e forced
to respect his personality. We may watch and pray and speak, but we
cannot save. There is almost a sort of spiritual indecency in
unveiling the naked soul, in attempting to invade the personality of
another life. There is sometimes a spiritual vivisection which some
attempt in the name of religion, which is immoral. Only holier eyes
than ours, only more reverent hands than ours, can deal with the spirit
of a man. He is a separate individual, with all the rights of an
individual. We may have many points of contact with him, the contact
of mind on mind, and heart on heart; we may even have rights over him,
the rights of love; but he can at will insulate his life from ours.
Here also, as elsewhere when we go deep enough into life, it is God and
the single human soul.

The lesson of all true living in every sphere is to learn our own
limitations. It is the first lesson in art, to work within the
essential limitations of the particular art. But in dealing with other
lives it is perhaps the hardest of all lessons, to learn, and submit
to, our limitations. It is the crowning grace of faith, when we are
willing to submit, and to leave those we love in the hands of God, as
we leave ourselves. Nowhere else is the limit of friendship so deeply
cut as here in the things of the spirit.

No man can save his brother's soul,
Nor pay his brother's debt.

Human friendship has limits because of the real greatness of man. We
are too big to be quite comprehended by another. There is always
something in us left unexplained, and unexplored. We do not even know
ourselves, much less can another hope to probe into the recesses of our
being. Friendship has a limit, because of the infinite element in the
soul. It is hard to kick against the pricks, but they are meant to
drive us toward the true end of living. It is hard to be brought up by
a limit along any line of life, but it is designed to send us to a
deeper and richer development of our life. Man's limitation is God's
occasion. Only God can fully satisfy the hungry heart of man.

The Higher Friendship

Love Him, and keep Him for thy Friend, who, when all go away, will not
forsake thee, nor suffer thee to perish at the last.

THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happen to be--God!

BROWNING.

The Higher Friendship

Life is an education in love. There are grades and steps in it,
occasions of varying