True Friendship

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1904

True Friendship.—How many times is that quatrain repeated in periodicals, both religious and secular—

"If you have a friend worth loving, Love him; yes, and let him know That you love him ere life's evening Tinge his brow with sunset glow."

It is good as far as it goes, but it is a perversion of friendship; for unselfish friendship does not ask whether the person be worth loving or not. The Samaritan did not inquire as to the man's worthiness before he helped him. God loves the world in all its unworthiness, and His own people in all their unworth,—loves them even to the end. "If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?" Jesus pointedly asks. If any person in the world needs the true friendship of the Christian it is the weak, the unworthy one, whose utter need ought to appeal to the Christian heart. "Love him; yes, and let him know that you love him."