ossom any of the fair flowers of love. The
surface truth of the poets' sentiment we have acknowledged and
accounted for, but it is only a surface truth. The best of friends
will fall out, and the best of them will renew their friendship, but it
is always at a great risk, and sometimes it strains the foundations of
their esteem for each other to shaking:

And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!

But in any serious rupture of friendship it can only be a blessing when
it means the tears of repentance, and these are often tears of blood.
In all renewing there must be an element of repentance, and however
great the joy of having regained the old footing, there is the memory
of pain, and the presence of regret. To cultivate contention as an
art, and to trade upon the supposed benefit of renewing friendship, is
a folly which brings its own retribution.

The disputatious person for this reason never makes a good friend. In
friendship men look for peace, and concord, and some measure of
content. There are enough battles to fight outside, enough jarring and
jostling in the street, enough disputing in the market-place, enough
discord in the workaday world, without having to look for contention in
the realm of the inner life also. There, if anywhere, we ask for an
end of strife. Friendship is the sanctuary of the heart, and the peace
of the sanctuary should brood over it. Its chiefest glory is that the
dust and noise of contest are excluded.

It must needs be that offences come. It is not only that the world is
full of conflict and controversy, and every man must take his share in
the fights of his time. We are born into the battle; we are born for
the battle. But apart from the outside strife, from which we cannot
separate ourselves, and do not desire to separate ourselves if we are
true men, the strange thing is that it looks as if it must needs be
that offences come even among brethren. The bitterest disputes in life
are among those who are nearest each other in spirit. We do not
quarrel with the man in the street, the man with whom we have little or
no communication. He has not the chance, nor the power, to chafe our
soul, and ruffle our temper. If need be, we can afford to despise, or
at least to neglect him. It is the man of our own household, near us
in life and spirit, who runs the risk of the only serious dis