which are to be exorcised by keeping close to beautiful thought,—to something high, poetic, reverent. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee" is one of the most practical aids in life. It can be relied upon more fully than the visit of the physician. From the Bible, from the poets, one may draw as from a sustaining fountain. As this intense depression is a mental feature of the disease it must be met by mental methods,—of resolutely holding the thoughts to high and beautiful themes; by allying the imagination with serene and radiant ideals. Emerson is the greatest of magicians. His words will work marvels. His thought is as luminous as a Roentgen ray.
"Heaven's perfect hour" is sure to sometime dawn if one but keep his face turned toward the morning. "Heaven's perfect hour" is within one's own possibilities of creation, if he live aright and think aright; and with joy and radiance may he make it his perpetual experience; although it is the supreme anomaly in life that the social relations which are designed to offer the profoundest joy, the most perfect consolation for disaster or sorrow, and to communicate the happy currents of electrical energy, are yet those which not unfrequently make themselves the channel of the most intense suffering. There is something wrong in this. The friendships of life, all forms and phases and degrees through which regard and friendship reveal themselves, are the one divinest, perhaps it may be said are the only, part of life on earth that is absolutely divine, and the divine element should communicate perpetual joy. This is the ideal view of the entire panorama of social interchange and social relations, and being the purest ideal, it is also the most intensely and absolutely real. For nothing is real, in the last analysis, save that which is ideal; and nothing is ideal that is not a spiritual reality. Then the question recurs,—how is it possible, how can it be accounted for that the one phase of suffering which seems past even trying to endure, comes through the sources which should radiate only joy and blessedness?
The old proverb, "Save me from my friends," is founded on a certain basis of fact. "Twenty enemies cannot do me the mischief of one friend," rather cynically, but perhaps not wholly untruly, said Gail Hamilton. For it certainly is not the avowed enemy, or the person to whom one is indifferent, who has the power to greatly harm or pain him. So far as injury goes, Emerson is probably right when he says, "No one can work me injury but myself." Misrepresentation, misinterpretation, there may be, but in the long run truth is mighty, and will, and does, prevail. One need not greatly concern himself with misinterpretations, but, rather, only with striving to live the life of truth and righteousness.
Perhaps one cause of much of the unhappiness and suffering that not infrequently invests relations that should only be those of joy and peace and mutual inspiration, is an over and an undue emphasis on material things. Now, when viewed in the light of absolute truth, material things are of simply no consequence at all. They do not belong to the category of realities. Money, possessions,—the mere goods and chattels of life,—are, even at their best appraisal, a mere temporary convenience. As a convenience they fill a place and are all very well. As anything beyond that they have no place at all in one's consciousness. Whatever luxury they can offer is simply in using them to the best advantage, and human nature is so constituted that this best advantage is usually more closely connected with those who are dear to one than it is with himself. For himself alone, what does he want that money, mere money, can buy? He wants and needs the average conditions of life, in the "food, clothing, and shelter" line; he needs and requires certain conditions of beauty, of harmony, of gratification of tastes and enlargement of opportunities,—all these are legitimate needs, and are part of the working conditions of life; of the right development and progress which one is in duty bound to make, both for his own personal progress and as the vantage ground of his efforts for usefulness. Beyond that, the luxury of life lies in doing what the heart prompts. The one heavenly joy of life is in the enlargement of social sympathies; it is in the offering of whatever appreciation and devotion it is possible to offer to those whose noble and beautiful lives inspire this devotion. To have this accepted—not because it is of intrinsic value, not because it is of any particular importance per se, but because it is the visible representation of the spiritual gift of reverence, appreciation, and devotion—is the purest happiness one may experience, and that which inspires him anew to all endeavor and achievement. To have it refused or denied is to have the golden portals close before one and shut him out in the darkness. Why, the heavenly privilege, the infinite obligation, is on the part of him who is permitted to offer his tribute of love and devotion, expressed, if it so chances, in any material way,—and he is denied his sweetest joy if this privilege be denied him. There are gifts that are priceless, but they are not of the visible and tangible world. They are the gifts of sympathy, of intuitive comprehension, of helpful regard; and, curiously, these—the priceless and precious—are never regarded as too valuable for acceptance, while regarding the material and temporal, which, at best, are the merest transient convenience, there will be hesitation and pain. And this hesitation arises, too, from the most beautiful and delicately exquisite qualities, but it produces the pain that is
"——the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute."
There is in life a proportion of pain and jarring that is inevitable, probably, to the imperfect conditions with which the experience on earth is temporarily invested; and because of this, all the range of friendship should be held apart as divine, and any interchange of material gifts should not receive this undue emphasis, but be regarded as the mere incidental trifle of momentary convenience, while all the regard and devotion that may lie behind should give its mutual joy as free and as pure as the fragrance of a rose. Of all that a friend may be Emerson so truly says:—
"I fancied he was fled,—
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again.
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form."
That alone is what all the loves and friendships of life are for,—that through their ministry life may take on nobler form.
"I fancied he was fled."
But a friendship that is true cannot flee; it is, by its very quality and nature, abiding. It may be silent forever; it may be invisible, inaudible, immaterial, impersonal; but once forged it is of the heavenly life, the heavenly language, and the Word of the Lord abideth forever!