Friendship
Wa friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” — xvii. 17. “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” — xviii. 24.
SUCH has been said and sung about friendship among men. Even the broken fragments of it that remain now on earth are sweet to weary wayfarers. The glimpses of it which we get in life are like those little isolated pools which stand in the deeper portions of a water-course in summer, when the spring-head has failed, and the stream has ceased to flow. Some broken bits of heaven are mirrored on their surface, when all around is dull and earthy. The burning eye gets some relief when it rests upon them; and the parched lips are refreshed by the water, such as it is, which they still contain. To creatures who are “but for a season,” and have never known the fresh, full flow of the living stream, these little pools seem very pure, and cool, and deep. These, accordingly, have become the theme of earth’s most joyful songs. Here in the desert they deserve all the praise that they get. We shall not lose sight of these little pools until the river flows full again. They will continue to cheer disciples on their pilgrimage through the desert, and will not be forgotten until they disappear in the river which makes glad the City of God. When the redeemed of the Lord shall enter the kingdom, these remnants of true friendship, which were their rejoicing in the house of their pilgrimage, will have no glory because of the glory that excelleth. A new song will be sung about friendship when the new heavens and the new earth shall appear. Many disappointments in the past generate fear for the future, and “fear hath torment,” — a torment which dilutes, if it does not positively imbitter, the joys of an imperfect lovej but perfect love when it comes casteth out fear.
and the joy of the Lord from its fountain-head flows forth unimpeded, filling the chosen vessels to the brim.
In the Scriptures we learn where the fountain of true friendship lies, what is its nature, why its flow is impeded now, and when it shall be over all like the waves of the sea.
“A friend loveth at all times.” This proverb might be employed, if not positively as a definition of true friendship, at least negatively as a test to detect and expose its counterfeit. Sternly applied, it wTould diminish the crowd of fair-weather friends that flutter round the prosperous, as much as the proclamation permitting cowards to return, thinned the ranks of Gideon’s army when the foe was near. Love is a holy thing. It comes from heaven, and, according to the measure of its prevalence, changes the face of the world, and turns its desert into a garden. Men who are strangers to its nature frequently appropriate its good name. We flatter ourselves that we are loving, when we are merely selfish.
You love, and love much. You are distinctly sensible of that blessed emotion circulating, and circulating in great volume, through your being. It is directed upon certain objects, now one and now another. Here is a neighbour, for example, whom you love. Both according to the definitions of the Bible, and in the estimation of the world, he is worthy. Surely then your emotion is pure on both sides; in its character, and its object. Nay; the conclusion is too hastily drawn. A number of mirrors are set round a little child. He looks into them all in turn, and admires each. What then 1 does he think the mirrors beautiful 1 No; he sees and admires only himself, although, in his childishness, he is not aware that the beauty which draws -him is all his own.
Alas! we often use our friends only as looking-glasses to see ourselves in. We imagine that we are loving them because we look towards them while we love; but it is the reflection of our own interest, all the time, that leads us captive. Apply this proverb to detect the spuriousness of such love; the shining counterfeit grows black when you touch it with the word. A friend loveth at all times, and in all places. Love, while it remains essentially the same, appears tenfold more loving when its object has fallen from prosperity into poverty; as a lamp, lighted during the day, shines much more brightly when the darkness comes. Many will court you while you have much to give; when you need to receive, the number of your friends will be diminished, but their quality will be improved. Your misfortune, like a blast of wind upon the thrashed corn, will drive the chaff away, but the wheat will remain where it was. How very sweet sometimes is the human friendship that remains when sore adversity has sifted it!
