Jonathan the Friend

There is a bay that, throwing out to sea two bold headlands, sweeps with deep and graceful curve into the land. It is girdled by lofty walls of wave-washed and weather-beaten rock, which exclude any view of the fields and farms that lie beyond. No situation more lonely! Yet on its long reach of yellow sands, with no companion nor sound but the measured dash of billows, nor sign of life but the white wing of a sea-gull, or alone ship sailing on the distant rim of ocean, I have not felt any sense of solitude there; or, if felt, it was pleasing rather than painful. And so has it been in other equally lonely circumstances. Once when, belated in a Highland glen, I stood alone under frowning crags and dark mountains on the silent margin of its mossy loch, with thick gloom. all around, save where the last lights of day, touching the upper end of the waters, turned them into a sheet of silver; and once also when from the cairn of a Scottish alp, I looked around on a tumbling sea of hills, nor, save a blue thread of smoke that curled up from the far verge of the forest, saw a sign of human life, or indeed any living object but an eagle, which, pausing on its flight in these realms of air, hovered for a little overhead, sweeping round and round to examine with keen and curious glance him that had intruded on her lone domains. Campbell, the poet, has painted in vivid colors the loneliness, the solemn solitude, of the last living man: “‘Tsaw a vision in my sleep, That gave my spirit strength to sweep Adown the gulf of Time! I saw the last of human mould That shall Creation’s death behold, As Adam in her prime! The sun’s eye had a sickly glare, The earth with age was wan, The skeletons of nations were Around that lonely man!

Some had expired in fight — the brands
Still rusted in their bony hands;

In plague and famine some.
Earth’s cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead

To shores where all was dumb.”

Yet it were not there, nor is it anywhere so much as among his fellows, and in crowds especially, man would feel most lonely. It has been truly and beautifully said of a devout man in a desert, on a lone moor, or in a death-desolated house, with no other company but God, that when most alone he is least alone; but it may be as true of a man surrounded by a mighty crowd and jostled on the busy streets, with friends and lovers far away, that when least alone he is most alone. Hence the force of the old Latin saying, Magna civitas, magna solitudo — A great city, a great solitude.” That is true; very true. For, to speak from personal experience — and thousands have felt the same — I

never felt so lonely as long years ago, when, taking days and nights to make the journey between Edinburgh and London, I was set down on a winter evening amid the glare and bustle and roar of the metropolis, among crowds which neither caring whether I lived or died, hardly left room to walk, and in a city among whose thronging millions I had but two acquaintances, and no friend.

In such a situation the presence of a crowd gives no feeling of companionship; and with no expression of recognition or interest in us on any face we meet, to walk the streets is in some respects like walking alone ina gallery of portraits. The absence of friends makes the busiest place a solitude; nor is there any vacuum Nature abhors more than that. She teaches us to seek a heart that beats in unison with our own; looks of sympathy and kindness; a bosom into which we can pour the secrets of our souls; when burdens press heavy, an arm to lean on; when our back is at the wall, an ally to stand fighting by our side; in our difficulties a counsellor to advise with; in our sorrows one to divide, and in our joys one to double them. This is so natural, and to possess such a friend is both so delightful and profitable, that, whether his home be a castle or a cabin, and he himself a king or a beggar, even though he was rich with the wealth of banks, and filled the earth with his fame, for a man to want friends, true friends, according to Lord Bacon, is to

find this world a wilderness.

The value which all ages and countries have set on friendship may be estimated by the honors they have paid to it, and the care they have taken to embalm the memory of those whose lives have afforded remarkable illustrations of what friendship could dare, and bear,and do. We have an example of this in the beautiful story of Damon and Pythias, where we see how it has filled the worst of men with admiration, disarming the hand and quenching the rage of tyrants. The first, a Pythagorean philosopher, was condemned to death by Dionysius; the execution of the sentence, however, being suspended in consequence of his obtaining leave to go home to settle his domestic affairs — a favor which the tyrant granted on condition of his returning by a stated day to suffer the penalty of death. The promise was given, but not reckoned sufficient. He dies on the spot, unless he finds a hostage — a friend who will pledge himself to die in his room. At this juncture Pythias steps forward; and delivering himself up to the hands of the tyrant, becomes Damon’s surety — to wait his friend’s return, or suffer in his stead. At length the day arrives and the hour; but no Damon. Pythias must be his substitute; and he is ready. Thanking the gods for the adverse winds that retarded the ship in which Damon sailed, he prepares to die, a sacrifice on the altar of friendship. And had fallen, but that before the blow descends, Damon rushes panting on the scene. Now the strange and friendly strife begins. Each is eager to die for the other; and each, appealing to Dionysius, claims the bloody sword as his right and privilege. Though inured to-scenes of cruelty, the tyrant cannot look unmoved on such a scene as this. Touched by this rare exhibition of affection, he is melted: nor only remits the punishment, but entreats them to permit him hereafter to share their friendship and enjoy their confidence. What an honor it were to the Gospel were there many instances of such friendship among its professors! Why should there not? Has not Jesus laid this injunction on us all, “‘ Love one another, even as I have loved you?”

