repose only on the certitudes of heaven; those who are joined together
by the gospel feel alike the misery of the fall and the glory of the
restoration. The impressive earnestness which overpowers the mind when
eternal and momentous truths are the subjects of discourse binds people
together with a force of sympathy which cannot be produced by the
sublimity of a mountain or the beauty of a picture. And this enables
them to bear each other's burdens, and hide each other's faults, and
soothe each other's resentments; to praise without hypocrisy, rebuke
without malice, rejoice without envy, and assist without ostentation.
This divine sympathy alone can break up selfishness, vanity, and pride.
It produces sincerity, truthfulness, disinterestedness,--without which
any friendship will die. It is not the remembrance of pleasure which
keeps alive a friendship, but the perception of virtues. How can that
live which is based on corruption or a falsehood? Anything sensual in
friendship passes away, and leaves a residuum of self-reproach, or
undermines esteem. That which preserves undying beauty and sacred
harmony and celestial glory is wholly based on the spiritual in man, on
moral excellence, on the joys of an emancipated soul. It is not easy, in
the giddy hours of temptation or folly, to keep this truth in mind, but
it can be demonstrated by the experience of every struggling character.
The soul that seeks the infinite and imperishable can be firmly knit
only to those who live in the realm of adoration,--the adoration of
beauty, or truth, or love; and unless a man or woman _does_ prefer the
infinite to the finite, the permanent to the transient, the true to the
false, the incorruptible to the corruptible there is not even the
capacity of friendship, unless a low view be taken of it to advance our
interests, or enjoy passing pleasures which finally end in bitter
disappointments and deep disgusts.

Moreover, there must be in lofty friendship not only congenial tastes,