Of the many steamers that ply with passengers on the Clyde through all the sunny summer, one only continues its course on the Lord’s day. As no business is done on that day, the voyage is emphatically a pleasure-trip, and doubtless there are many professions of brotherhood and fellow-feeling among the joyous company. In the narrow river near Glasgow, when the air was bright with sunlight and the water’s surface like a mirror, one of the passengers, who, finding the sail not sufficient of itself, had adopted other means to augment his pleasure, lost his balance and fell overboard. Although he struggled for some time on the surface, the poor man sank and perished, ere his friends, all dry and comfortable, reached, by a circuitous route, the fatal spot. If there had been one in all the crowd with the nerve of a man, not to say the love of a Christian in his heart, he would have leaped into that still water and held his brother up a few moments until help had come from gathering hundreds. While our Father in heaven reigns over all, we often need help from a brother’s hand; and I pray that when I am in danger I may be surrounded by other friends than a company of Sabbath pleasure-seekers. I would not count much either on the pith of their arm or the compassion of their heart. That species of pleasure takes the manliness out of a man, and forces native selfishness up to its fullest growth.
Man in his weakness needs a steady friend, and God in his wisdom has provided one in the constitution of nature. Not intrusting all to acquired friendship, he has given us some as a birthright inheritance. For the day of their adversity a brother is born to many who would not have been able to win one. It is at once a glory to God in the highest and a sweet solace to afflicted men, when a brother or a sister, under the secret and steady impulses of nature, bears and does for the distressed what no other friend, however loving, could be expected to bear or do. How foolish for themselves are those who lightly snap those bonds asunder, or touch them oft with corrosive drops of contention! One who is born your brother is best fitted to be your friend in trouble, if unnatural strife has not rent asunder those whom their Maker intended to be of one spirit. In visiting the eick I am often constrained to exclaim in glad wonder, What hath the Lord wrought! when I see the friendships of nature supplying a ministry in sickness for the poor, such in tenderness and patience as the wealth of a world could not buy for the rich. “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” He must be a fast friend indeed; for a brother, if nature’s affections have been cherished, lies close in, and keeps a steady hold. I know how closely a brother sticks, for I have been warmed and strengthened by the grasp; and have shivered as if alone in a wintry world when it slackened in death, and dropped away. I know by tasting, both the worth and the want of a brother’s love. It seemed the chief earthly joy of my youth. Perhaps the stream flowed more strongly because it was all confined within one channel, and that a narrow one; for I had only one brother, and him I had not long. We grew up together in childhood, and at the softest period of life were run into one by kindred tastes inherited, and common objects pursued. While we were passing together through the tender but decisive stage of youth, he was smitten by his death-disease, and I was spared in health. One was taken, and another left: not so taken, however, or so left, as to make a sudden separation; for the malady besieged the tower of his strength three full years and a half ere its gates were opened and the life given up. Born of the Spirit, and having his new life hid with Christ in God, he was, and felt himself to be, beyond the reach of that enemy who was closing round the body, and cutting off its resources. As the outward man was perishing, the inward man, both as to intellect and faith, was renewed day by day. Through his weakness and my strength, we were let into each other much more deeply than if both had been feeble, or both robust. It was something analogous to that other work of God in his creatures — woman’s weakness and man’s strength, so arranged with a view to completer union. Such a fusion, whether accomplished by a general law or a special providence, is good for man. We did stick closely together, till death divided us. His pale brow was in my hands when its aching ceased. His grave in the village churchyard became a place of pilgrimage. The memory of that brother cleaving to my soul, after he had gone to rest, was God’s own hand holding me back from enticing vanities, at the period of their greatest power, that, undistracted by the tumult of the world, I might better hear his own paternal voice. Oh! when hindering things are taken out of the way of God’s work, a brother lies very close to a brother! He who comes closer must be no common friend.
