| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 20 |
Page 5 |
“What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be.”
Our friends are also our ideals. At least in every beautiful friend’s life we see some little glimpse of life “as it is in heaven,” a little fragment of the beauty of the beauty of the Lord, which becomes part of the glory into which we, should fashion our lives.
When we truly love a friend we unconsciously reach toward what he/she is and grow into or toward his/her likeness. Thus as a father and mother are ideals to their child who copies their life, their speech, their faults as well as their virtues. The same is true in all friendships and close companionships. If these were not good, the influence can be only hurtful and evil.
There is a wonderful restraining and constraining power over us in the life of one we love. We dare not do wrong in the sacred presence of a pure, gentle friend. Every one knows how unworthy they feel when they come, with the consciousness and recollection of some sin or some meanness, into the companionship of one they honor as a friend. It is a kind of “Jesus-presence” that our friend is to us, in which we dare not do evil things.Thus one writes of the hallowing influence of a friend’s pure presence:–
“Each soul whispers to herself: ‘Twere like a breach
Of reverence in a temple, could I dare
Here speak untruth; here wrong my inmost thought.
Here I grow strong and pure; here I may yield
Without shamefacedness the little brought
From out my poorer life, and stand revealed
And glad, and trusting, and in the sweet and rare
And tender presence which hath filled the air”
George Eliot, too, puts a like thought thus: “There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration. They bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us; and our sins become the worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust.”
Page 5