st friend." Such weak giving in to the supposed
higher demand of friendship is only a form of selfishness.

Friendship is sometimes too exacting. It asks for too much, more than
we have to give, more than we ever ought to give. There is a tyranny
of love, making demands which can only be granted to the loss of both.
Such tyranny is a perversion of the nature of love, which is to serve,
not to rule. It would override conscience, and break down the will.
We cannot give up our personal duty, as we cannot give up our personal
responsibility. That is how it is possible for Christ to say that if a
man love father, or mother, or wife more than Him, he is not worthy of
Him. No human being can take the place of God to another life; it is
an acted blasphemy to attempt it.

There is a love which is evil in its selfishness. Its very exclusive
claim is a sign of its evil root. The rights of the individual must
not be renounced, even for love's sake. Human love can ask too much,
and it asks too much when it would break down the individual will and
conscience.

The hands that love us often are the hands
That softly close our eyes and draw us earthward.
We give them all the largesse of our life--
Not this, not all the world, contenteth them,
Till we renounce our rights as living souls.

We cannot renounce our rights as living souls without losing our souls.
No man can pay the debt of life for us. No man can take the burden of
life from us. To no man can we hand over the reins unreservedly. It
would be cowardice, and cowardice is sin. The first axiom of the
spiritual life is the sacredness of the individuality of each. We must
respect each other's personality. Even when we have rights over other
people, these rights are strictly limited, and carry with them a
corresponding duty to respect their rights also. The one intolerable
despotism in the world is the attempt to put a yoke on the souls of
men, and there are some forms of intimacy which approach that
despotism. To transgress the moral bounds set to friendship is to make
the highest forms of friendship impossible; for these are only reached
when free spirits meet in the unity of the spirit.

The community of human life, of which we are learning much to-day, is a
great fact. We are all bound up in the same bundle. In a very true
sense we stand or fall together. We are ever on our trial as a
society; not only materially, but even in the highest thing