There is another, and almost equally remarkable, example of friendship told of such as never heard of Him who is the friend of sinners. It is so remarkable indeed that it procured divine honors to Orestes and Pylades from the Scythians — a race so bloody, rude, and savage, that they are said to have fed on human flesh, and made drinking-cups of their enemies’ skulls. Engaged in an arduous enterprise, Orestes and Pylades, two sworn friends, landed on the shores of the Chersonesus to find themselves in the dominions and power of a king whose practice was to seize on all strangers, and sacrifice them at the shrine of Diana. The travellers were arrested. They were carried before the tyrant; and, doomed to death, were delivered over to Iphigenia, who, as priestess of Diana’s temple, had to immolate the victims. Her knife is buried in their bosoms, but that she learns before the blow is struck that they are Greeks — natives of her own native country. Anxious to open up a communication with the land of her birth, she offers to spare one of the two, on condition that the sufvivor will become her messenger, and carry a letter to her friends in Greece. But which shall live, and which shall die? That is the question. The friendship which had endured for years, in travels, and courts, and battle-fields is now put to a strain it never bore before. And nobly it bearsit. Neither will accept the office of messenger, leaving his fellow to the stroke of death. Each implores the priestess to select him for the sacrifice; and let the other go. While they contend for the pleasure and honor of dying, Iphigenia discovers in one of them her own brother. She embraces him; and sparing both, flees with them from that cruel shore. Both are saved; and the story, borne on the wings of fame, flies abroad, fills the world with wonder, and, carried to distant regions, excited such admiration among the barbarous Scythians, that they paid divine honors to Orestes and Pylades, and deifying these heroes, erected temples to their worship.

How far these old-world tales are true, and how far they may have been exaggerated by tradition, and received, like a wall which is covered and tinted with golden lichens, their glowing colors from the hands of time, it would be idle to inquire. But the legends must have had some foundation in truth — some gallant deed had been done to form the nucleus of such remarkable traditions. We should not like, at any rate, to part with that belief — such cases throwing a glory over our fallen humanity that we delight to linger on, as on those traces of beauty that survive the stroke of death; as on the flowers that, rooted in its refts and fed by dews and sunbeams, adorn the walls of some noble ruin. But to illustrate what a friend has been, and friends should be, we have a yet brighter example and more certainly truthful story in that of Jonathan — at once so touching and so tragic.

i — Many friendships — traceable to near neighborhood, a common playground, the same form at school, some accidental meeting on a road or ina room — spring from trivial circumstances. Growing strong only with the progress of years, they resemble our streams which, though at length swelling into rivers, are at first but tiny rills; feeble in their beginning, and springing from mossy wells, of obscure and humble birth. It was not so with Jonathan’s friendship. It finds its type in those rivers, the Rhine and Rhone for instance, which, fed by exhaustless snows, and springing into light in lofty regions, high above the sea to whose distant shores their waters wend, are rivers at their birth; bursting from the icy caverns of Alpine glaciers in full, impetuous flood. It had its origin in a very memorable event, and on one of the most notable days in the whole history of Israel.

The peasant had left his plough in the furrow, the fisherman his boat on the lake, the shepherd his flock to the care of boys and women; and gathering from the hills of Bethlehem, and the shores of Galilee, and the remotest ends of the country, its best and bravest sons had mustered to its defence. With Saul at their head and their fathers’ swords in their hands, they have set the battle in array against the Philistines in the valley of Elam — yet shrink from it. They are appalled. A giant who stalks forth day after day into the valley that divides the opposing hosts, and challenges Israel, and blasphemes Israel’s God, has struck the boldest with terror. No lingerer at home in such a crisis, no coward, but distinguished as much for his bravery as for his rank, Jonathan was there; and I can fancy how his heart was ready to burst with vexation, how he chafed and fretted, as, slowly retreating before the steps of this terrible antagonist, he obeyed his father’s orders, and yield-JONATHAN THE FRIEND. 32z7

