THERE is, perhaps, no craving of the human heart more insistent than the desire for a faithful, understanding friend, one to whom one may turn in an emergency or in a dark hour, sure of the loving sympathy which will not condemn, but will uplift and sustain. However, because this desire for friendship is so often based on a sense of human personality and a selfish desire to get rather than to give, there are few who do not meet with disillusionment and disappointment. Then in bitterness and sorrow they are tempted to lose faith and confidence in their fellowman and to shut themselves up within a wall of reserve.
Matthew Arnold, in his poem entitled "The Buried Life," has depicted the loneliness of the human heart; but, great thinker and poet as he was, he was unable to indicate more than a tentative remedy. It remained for Mary Baker Eddy, through her selfless life and inspired writings, to renewedly reveal the true meaning of the friendship referred to by Jesus when he said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." What do these words mean? Do they not imply the giving up of the material sense of human personality; the selfish clutching which would hold a loved one solely for one's self; the jealous thought which would grudge any time or attention given to another; the desire to possess and dominate and mold according to a finite concept of man? In the human sense of friendship how often the thwarted human will and the selfish, limited sense of love have turned to coldness and indifference, even to fear and hatred, thus proving that the so-called love and friendship had no element of divine Principle in them, no tinge of that infinite, compassionate love which forgives all because it understands the struggles and weakness of every human heart.
One test of true friendship lies in the practical application of those words of our Master just quoted. Are we truly willing to lay down our false material sense of life for our friend, and, in spite of the evidence of the physical senses, to look through the mist of human beliefs to God's perfect, spiritual man? In order to bring out this true sense of friendship in our human experience should we not seek to gain, first, a clearer understanding of our Father-Mother God, who is the infinite Friend of His entire creation? What a momentous thought,—to know that God is our Friend! Should not this great truth heal the beliefs of loneliness, incompleteness, unsatisfied desire, and the yearning to be understood and loved?
