cannot change while the one who loved remains himself, and the one whom he loves is, with all his changes, still himself. Failure on the part of the one loved may sadden a friend's heart, or treachery may break it, but no such change as this can change that heart's fidelity.

It was while Jesus was troubled in spirit over his already planned betrayal by one whom he had loved as a friend, that he made exhibit of his still-continuing unselfish love for him by giving to him the morsel, or sop, of affection, out of the dish from which they were partaking together in friendship. In all the changes of that night of gloom, the friendship of Jesus was changeless. The nearer one's friendship approaches to the standard of Jesus, the surer it will be to remain unfailingly true, despite every failure of its object of love.

When Josephus was defending the Jews against the attack on them by the pagan Greek Apion, he laid emphasis on their habit of unchanging fidelity in all the changes of a chosen friendship. "Secrecy among friends is prohibited," he said; “for friendship implies an entire confidence without any reserve." "Nay, where friendship is dissolved," he added, "we must not be false to a former trust." It would hardly be admitted that the Christian standard at this point is lower, on this verge of the twentieth century, than was that of the Jews at the beginning of our era.

One's self, rather than one's friend, is on trial when the question is mooted whether a love given in a friendship is to continue changelessly, or is to change. If a man was wise and true in giving his love, let him be wise and true in its continuing. If, however, it would seem that he

was not wise, let it not also appear that he is not true. Even if it be too late to choose a true friend wisely, it is not too late to be wisely true as a friend.

This thought it is that Cicero emphasizes when he says: "We should employ such carefulness in forming our friendships that we could not at any time begin to love the man whom we could possibly ever hate. Moreover, if we have been but unfortunate in our selection, . . . this should be submitted to, rather than that a time of alienation should ever be contemplated. . . . For nothing can be more disgraceful than to be at enmity with him with whom you have lived on terms of friendship."

Coleridge, in the greatness of his mind, perceived the truth that no change in the intimacies of a friendship should change the friendship itself:

'Unchanged within to see all changed without

Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
Yet why at others' wanings shouldst thou fret?
Then only mightst thou feel a just regret,
Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
While, and on whom, thou mayst-shine on! nor heed
Whether the object by reflected light

Return thy radiance or absorb it quite:

And though thou notest from thy safe recess

Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
Love them for what they are; nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were."

At the best, a change in the intimacies of a friendship is a loss to both him who loves and him who is loved. It is with all estranged friends as it was with Lord Roland

and Sir Leoline, in Coleridge's "Christabel," in their

estrangement:

"Each spoke words of high disdain

And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted-ne'er to meet again!

But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining-

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between ;—
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

A changeless personality, that must unceasingly suffer from the changed relations of a once joyous friendship, cannot be so untrue to itself as to be untrue to the memories, the inspirations, and the obligations, of that friendship. At the worst, in recognition of that which is called a hopeless change in the friendship itself, its reverent cry will be:

"We that were friends, yet are not now,

We that must daily meet

With ready words and courteous bow,

Acquaintance of the street;
We must not scorn the holy past,

We must remember still

To honor feelings that outlast

The reason of the will."

VERY heart is human, and every human heart has its possibilities in the direction of best and truest outreachings of affection. In all lands and in all ages the reciprocal ties of blood and of marriage have found their comparative measure of binding force; and with like universality there has been recognized the binding force of the tie in a noble and an ennobling friendshipabove the dearest of these reciprocal ties.

Marriage has had its varying degrees of obligation and sacredness among different peoples of the world. Polygamy, polyandry, and promiscuity, have in turn tended to destroy or diminish the beauty and sanctity of the primal institution of dual union in conjugal love. Parental and filial and fraternal affections have had greater or lesser sway according to the circumstances and characteristics and religious beliefs of diverse nationalities and communities. Savage customs, or selfish cravings, or ecclesiastical requirements, have had their part in crushing

out the divinely implanted love for offspring. Perverted reasoning, or the hard struggle for personal existence, has at times so far obliterated from the mind all loyal regard for the authors of one's being, as to cause the desertion or destruction of helpless or infirm parents to be deemed justifiable, or even praiseworthy. All these causes have again, in their turn, operated to neutralize the love which would bind in unity the several children of a common parentage. Yet no people has fallen so low in the social scale, nor has any risen so high, as to be without the clear conception of a union, real, sacred, and abiding, between two persons made one in the love of an unselfish and inviolable friendship.

An absolute merging of two personalities into one, in this union of friendship, has been sought, among primitive peoples everywhere, by the intermingling of the blood of the two, through its mutual drinking, or its inter-transfusion; with the thought that blended blood is blended life. Traces of this custom are found in the traditions and practices of the aborigines of different portions of Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Islands of the Sea. Nor is there any quarter of the globe where traces of this rite, in one form or another, are not to be found to-day.

Almost invariably this formal seeking of a friendship union by intermingled blood has been accompanied by an appeal to God, or to the gods, in witness of its sacredness, and in pledge of unswerving fidelity to its obligations. A sundering of this tie-unlike that of marriage— has ever been deemed an impossibility; and no claims of personal interest, of family, of caste, of country, or of