Friendship | Page 5

brought
about differs very much, and depends largely on temperament. Some
friendships grow, and ripen slowly and steadily with the years. We
cannot tell where they began, or how. They have become part of our
lives, and we just accept them with sweet content and glad confidence.
We have discovered that somehow we are rested, and inspired, by a
certain companionship; that we understand and are understood easily.
Or it may come like love at first sight, by the thrill of elective affinity.
This latter is the more uncertain, and needs to be tested and corrected
by the trial of the years that follow. It has to be found out whether it is
really spiritual kinship, or mere emotional impulse. It is a matter of
temper and character. A naturally reserved person finds it hard to open
his heart, even when his instinct prompts him; while a sociable,
responsive nature is easily companionable. It is not always this quick
attachment, however, which wears best, and that is the reason why
youthful friendships have the character of being so fickle. They are due
to a natural instinctive delight in society. Most young people find it
easy to be agreeable, and are ready to place themselves under new
influences.
But whatever be the method by which a true friendship is formed,
whether the growth of time or the birth of sudden sympathy, there

seems, on looking back, to have been an element of necessity. It is a
sort of predestined spiritual relationship. We speak of a man meeting
his fate, and we speak truly. When we look back we see it to be like
destiny; life converged to life, and there was no getting out of it even if
we wished it. It is not that we made a choice, but that the choice made
us. If it has come gradually, we waken to the presence of the force
which has been in our lives, and has come into them never hasting but
never resting, till now we know it to be an eternal possession. Or, as we
are going about other business, never dreaming of the thing which
occurs, the unexpected happens; on the road a light shines on us, and
life is never the same again.
In one of its aspects, faith is the recognition of the inevitableness of
providence; and when it is understood and accepted, it brings a great
consoling power into the life. We feel that we are in the hands of a
Love that orders our ways, and the knowledge means serenity and
peace. The fatality of friendship is gratefully accepted, as the fatality of
birth. To the faith which sees love in all creation, all life becomes
harmony, and all sorts of loving relationships among men seem to be
part of the natural order of the world. Indeed, such miracles are only to
be looked for, and if absent from the life of man would make it hard to
believe in the love of God.
The world thinks we idealize our friend, and tells us that love is
proverbially blind. Not so: it is only love that sees, and thus can "win
the secret of a weed's plain heart." We only see what dull eyes never
see at all. If we wonder what another man sees in his friend, it should
be the wonder of humility, not the supercilious wonder of pride. He
sees something which we are not permitted to witness. Beneath and
amongst what looks only like worthless slag, there may glitter the pure
gold of a fair character. That anybody in the world should be got to
love us, and to see in us not what colder eyes see, not even what we are
but what we may be, should of itself make us humble and gentle in our
criticism of others' friendships. Our friends see the best in us, and by
that very fact call forth the best from us.
The great difficulty in this whole subject is that the relationship of

friendship should so often be one-sided. It seems strange that there
should be so much unrequited affection in the world. It seems almost
impossible to get a completely balanced union. One gives so much
more, and has to be content to get so much less. One of the most
humiliating things in life is when another seems to offer his friendship
lavishly, and we are unable to respond. So much love seems to go
a-begging. So few attachments seem complete. So much affection
seems unrequited.
But are we sure it is unrequited? The difficulty is caused by our
common selfish standards. Most people, if they had their choice, would
prefer to be loved rather than to love, if only one of the alternatives
were permitted. That springs from the root of