ts he did not seek to reveal. He gave
to them his choicest hours, explained to them the mysteries, revealed
his own experiences, animated their hopes, removed their
stumbling-blocks, encouraged them in missions of charity, ignored their
mistakes, gloried in their sacrifices, and held out to them the promised
joys of the endless future. In return, they consoled him in
disappointment, shared his resentments, exulted in his triumphs, soothed
him in his toils, administered to his wants, guarded his infirmities,
relieved him from irksome details, and inspired him to exalted labors by
increasing his self-respect. Not with empty flatteries, nor idle
dalliances, nor frivolous arts did they mutually encourage and assist
each other. Sincerity and truthfulness were the first conditions of
their holy intercourse,--"the communion of saints," in which they
believed, the sympathies of earth purified by the aspirations of heaven;
and neither he nor they were ashamed to feel that such a friendship was
more precious than rubies, being sanctioned by apostles and martyrs;
nay, without which a Bethany would have been as dreary as the stalls and
tables of money-changers in the precincts of the Temple.

A mere worldly life could not have produced such a friendship, for it
would have been ostentatious, or prodigal, or vain; allied with
sumptuous banquets, with intellectual tournaments, with selfish aims,
with foolish presents, with emotions which degenerate into passions
_Ennui_, disappointment, burdensome obligation, ultimate disgust, are
the result of what is based on the finite and the worldly, allied with
the gifts which come from a selfish heart, with the urbanities which are
equally showered on the evil and on the good, with the graces which
sometimes conceal the poison of asps. How unsatisfactory and mournful
the friendship between Voltaire and Frederic the Great, with all their
brilliant qualities and mutual flatteries! How unmeaning would have been
a friendship between Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson, even had the latter
stooped to all the arts of sycophancy! The world can only inspire its
votaries with its own idolatries. Whatever is born of vanity will end in
vanity. "Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that
mirth is heaviness." But when we seek in friends that which can
perpetually refresh and never satiate,--the counsel which maketh wise,
the voice of truth and not the voice of flattery; that which will
instruct a