the institution of marriage, saying of the twain thereby made one, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Moses again it is who describes “a friend" as in a relation to another closer and more vital than even that of one flesh"-" thy friend which is as thine own life"-literally, "thine own self." It is Paul who points back to this original institution of marriage as a Divine declaration that "the twain shall become one flesh," and who counsels that "even so ought husbands

[ocr errors]

to love their own wives as their own bodies."

Paul also it is who, referring to his friend and his child in the faith, Onesimus, speaks of him as "my very heart," and again as "myself." Is there no meaning in these inspired

distinctions?

It is not that the tie of marriage or the ties of blood ought, in any case, to exist without the sentiment of friendship; but it is that those ties do not in and of themselves secure such an interunion of very soul as is possible between those who are only friends. Friendship without conjugal or kinship love is a profounder and more sacred affection than conjugal or kinship love without friendship. He who has a duty of conjugal love or of kinship love has a duty also of friendship's love in the same direction. Without this love the other loves can never reach their highest and holiest possibilities, or be at their God-intended completion.

Jesus Christ and his church are, it is true, represented in the relation of a bridegroom to a bride; but he and his chosen disciples are also represented as united in the yet more intimate and enduring relation of "friends." The church, as a church, is his "body;" the personal believers in him are sharers of his very "life." "In the resurrection," says Jesus, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage." But in his farewell discourse to his disciples, as his "friends," Jesus says: "I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also." The marriage tie by itself is of the life that is here, in the flesh. The tie of friendship, with marriage or apart from it, is of the life that is both here and hereafter. This is the distinction recognized by the

« PreviousContinue »