ing to the dictates of prudence, declined Goliah’s challenge — refusing to fling away his life in such an unequal contest. Grieved at the insults cast on the arms of Israel; trembling with anxiety for his father’s life and crown; wounded to the heart by the blasphemies of the uncircumcised Philistine; often withdrawing from the bustle and distractions of the camp to seek on his knees light and help from God, and cry to Him, in his despair of any help from man, ‘“How long, O Lord, how long! Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: as smoke is driven away, so drive thou the ay; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish in the presence of God;” with such feelings I can fancy that of all the eyes that day turned on David, Jonathan’s watched him with the greatest agitation. What astonishment and admiration he felt for the gallant stripling! what anxious prayers he put up on his behalf, as he saw him, clad in a shepherd’s garb, his heart armed with faith, but his hand only with a sling, step out boldly from the lines to accept the challenge — to bring away the giant’s head, or leave his own to feed the fowls of heaven! The stone sped on its fatal errand. Goliah falls; and with a shout that rends the air, Israel hails the conqueror. And when the stripling, so young and yet so brave, crowned with such honor and yet so modest, so full of love to his country and piety to his God, advances to lay his bloody trophy at the feet of Saul, Jonathan’s whoie heart flows out to him; he becomes at once the object of a deep and deathless love. It came to pass, to use the beautiful language of Scripture, that, when David modestly replying to Saul’s question, ‘‘ Whose son art thou?” ‘‘I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite,” had made an end of speaking, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of avid, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. So their friendship began; and its continuance, under the most adverse circumstances, was even more remarkable than its commencement.

The friendships are few that survive years of separation; the shock of conflicting interests; the drain made on our old affections by new claims; the trials they are put to by infirmities of temper, by plain dealing with faults, by a manly independence, by requests refused, by favors unrequited, by the rivalries. of business, by the partisanship that springs from creeds or politics, and by a thousand

other nameless circumstances. Fragile as the flowers the winter frost traces on our windows, there are friendships that a breath will melt away. It may be very wrong and very pitiful, but, as the wise man says, ‘‘a whisperer separateth chief friends;” and who lives long lives to see so many, like leaves the frost has nipped, fall off, and the ties which friendships had formed, so often and sometimes so easily dissolved, that he comes to rea with little astonishment, and no great sense of exaggeration, the words of one who, describing his relationships, said, ‘‘ Though the church would not hold my acquaintances, the pulpit is large enough to hold all my friends.”

Happily, there are friendships that stand the test of time and the everest strain; but among these, what poet or panegyrist has recorded with glowing pen one to be compared with Jonathan’s? It is quite unique; remarkable as his father’s stature when Saul, shrinking, as great men have done, from an office of great responsibility, hid himself among the stuff, and, directed by God where to find him, the people ‘‘ran and fetched him thence: and when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward; and Samuel said, See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people!” The words of the poet may be justly applied to Jonathan, — ‘* None but himself could be his parallel,”

For example, men will praise their friends, but how few are generous enough without jealousy to hear others praise them, at their expense, in eulogiums they feel to be disparaging to themselves. There is no passion more natural to us, man or child, than jealousy. See how it broke out against David from the lips of his own brother! indignant at the stripling for talking as if he would meet the giant, and carry off the palm from his brethren and all the host of Israel, Eliab sharply rebuked him, asking, ‘‘ Why camest thou down thither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart.” And who that knows his own heart will refuse some sympathy to Saul for taking offence — however unjustifiable his way of expressing it — at the disparaging comparison in the song of the maidens when dancing before David, they sung, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.” We wonder not at Saul’s offence, but at Jonathan’s generosity. The song that grated so harshly on his father’s ear, stirred up nor envy, nor jealousy, in him. Rejoicing in another’s honor, he hailed the rise of a sun that paled his own star; and though, as Saul’s eldest son, standing next the throne, Jonathan was content to be second to the good, brave, gallant shepherd, who had gone forth in the name and strength of the Lord to shut the mouth of the blasphemer, and peril his life for the safety of his country and the honor of his God.

