The Hope of Glory

by E. C. Dargan - 1919

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP is one of the God-like things in humanity. Human nature shows like God when it is kind, for God is love. Everybody who is worth while has friends. Surely, it is one of the most sorrowful things in this world to be friendless. How do we regard our friends, and how do our friends regard us? How many friends have we? To how many are we friends?

Let us think together of the sweetness and preciousness and the character of friendship. It has been the theme of poets who have sung of it in beautiful terms, of philosophers who have discoursed about it in wise and strong ways, of essayists who have written of it in beautiful language. But it is not to literature nor to philosophy that we look for the right description of friendship. If we ourselves do not know what it is, and cannot tell by our own knowledge of one another what friendship is, no one else can tell us by definition or essay.

Friendship mnst have two sides. It is not always equal, but it must be mutual. You cannot think of a one-sided friendship. However, always, or nearly always, in friendship, one gives more than the other. We have grades of friends. We have circles of friends. We speak of our ”friends” in a general way. When people are kindly disposed towards us and we are kindly disposed toward them, we say that we have friends. But we draw a line nearer than that and talk about our ”particular friends.” We draw the circle closer still and talk about our ”intimate friends.” There are some to whom we give the utmost of our confidence and keep nothing back. Then we may go even beyond that. There, perhaps, are one or two who are more than intimate. Sometimes it happens that they are our other selves. It is this close and profound and loving tie that we especially have in mind when we speak of friendship in the most emphatic way. We think of Damon and Pythias, of David and Jonathan. We mention these as cases of special self-sacrificing friendship. It is this friendship of David and Jonathan that gives the suggestion that I desire to follow out in our talk tonight.

Friendship like this must be founded in mutual admiration. We sometimes say of certain people that they form ”a mutual admiration society,” by way of criticism. But after all there is a great deal of truth in this statement. There can be no friendship without mutual admiration. We can love people that we do not admire. For myself, I am thankful that I do not have to like everybody that I love. There must be something to admire. There has got to be mutual admiration. That was certainly so of David and Jonathan. When David came back from his triumph, when he had slain the Philistine and stood before Saul with nothing but his shepherd’s tunic about him, armed with the simple sling and smooth stones, as he stood there mute before King Saul, the Scripture tells us that ”the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David and he loved him as his own soul.” Why? Because he admired him. And this soul of splendid young manhood went out and grasped with a tie death could not break the soul of another man. Brave spirits they were which recognized that spirit of manhood each in the other. Jonathan was great in himself, - a man that feared not the face of others, that braved his father’s wrath for his friend’s sake, yet was loyal to him through all. Jonathan saw that beautiful thing of superior manhood and courage in David and he loved him as his own soul.

Then another thing. In true friendship there must be not only mutual admiration but mutual confidence. We must trust each other, and so David and Jonathan fully trusted each other. David would trust his reputation in Jonathan’s hands. David knew that he could depend on his friend to protect him even against his father. He knew that he had a friend in court when Jonathan was there. Jonathan would see justice done and he trusted him not in vain. On the other hand, Jonathan absolutely trusted David. He had no doubt whatever that David would perform to the fullest the vow that he made. And he said to him, ”When thou art king, and there are any of mine left, be thou true and faithful. He took the oath, of God that he would.” There was perfect trust between these two.

Friendship requires mutual sacrifice. That is not friendship in which both parties do not give up something, in which both parties are not willing to surrender something. There is a curious thing about David. You will notice it all his life. He was one of those exceedingly winsome occasional characters which we meet that always seem to get more than they give. He had that attractive quality that makes people willing to give. Why when he was thirsty one day and longed for a drink of water just after a battle, he said, ”Oh, that one would give me water to drink of the well of Bethlehem.” And three mighty men broke through the hosts of the enemy and brought him water from the well of sacred memories. He was a man for whom people would do things like that. All his life he was like that. Joab and the others about him would not let him go out and fight in his old age. David got more; Jonathan gave more. That was what made the beauty of Jonathan’s love. It was his selfgiving.

Again, we must remember that friendship necessarily has its emotional side. It means affection. It means tenderness. That is one reason why we ought to cherish friendship. When men grow callous and hard-hearted and indifferent and unemotional, they need the ministry of friendship. I do not like a man that cannot cry. It does me good sometimes to see a man who can sob with emotion. A man who has lost the faculty of tenderness is not the best person in the world to deal with. I would not trust a man that never could weep. David was the more emotional of the two. Yet we must remember how David said, in lamenting Jonathan’s death, ”Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” In one of the interviews of these friends, when they had sworn their dying friendship to each other, it is said that they wept upon each other’s shoulders ”until David exceeded.” When you read the Psalms of David, you will see what a wealth of tenderness was in his soul. And so there was a warmth of affection and love and tenderness that existed between the two.

