The Penn's Grove record., 1912-06-28

"S-~
than love, being a sort of unsettled
love, love with the itch and hunger ex-
tracted.
We do not love our friends; we like
them. We love our children, wife and
parents, and kinfolks. We like apples
and custard pie and a coy fire and a
good bed and slippers-and our friend.
Like goes farther in than love. Like
is a voice from the s~ubconscious self,
q cry from the inward and unknown
me. 1t lies behind the will, beneath
the judgment, IN the far darkness Of
our secret soul.
1t does not say that a wife cannot
be also a friend; but she rarely is;
she is usually an enemy, to whom We
are most passionately attached. And
If she be a friend, then that friendship
has grown up from other sources, and
Is Of a different texture and quality
from the sex motives which make mar
riages. Not many women would toler-
ate comradeship from a husband. Per-
haps this Is as it should be, and nature
needs fercer fires for her necessary
results.
Still rarer is friendship between
parent and child. It is an amazing
thing 1 have noticed here, how warm,
intelligent and cultured father and
son both strive for friendship and
cannot attain it. Sometimes they sue
coed, but so rarely that it may be
called a phenomenon.
Whence, then, come friends? And
who are they? And how can one make
them? All answers to these pathetic
questions seem to me to be unsatis-
factory, partial, insufficient, and by the
way. The rules of the wise will not
work. We do not make friends by be-
ing noble and good; friendship does
not arise from similarity of tastes;
and otherwise one can, in actual eX-
perience, drive a two-horse wagon
through all and any of the prescrip-
tons of the proverbial philosophers.
Much of a Mystery.
The fact is that the secret springs
of friendship are wholly mysterious.
Searching for them We must report
Ike the Louisiana sheriff reported on
the back of a writ "duces tecum"
which he had been given to serve upon
a negro who had escaped into the
swamp: Mon comattibus, up stump
um, in swampo." AS l look oveF ny
friends I find l like them as a dog
likes his master. So I conclude that
this emotion must originate in some
Newfoundland or st. Bernard region
Of my nature, and, is probably one Of
those instincts not yet eliminated by
evolution, something l share with
dogs.
For all that I honor it as the best
thing I am conscious Of. I am prouder
of liking my friends than of any other
of my small bunch of virtues. When
think of Bill and Lige and Al and
Ralph and Newt l get a kind of
warmth about the cookies of my heart
no other contemplation can produce.
And the biggest hurts I have eve
felt are those made by the ~disloyalty
of others whom thought friends and
trusted. Nothing is so salt and nau-
seous to the soul as the taste of Judas
IN tle mouth OF memory.
And 1t seems to me-for this, after
all, is a sermon-that religion, rightly
taken, is rather a friendship for God
than a love for God, and that We would
better translate all the Bibles admo-
nitions to love God by the paraphrase
to be friends with God.
To love God has a conventional
sound; but to be a friend of God
that is a searching and swordlike
word. 1t means to like him; not to
avoid him; to seek his presence; to be
at home with him; to be cheered, con-
soled, quieted by the thought of him.
Speaking for myself, I can say that
l never came into this comfortable re-
lationship until l had swept away all
| had ever been taught, dared to pre-
sumo upon the debt God had incurred
toward me by making me, and took
my rightful place as his son at his Ia
Bile.
1t does not require any assumption
of holiness or sinlessness to do thist
it only needs to presume upon the
vast noble m~indedness, kindness and
~forbearing wisdom Of such a heart as
Jesus reveals to US. 1t requires a ire
mendous burst of moral courage to be-
lieve God likes the kind of nan ] am;
but I do believe it; and the result is
the greatest ethical dynamic of my life
the friendship Of God.-Dr. Frank
Crane.