Then see what severe trials this friendship endured; and enduring, triumphed over. Saul’s gloomy eye fixed on David, the javelin he hurled to pin him to the wall, the cries of his soldiers echoing from the rocks as they hunted the fugitive from cave to cave, and hill to hill, not more illustrating the words, ‘‘ Jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire,” than the friendship of Jonathan did those which follow, ‘“‘ Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

Happier in his eldest son than David in Absalom, than many fathers, and most kings, in theirs, Saul had a pious, most noble, brave, and dutiful son in Jonathan. What piety, for example, in the words he addresses to his armor-bearer, when, pointing across the gorge to a garrison of the Philistines, he proposed, single-handed, to attack it, saying, ‘Come and let us go over; it may be that the Lord will work for us: for there is no restraint to the Lord, to save by many or by few!” What exploit in the annals of war braver, or so brave, as that which followed — when, scaling their rocky fastness on his hands and knees, he leaped headlong among a swarm of Philistines, and, receiving the battle on his single shield, mowed them down like grass before the scythe? Thus gloriously broke the day on Israel — filling the hearts of her warriors with courage for the coming battle; but, like many that rise with dawn of brightest promise, it had nearly set in the deepest gloom. The victory is won; but at what a price? His father has made a rash vow; and he now requires that Jonathan shall die. It was hard to part with wife and children, hard to leave the world in the flush of life and the very hour of victory, yet he submits himself to his father’s will. Baring a bosom seamed and scarred with wounds suffered in that father’s cause, he stands ready to receive the stroke — a sacrifice to filial piety; and had fallen, but that the people, brandishing swords red with the blood of the Philistines, broke out into open revolt, and throwing themselves before Saul, said, ‘‘ Shall Jonathan die, who hath wrought this great salvation for Israel? God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground. So the people rescued Jonathan, that he died not.”

The reed that bends its head to a breath of wind, and the old gray rock which withstands the hurricane that strews the plain with trees and the foaming shore with wrecks, are not more unlike than Jonathan where his own interests, and the same Jonathan where David’s interests were concerned. Such was the depth and power of his affection for his friend. Here neither Saul’s entreaties, nor anger, nor violence, could move him.

He would part with life to please his father, but not with his love for David. When Saul, to the astonishment of the host, proposed to sacrifice his son to a rash and wicked vow, Jonathan neither made resistance nor remonstrance — like Him whose divine friendship his recalls, he ‘‘ was dumb, opening not his mouth.” But when Saul threatens David’s life, he refuses obedience, and becomes the advocate of his friend; in words replete with affection, a pious spirit, and unanswerable arguments, he pleads with his father; he remonstrates with him, saying, ‘Let not the king sin against his servant, against David; because he hath not sinned against thee, and his works to theeward have been very good: for he did put his life in his hand, and slew the Philistine, and the Lord wrought a great salvation for all Israel: thou sawest it, and didst rejoice: wherefore then wilt thou sin against innocent blood, to slay David without a cause?”

Saul makes many attempts to awaken Jonathan’s jealousy, and kindle in his son’s bosom the hatred that burned and raged in his own. But they are vain. Nor does he succeed any better when all his pent-up passions burst forth in volcanic fury on discovering that David, the object of his hatred, is to be the successor to his throne. In that discovery he flatters himself he holds a spell of power to turn Jonathan’s love into the bitterest hatred, and raise all the devil in his son. There was no devil to raise. The dreadful secret is revealed; but whatever pain is inflicted, whatever struggle it cost, whatever tears it wrung from Jonathan’s eyes, it kindles no bad passions in that pious, generous, and loving heart.

If piety is shown by a regard to God and a childlike submission to his sovereign will, by taking up our cross and denying ourselves daily that we may follow Christ, by saying, like Jesus himself, as he tock the bitter cup of our sorrows from his Father’s hand, ‘‘Father, not my will, but thine be done,” what finer example of this grace than Jonathan? David is to supplant him; David is to enter on the honors and fortune he expected to enjoy; and out of the ruins of Saul’s house, David is to build his own; yet Jonathan ceases not to regard him with unabated and the tenderest affection. For this his father loads him with cruel reproaches; and, borne away on the foaming torrent of his passions, insults the very name and memory of his mother; calling him ‘‘the son of a rebellious and perverse woman.” But these reproaches — like the javelin his mad hand hurled at his son — are all in vain. Jonathan leaves the presence of his father to seek David, and warn him of what was no longer doubtful, hisimminent danger. With what affection they meet; with what bitter sorrow and loving vows they part; tender as brave, ‘“‘they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded; and Jonathan said to David, Go in peace, forasmuch as we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed forever.” Once again they met. It was in the wood of Ziph, and probably under the cloud of night. There, strong in faith and clinging to the hope of better days, Jonathan sets himself to comfort the friend of his bosom. “Fear not,” he says to David, “for the hand of Saul my father shaly not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;” and so, neither of them anticipating that this was to be their last meeting on earth, they parted — never to meet more; Jonathan to leave behind him a name sacred to friendship, and enter, ere long, through a bloody passage into welcome rest; David to mourn his loss, and cherish Jonathan’s sweet memory, and lay on his grave the finest wreath ever bedewed with tears and woven in honor of the dead.

