Morning Star

CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP.

In such a world as ours, subjected as we are to all the vicissitudes of life—to sickness, sorrow, and death—valuable, indeed are the pleasures of Christian friendship. And chilled and frozen must be that heart which cannot feel that the sweetest earthly joys result from the mutual interchange of soul. When our prospects are most bright, and the fabric of earthly bliss which imagination often rears, seems almost completed—we feel that much, very much, of our happiness is derived from the society of those we love—particularly from those we love as the followers of Jesus—and we may hope are travelling the same path to heaven. But when affliction is ours, when our fondest hopes are disappointed—and our dearest sources of comfort are cut off, then we can best realize the worth of those friends who mingle their sympathies with ours, and take from affliction half its sting.

"The crowds whom we smile with, when gladness is ours,
Are summer's bright blossoms and autumn's gay stores,
But the friend on whose breast we in sorrow repose,
That friend is the winter's lone beautiful rose!"

There is, indeed, a painful reflection which must mingle with all the pleasures of friendship—and that is, the uncertainty of its continuance—this uncertainty that always accompanies earthly joys, often "throws as it were a sickly drapery around them." But the Christian can look beyond these changing scenes, and though his heart may often bleed, when those that are most closely entwined around it are no longer permitted to remain on the earth, faith in Jesus will enable him to believe that he receives followers to his own bosom—and he will sweetly solace himself with the reflection, that when he shall have finished his course, he shall be again united to those friends that have reached the mansions of glory—and mingle with them in joys that are unfading and eternal.