tion of the Talmudic maxim (in Pirqe Aboth): "All love which depends on some thing, when the thing ceases. the love ceases; but such love as does not depend on anything, ceases not forever." Francis Quarles seems to have had this maxim in mind when he wrote: "Convey thy love to thy friend, as an arrow to the mark, to stick there; not as a ball against the wall to rebound back to thee. That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end." And so it is that true friendship is deathless, through being a love that is endless.

The very joy of friendship is found in loving, not in being loved. Epicurus is cited by Plutarch as saying, concerning this matter of friendship, "It is more pleasant to do good than to receive good;" and La Rochefoucauld, the French Epicurean, could see that in all the sphere of the affections the larger gain and the larger joy are from loving, rather than from being loved. "The pleasure of loving is to love," he says; "and we are much happier in the passion we feel, than in that we excite." It is in the light of this characteristic of friendship that La Rochefoucauld exclaims: "Rare as true love is, it is less rare than true friendship."

The gentle-spirited Whittier brings out this truth in its richer signifyings, in his words:

"Love is sweet in any guise;

But its best is sacrifice.

"He who giving does not crave,

Likest is to Him who gave

Life itself the loved to save."

It is a woman's readier apprehension of the supremacy

of a self-abnegating love, that shows itself in the words • of Helen Hunt:

"When love is strong,

It never tarries to take heed,

Or know if its return exceed

Its gift; in its sweet haste no greed,

No strifes belong.

"It hardly asks

If it be loved at all; to take

So barren seems, when it can make

Such bliss, for the beloved's sake,

Of bitter tasks."

In similar womanly perception of the spirit of true friend

ship it is that George Eliot affirms:

"So if I live or die to serve my friend,

'Tis for my love,-'tis for my friend alone,

And not for any rate that friendship bears
In heaven or in earth."

This is the Bible view of friendship, both in the Old Testament and in the New. The Divine pattern of love is a love that loves without any condition of love returned, and that consists in loving, rather than in being loved. "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you," says Moses to Israel. It was not because of your lovableness, but because of God's lovingness, that God loved you; and his love consists in loving. "And he will love thee," adds Moses. He will keep on loving you, because he is so loving toward you whom he does love.

"Ye did not choose me, but I chose you," says Jesus to those whom he calls his friends. "Herein is love," herein is Divine love, Divine friendship, says the disciple whom Jesus loved, -" not that we loved God, but that heloved us;" this love consists in God's loving us, rather than in our loving God; for the truest, highest, purest, love which is friendship, or which friendship is-whether it be Divine love or friendship or human love or friendship-always consists in loving, rather than in being loved.

Only he who is unwilling to love without being loved, is likely to feel that there is no such thing as friendship in the world.

RUE friendship being love without compact or condition, true friendship never pivots on an equivalent return of service or of affection. Its whole sweep is away from self and toward the loved one. Its desire

is for the friend's welfare; its joy is in the friend's prosperity; its sorrows and trials are in the friend's misfortunes and griefs; its pride is in the friend's attainments and successes; its constant purpose is of doing and enduring for the friend; and even its unrest, if unrest there be, is because of its never-satisfied endeavor to advantage and benefit the friend. This is ideal friendship; this is true friendship in actual attainment.

Take, for example, that most beautiful of all illustrative friendships, the friendship of Jonathan for David, in the Bible narrative, it was grandly, gloriously unselfish. Jonathan was a prince of the royal house, heir-apparent to the throne of a kingdom. He was himself a hero of high achievement, with a foremost place in the people's love and honor. His first glimpse of David was in the light of a successful rival. The stripling shepherd stood the new hero of the hour, brought into the presence of the king while the nation's praises were ringing in his ears because of the wonderful deliverance wrought by his faith-filled daring. Looking then upon him in his loveliness of person and of character, Jonathan saw with prophetic ken the sure future of David as the coming king of Israel, as the one in whose glowing light his own star of earthly hope must pale. But in the first flush of that discovery there was no shade of envy, nor yet the faintest trace of regret, in the more than royal heart of Jonathan. Joy in the recognition of so noble and lovable a character as David's, filled the whole being of the nobler and yet more lovable Jonathan. "And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." And from that time onward every heart-throb of Jonathan's friendship for David was a heart-throb of unselfish devotedness to him to whom he was a friend. What wonder that David pronounced upon that friendship as "passing the love of women;" passing all craving love, all selfish desire!

Similarly, the unselfish devotedness of Ruth to Naomi gave her friendship a place in the sacred story, and marked the contrast of her love with Orpah's. The associations of a lifetime, the drawings of personal interest, of kindred, of patriotism, and of religion, combined for the attaching of the widowed daughters-in-law to Moab and its dwellers. Only a sacred friendship, a friendship which had its deepest roots in no obligations of blood or of