Tender as a woman, and yet true as steel, overflowing with generous kindness, utterly devoid of selfishness, trusting as much as he was trusted, with a heart that reflected David’s as face answereth to face in water, Jonathan was the paragon and perfect pattern of a friend. Many a fond lie has been written on tombstones; and with all their good qualities magnified by the tears through which we gaze on them, the dead appear fairer, dearer, and better than they ever seemed in life; but Jonathan was altogether worthy of this grand .eulogium:

“The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!

Tell it- not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shiald of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.

From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.:;

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.

;

Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights; who put on ornaments of gold upon yow apparel.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the baitle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.

T am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing tha love of women.

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”

To make some practical use of this matter, I remark, —

I. Every one should seek and cultivate friendships. Man has no room in his heart to accommodate many friends; but, as God said in Eden, it is not good that man should be alone. Isolation breeds selfishness, moroseness; and these are apt to run into misanthropy. Those friendships which are essential to the happiness as well as the complete development of our nature, form, indeed, one of the most marked distinctions between us and those animals that resemble us in their social habits — the rooks, for instance, which crowd the same tree with their nests, and, rising by thousands into the air, fill it with their cries and darken it with their sable wings; the cattle that roam pastures and prairie in countless herds; those fishes that, moving in vast shoals, make the green sea glitter with their silver scales. These all seck companionship. God has endowed them with that

instinct. Yet in their normal condition, and unless

where their nature is modified by domestication, they show no sign, nor even seem to be capable, of friendship. So necessary, however, is it for the happiness of man and the complete development of his nature, that kings, who are often required by policy to stand aloof on their cold, unenviable elevation from their highest nobles, have raised servants into favorites, and sought the pleasures of friendship in the confidence and company of menials. Soured, blighted, disappointed with the world, some make friends of domestic animals, and give to birds and dogs and cats the affections which belong to man; and there is a touching story of a captive, cut off from human society and long immured in a lonely dungeon of the Bastille, whose heart, craving some object of friendship, found it in a spider he had tamed, and which his brutal jailer cruelly destroyed.

Besides gratifying one of the strongest instincts of humanity, friendship is recommended by its many advantages. These are equal to its pleasures. A friend, for example, can ask for us what modesty may hinder us from asking for ourselves. A friend can do justice to our merits, urge our claims, defend our character, and do a hundred things else for us it would not seem proper that we should do for ourselves. But perhaps one of the greatest advantages he enjoys who possesses a kind, honest, wise, discreet, faithful friend, lies in this, that amid difficulties he has a counsellor to advise, and against dangers a monitor to warn him. Happy those especially who have friends that will not see sin in them; and, without being censorious, will tell them to their face what others say behind their back — point out their faults and failings, giving them occasion to say, “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.” It is here, indeed, that friendship is most commonly at fault. ‘Meddle not,” says the wise man, “with him that flattereth;” but — and this brings out the value of a faithful friend — there is not in smooth and oily tongue any such flatterer as a man’s own self. The difference, it has been well said, between the counsel a friend giveth and a man giveth himself being as great as between the counsel of a friend and the counsel of a flatterer. Hence the value of those who will give us good advice at the risk of giving us offence; and will rather forfeit our friendship than not attempt to save our interests and especially our souls. The warnings and counsels of such friends may wound our feelings; but so does the surgeon who inflicts pain to preserve life, and cuts that he may cure — ‘ Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

2. In choosing friends, we should select such as promise, by the tone of their conversation, and by their moral and religious character, to prove friends indeed — such as we can trust in the hour of adversity, and would like to see by our dying-bed. Acquaintances are one thing, but friends another. Whoever, therefore, our acquaintances may be, we should, in the choice of friends, be guided by what determined David in the selection as well of his servants as of his associates — ‘‘I am a companion of all them that fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts. Mine eyes:shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me; he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me.” The friendship of the world, as the Bible says, is enmity with God; and to its influence, to bad and dangerous associates, how many promising youths, especially, owe their ruin — — their chosen friends proving to be their worst foes! Better they took a serpent to their bosom than made a friend of the Sabbath-breaker, of the impure, of the scoffer, of the ungodly! Such companionship is more to be dreaded than the clutches of a drowning man. Choosing for his friends the friends of Jesus, ‘he that walketh with wise men shall be wise;” but not less true, and illustrated by the fate of thousands, who are drawn at first into sin and at last into perdition, the words that follow, “The companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

