ONE of the great blessings in human experience is true friendship. The bond that links friends together is very sacred in its beauty when unselfishness governs and Soul touches human thought to higher issues only. Mrs. Eddy has said (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 80), "There are no greater miracles known to earth than perfection and an unbroken friendship." Why should it be a miracle to preserve "an unbroken friendship"? The answer is clear: Because of the belief of double mindedness, the belief of minds many with conflicting opinions, desires, and ambitions; because selfishness is included in the belief of a mind other than the divine Mind, or God. In the human dream of life in matter, envy, malice, sensuality, and other animal qualities of thought seem to wage persistent warfare against divine qualities, against clear thinking and acting.
Friendship is pure, clean, and enduring when it is based on the attraction of the divine qualities of Soul; while only by the absence of such qualities can friendship seem to be broken. Again, one may ask, Why should supposititious evil persist in its attempt to break up a sense of friendship? Because true friendship is pure, because evil is enraged by purity, and because true friendship expresses in many different ways the oneness of Mind, God. Agreement on subjects, actions, desires, goals, shows forth in some degree the unanimity of good, the spiritual agreement of all ideas. Evil, nonexistent and impotent, seems existent and potent only as disunity, divergences, aggressive differences of thought, and the like, seem to obscure or obliterate the friendliness of good.
In the human experience, men are confronted with moods, temperaments, vacillation, and differences of thought which are seemingly very trying, and which, if not wisely considered and rightly handled, may ultimate in broken friendship. True friendship is beautiful and needs to be carefully guarded and protected against the ravages of adulteration, through materiality, selfishness, and other evils. Friendship needs to be guarded against the seductive poisons of self-gratification, self-consideration, and self-indulgence. Only unselfed friendship can endure. Christian Science enables one to separate error from person and insists that he do so, instead of separating the friend from his speaking list. An error is properly and effectively rebuked only when it is separated from person, when it is remanded to nothingness, as having no presence, power, or knowledge. Error can be nowhere; it can have no power; it can have no knowledge, no truth, for God, good, is everywhere. "Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord." Consequently error cannot even seem real to the one who is alert to realize man's true, sinless selfhood as a child of God. Hence for such thought it is easy to unsee, destroy by disbelief, any material evidence of error that would attempt to break up a beautiful sense of friendship.
