does not detract from human friendship,
but really gives it worth and glory. It is because of this, that all
love has a place in the life of man. All our worships, and
friendships, and loves, come from God, and are but reflections of the
divine tenderness. All that is beautiful, and lovely and pure, and of
good repute, finds its appropriate setting in God; for it was made by
God. He made it for Himself. He made man with instincts, and
aspirations, and heart-hunger, and divine unrest, that He might give
them full satisfaction in Himself. He claims everything, but He gives
everything. Our human relationships are sanctified and glorified by
the spiritual union. He gives us back our kinships, and friendships,
with a new light on them, an added tenderness, transfiguring our common
ties and intimacies, flooding them with a supernal joy. We part from
men to meet with God, that we may be able to meet men again on a higher
platform. But the love of God is the end and design of all other
loves. If the flowers and leaves fade, it is that the time of ripe
fruit is at hand. If these adornments are taken from the tree of life,
it is to make room for the supreme fruitage. Without the love of God
all other love would be but deception, luring men on to the awful
disillusionment. We were born for the love of God; if we do not find
it, it were better for us if we had never been born. We may have
tasted of all the joys the world can offer, have known success and the
gains of success, been blessed with the sweetest friendships and the
fiercest loves; but if we have not found this the chief end of life, we
have missed our chance, and can only have at the last a desolated life.

But if through the joy or through the sorrow of life, through love or
the want of it, through the gaining of friends or the loss of them, we
have been led to dower our lives with the friendship of God, we are
possessed of the incorruptible, and undefiled, and that passeth not
away. The man who has it has attained the secret cheaply, though it
had to be purchased with his heart's blood, with the loss of his dream
of blessedness. When the fabric of life crumbled to its native dust,
and he rose out of its wreck, the vision of the eternal love came with
the thrill of a great revelation. It was the entrance into the
mystery, and the wonder of it awed him, and the joy of it inspired him,
and he awakened to the fact that never again could he be _alone_ to a