3. We should seek a friend in Jesus Christ — the best, truest, kindest, surest friend man ever had. Everliving, everloving, and everlasting, there is no father like our Father who is in heaven; and as there is no fatherhood like God’s, there is no friendship like Christ’s — to be once named with His who, dying for us, the just for the unjust, laid down His life, not for friends, but enemies. Other friends change: not He. Of them we may, and often do, expect too much; nor will friendship be long maintained between us unless we lay our account with sooner or later discovering, and bearing with, their faults. But Jesus is faultless; altogether lovely — a friend on whose favor we cannot reckon, and from whose kindness we cannot expect, too much. With a wider and far deeper meaning than the world attaches to the expression, in Him we have “a friend at court;” whose inter- — cessions for us, in contrast with those of Jonathan for David, are addressed to a gracious ear and a loving heart In the presence of his Father and amid the glories of the upper sanctuary, at the eternal source of all love and blessing and power, where pardons are granted to save, and grace is bestowed to sanctify, and angels wait to welcome, and mansions stand ready to receive us, He pleads our cause at God’s right hand, omnipotent to save.

Like summer birds which come and go with the sun, like our shadow which deserts us when his face is clouded, like fair flowers that close their leaves as soon as rain begins to fall or cold winds to blow, earthly friends may desert us when we most need their sympathy and support — at the time, and in the circumstances, expressed in the well-known adage, ‘A friend in need ts a friend indeed.” But such a friend is Jesus Christ. Sweetest when trials are bitterest, kindest when others are cruellest, nearest when danger is greatest, his character is delineated in the words, “‘ A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity;” and his image, though faintly, is beautifully shadowed forth in the mother who presses the tender infant closest to her bosom when storms beat and winds blow the coldest. In view of that dread hour when father, mother, husband, wife, children, acquaintances, wealth, and life itself, shall leave us, He says, ‘“‘I will never leave you, nor forsake you: when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned: neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.” Nor shall they — his presence with us there working a greater wonder than on the day Israel passed dryshod through the sea, or the three Hebrew children breathed in a burn-V4 ing furnace, and walked unharmed on coals of fire.

One of the old Fathers tells a parable, which, with a slight alteration, illustrates this subject; and, in view of an hour of death, and a day of judgment, may well recommend to our acceptance and confidence and peace and joy the friendship of the Friend of sinners. A man summoned to answer for his crimes, and called in question for his life, sought help of three friends he had. The first agreed to bear him company for a part of the way; the second would lend him some money for his journey; while the third undertook to go all the way with him, to appear in court, and plead his cause. Soruns the story. In this man, the representative of a lost and guilty race, we See ourselves: and in the three friends whose help he sought, we see the flesh, or our fellow-creatures, the world with its wealth, and Christ, the sinner’s Friend. And what can earthly friends, our dearest, do whendeath summons us to judgment, beyond accompanying us some way to the grave? We part on its gloomy threshold; further they cannot go. Nor can wealth and worldly goods help us to more than a winding sheet — the coffin that receives, and the tomb that closes on, our cold remains. But Jesus — the friend that sticketh closer than a brother — when heart and flesh faint and fail, shall be the strength of our heart, and our portion for evermore. He will never leave us. And when the gates of heaven have opened to receive us, and we have heard Him advocate our cause, and receive amid the loud plaudits of saints and angels, a verdict of acquittal, and in a blood-bought crown the reward of faith, then shall we fully know that there is no friend like Him whom his enemies reproached, but his people love to think of, as the Friend of sinners. Happy for us if the coldness and alienation of old friends, whose countenance has changed, and by whose once oft-frequented doors we pass to sigh over the falsehood or frailty of earthly friendships, make us cling the closer to Jesus, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow —

Nor death nor life, nor earth nor hell,
Nor time’s destroying sway,
Can e’er efface us from his heart,
Or make his love decay.

Each future period that will bless,
As it has bless’d the past;

He loved us from the first of time,
He loves us to the last.”