Friendship is not merely emotional, but action in moral sentiment and service. A friendship that does nothing for a friend is not a friendship worth while. There must not only be self-giving in the loyalty, of loving affection, but self-giving in the sacrifice of service. And these men gave that to each other. There was nothing that David had that he was not willing to give Jonathan. There was nothing that Jonathan had that he was not willing and glad to give David. When he first saw David, he had no clothes to speak of, no implements of war, naught but the sling and the stones of the brook. Jonathan stripped himself of his own garments and placed them upon his friend. How he stood by when in anger and jealousy Saul assailed David and drove him out in the wilderness 1 And through each succeeding attack upon David in court, Jonathan was the staunch friend, supporter, champion. A man who will stand by his friend in his absence is a friend worth while. When David was yonder banished with only some few companions besides the armed men he had, with his life in his own hand, comes this statement of the text: ”And Jonathan, Saul’s son, arose, and went to David into the wood, and strengthened his hand in God.”

It is the man that comes into the wood, it is the man that comes in the hour of trial, it is the man that comes when others go out, it is the man that comes when we need him most that is our friend. The highest deed of friendship is to arrive upon the scene when you are most needed. When David was in the wood, outcast, alone, broken-hearted, Jonathan came to him in the wood and ”strengthened his hand in God.” The man that comes to you in the hour of trial to strengthen and help you knows and meets the need of friendship. He does not send you a message or a check, but comes; you do not want messages at such times. You appreciate them in a way, but there is something lacking. You do not care for his financial help, you want the man himself. When you want the sympathetic hand-grasp, when you want the tremulous lip, - these are the times when nothing else will do for friendship but the friend himself.

Someone has said that there is nothing which moves the heart like the approach of a friend. There is a mutual conscious attraction, an enhancement of feeling. It is as the approach of magnet and iron, as the coalescing of points of light into a warmer and fuller glow. Sometimes nothing needs to be said or done. My friend comes! that itself suffices. It tells me more than words can say; it counts for more than money can buy. Yet this need not mean the failure of words nor the omission of deeds; for with himself the friend may also bring a gift.

Notice what this gift of friendship was. Jonathan strengthened David’s hand in God. What did he bring to his friend? Something to eat? News of other friends? Perhaps; but the thing most needed he brought was that he strengthened his hand in God. The highest gift of friendship is to give to our friend a new grip on God. This is more than earthly friendship, more than affection’s kindly words, more than admiration’s finest compliments. The man who helps me to God is the best friend I can have. The man who strengthens my faith in the time of my deepest need is indeed my friend. And so on the other hand I am best friend to another when I help him to renew and strengthen his grasp upon God. The sweetest friendship in this world is the friendship that brings the friend to the Great Friend. For a man to claim to be another man’s friend and drag that man to hell is awful travesty and tragedy. You are not a friend to the man whom you debauch, and the man who would lead you astray from paths of virtue is your worst enemy. The man who grasps your hand and strengthens you in God is the best friend you have in this world. When you need a saviour, a man who can bring you up out of the dark, that man is your friend. But it is a travesty upon the name of friendship when friends drag their friends to evil. Long years ago when I was a college boy, young and small, and easily teased and bothered, I had some friends that were not very good fellows in many ways. They were ”bad boys,” as we say. One day when some of the others were saying unkind things to me, and I had as much as I could stand of it, and my lips began to quiver and my eyes to flash and, somehow it seemed that I could endure no more, there was a great big six-footer standing by who laid his hand on the fellow by me and said, ”Jake, you have got to let Ned alone, or you can settle with me.’’ The man that helps you to God, that stands by you when your virtue is tried, that stands by you when you are tempted to evil, that man is your friend, - the man who comes to you in the woods and strengthens your hand in God. The kind of friendship we ought to show is to help our friends to be better than they are, not by criticism, but by kindness. The truest friend is the friend who helps us in the way of righteousness, in the way of salvation.

That brings us to speak of the Great Friend. Jesus allowed himself to be called the Friend of Sinners.

Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,
We wretched sinners lay,
Without one cheerful beam of hope,
Or spark of glimmering day.

”With pitying eyes the Prince of grace
Beheld our helpless grief;
He saw, and, O, amazing love!
He flew to our relief.

Down from the shining seats above,
With joyful haste he fled,
Entered the grave in mortal flesh.
And dwelt among the dead.

O for this love, let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break,
And all harmonious human tongues
The Saviour’s praises speak.

He came into our woods and strengthened our hands in God. He came when there was no hand to help and raised us up out of our despair and put a new song into our mouths, even praises unto our God. He is our Friend. What a Friend we have in Jesus! Brother, is he your Friend? And are you his friend? Have you joined in friendship with Christ and accepted the hand reached down for your help and made him your Friend? O, may God help us to be the right kind of friends to each other, and to form and cherish in our hearts the proper return for the infinite and perfect friendship of the Friend of Sinners!

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