And yet there is a Friend that comes closer than a brother. I do not venture to give a judgment here on critical grounds, whether the text contains a specific and intentional prophecy regarding the Son of Man, the Saviour. But this is not necessary. We reach the same object more surely in another way. The affirmation in the text is, that close though a brother be, there is a friend that comes closer still. It is the idea of a friendship more perfect, fitting more kindly into our necessities, and bearing more patiently with our weakness, than the instinctive love of a brother by birth. From God’s hand-work in nature a very tender and very strong friendship proceeds: from his covenant of mercy comes a friendship tenderer and stronger still Now, although in some sense the conception is embodied in the communion of saints, its full realization is only found in the love wherewith Christ loves his own. When the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, man found a Friend who could come closer to his heart than any brother. The precious germ which Solomon’s words infold, bore its fully ripened fruit only when He who is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh gave himself, the Just for the unjust. Thus, by a surer process than verbal criticism, we are conducted to the man Christ Jesus, as at once the brother born for our adversity, and the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. The brother and the friend are, through the goodness of God, with more or less of imperfection, often found among our fellows; but they are complete only in Him who is the fellow of the Almighty. Whoever would prosecute the twin ideas to their utmost issue, must pass out through humanity, and settle down in “God with us” beyond.
In the day of your deepest adversity, even a born brother must let go Ms hold. That extremity is the opportunity of your better Friend. His promise, “Lo, I am with you alway,” entering into your sinking spirit, kindles the light of life in its darkness, and your confiding answer is, “I will not fear, for thou art with me.”
“A man that hath friends must show himself friendly.” It is another example of the pervading law, action and reaction are equal. When love is received, it is reciprocated. It is one of the most repulsive features of fallen humanity, to take selfishly material good from another, and refuse to show kindness to a neighbour when an opportunity occurs. This phase of selfishness, pictured by the Lord’s own lips, is held up for our reprobation in the Bible (Matt, xviii. 26-30). A man in his distress asked and obtained mercy on a large scale from his master, and then harshly refused a little grace, when a fellow-servant humbly besought it at his hands. The man had a friend, and yet would not show himself friendly.
Our best friendship is due to our best Friend. He deserves it and desires it. The heart of the man Christ Jesus yearns for the reciprocated love of saved men, and grieves when it is not given. “Where are the nine?” he exclaimed with a sigh, when one only of the cleansed lepers came back to praise him. Who shall measure the strength of that longing for the friendship of his friends which drew from his loving heart the triple appeal, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me 1”
Recall now the idea with which our exercise opened, that we may gather another lesson from it in the close. The separated pools remaining in the deeper places of the river’s bed, after the river has dried up from its source, become narrower, and shallower, and muddier as the season advances. If no new supply come down, they will soon be dry. Even before they are wholly dry, the water is hot and stagnant, unsatisfying and repulsive; and after the water has exhaled, the place where it lay is noisome. Such are friendships of the earth, if they be of the earth merely. As life draws onward to age, one and another will fail you. The breadth and depth of your pool will diminish apace, as secretly and insensibly, but as surely, as a lake is reduced in bulk by evaporation, when the sources of its supply have failed. When friends become fewer, you have not the power which you possessed in youth, of forming new intimacies to supply the place of the old
Not only does the absolute quantity of available friendship gradually decrease; your capability of enjoying the remainder decreases too. Disappointments in the course of life do more to make us distrustful than success to render us confiding. Friends grow fewer, and feebler grows your trust in friends. It is a desolate thing to grow old in this world, and have none but the world and the worldly to lean upon in the day of need. The last little pool that lay in nature’s deepest place has vanished like the rest, and the weary has not a drop of consolation now to cool his tongue! He has always been without God in the world, and now he is without man. The nether springs are dry, and the upper springs he never knew. Woe is me for the friendless!
But for those who are in faith’s union with the Fountainhead another experience is prepared. To them that look for Him he shall appear. In due season a stream will flow in the desert. The little pools in the river-bed of their life will be lost too; not by a drying up, but by an overflowing. In the spring-time of youth close with the sinners’ Friend, and he will not leave you comfortless when age draws on.
“One there is above all others:
Oh, how he loves!
His is love beyond a brother’s:
Oh, how he loves!
“Earthly friends may pain and grieve thee, — One day kind, the next day leave thee;
Bat this Friend will ne’er deceive thee:
Oh, how he loves!”