Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 279. The Pattern of Friendship
Subjects in this Topic:
The Pattern of Friendship
1. If it was the military exploits of Jonathan that chiefly impressed his contemporaries, it is his friendship with David that has most strongly appealed to the imagination of the after-world. In truth, it gives an unrivalled example of the essential notes of friendship-warmth of affection, disinterestedness, helpfulness, confidence, and constancy. The love of Jonathan for David is represented as of sudden growth, its birthday the day when they first met after the slaying of Goliath. The young shepherd lad had been brought into the king's presence amid the cheers of the army and with the modest flush of victory on his brow, and there Jonathan saw him and loved him. The jealousy of Saul and the love of Jonathan awoke almost at the same moment, “and Saul became David's enemy continually.” The progress of Saul's hatred is continuous and steady from the time of the slaughter of the Philistine giant. From the same point begins Jonathan's love for the man whom his father hated. The reason of Saul's hatred is plain. He was rejected from his kingdom. He suspected that David was the man whom God had chosen to fill his place, and so was naturally jealous. If Saul's jealousy was natural under the circumstances, surely Jonathan's love was supernatural. Jonathan, by his own brave, heroic deeds, had been the idol of the people, until David's triumph over the Philistine had changed the current of their fickle affection. The acclamations which welcomed the shepherd lad were so much stolen from the popularity of the king's son. Jonathan was forgotten in the popular furore which raised David to sudden fame. From the day that the son of Jesse appeared, the cloud began to gather over Jonathan's prospects. The house of Saul felt instinctively that the kingdom was slipping from their grasp into the hands of this young competitor. Judging by the way of the world, they owed him nothing but distrust and hatred. We miss the point in Jonathan's character if we fail to see that it was not his interest, not the interest of his house, that he should befriend David.
Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: “It is certain, my Belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind thereof”! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost Me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost Me!1 [Note: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Bk. iii., chap. 2.]
2. Very charming are the words which describe the bond of friendship which Jonathan and David made. “Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his apparel, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.”
Is it lawful to allegorize these simple and interesting details?
(1) They may be used to suggest that Christ, the Prince of Heaven, comes seeking a compact with us. It astonishes us to see Jonathan seeking a compact with David the shepherd boy; but how much more wonderful when Jesus, the Son of God, rich in all the glory of heaven, comes down to earth and suffers hardship and poverty and bitterest temptation and trial, and finally dies on the cross for us, that He may be able to make a compact between Himself and poor sinners. Surely nothing but love could prompt it. Only love could have made Jonathan do such a wonderful thing as he did to David, and only love, indescribable, deathless love, could have brought Jesus down from heaven to die for us.
(2) There is another suggestion. Did Jonathan's love prompt him to give his own clothes to David, so that his humble friend might look as much the prince as himself? Christ comes offering to clothe us in His own beautiful garments of purity and righteousness. It is the glory of Christians that Christ helps them to become like Himself. Christ does not propose to save us in our sins, but to save us from our sins. Our ragged clothing of sin and evil habit is to be cast off, and we are to be clothed with goodness and gentleness and meekness and love and hope. That is the most glorious thing about Christianity. It is not that a man may simply be saved from sorrow and despair and punishment on account of his sins, but that the sinner's nature may be transformed and that he may become a prince of God's realm, a holy man. The drunkard may put on sobriety, the gambler may put on honour and integrity, the impure may become wholesome and noble, the low and the vulgar may be lifted up to have high ideals and brave and splendid purposes.
(3) There is yet another suggestion here. Jonathan not only bestowed upon David his own clothing, but he gave him his own armour and weapons. So Christ equips us with the very weapons with which He battled in this world when He was tempted in all points like as we are and yet came off victorious, without sin. St. Paul declares that our Lord gives us the whole armour of God, and that, thus arrayed, we are able to withstand all the wiles of the devil. He gives us the girdle of truth, and the breastplate of righteousness; on our feet He puts shoes made of the preparation of the gospel of peace; on the left arm we carry the shield of faith-a wonderful shield that is able to stop every fiery dart of the wicked one. On our brow He sets the helmet of salvation, and in the right hand He puts a sword far more splendid than that which David captured from Goliath-the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
That friendship of Prince Jonathan for David was human; this of Jesus for us is Divine. That had a beginning; this is from everlasting. That was deserved; this is wholly undeserved. That was highly valued by its object; this is but poorly and inadequately appreciated at the best. That was self-sacrificing to the extent of risking life; this was so to the extent of enduring “death, even the cursed death of the cross,” and all with a view to converting enemies into friends.1 [Note: J. Mackay, Jonathan, the Friend of David, 76.]
3. David was in all probability profoundly influenced by the character of Jonathan, who must have been considerably older than himself. Years have passed since the day of Michmash and Aijalon-years which only served to deepen and strengthen Jonathan's noble character. He was, if possible, more than ever the man of piety, of patriotism, and of high ideals. And the bond of a common manliness knit these twin souls from the first. But the love of Jonathan for David rests upon a totally different level from that occupied by the love of David for Jonathan. David's love for Jonathan had no barriers; it coincided with his interest. But the love of Jonathan for David had every prudential argument against it. He puts out his hand to save from the destroying hand of his father a man whom the popular voice had predicted to be his own supplanter. In this he is animated by a purely personal liking. He is an absolute spendthrift for the sake of love. Nothing could more powerfully express the attitude of his mind than the passage in 1Sa_18:4, when he makes a covenant with David: “Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.” It is a typical statement; it describes in one sentence the whole trend of his heart. From beginning to end, the love of Jonathan for David was a disrobing, a divestiture. In every act of friendship, in every deed of devotion, in every outstretching of a protective hand, he was stripping himself of a royal garment. He was unarming himself, ungirding himself, sapping the foundations of his imperial strength-and all to gratify an impulse of human affection. He saw in the young hero a congenial soul and a true man. He was attracted by his piety, his patriotism, and his prowess, and he yielded up his heart to him in the unselfish impulse of disinterested affection. He did not seem to care that the duel with the giant would, in the after history of the nation, be seen to rival his own brilliant achievement at Geba. He did not think of himself at all; but, having found a man whom he could love and trust, he “grappled him to his soul with hooks of steel.” Even when he came to know that David was the predestined occupant of his father's throne, the heart of Jonathan was never alienated from him. He accepted the lot which was before him, and rejoiced in it for David's sake, saying only, “Thou shalt be king in Israel, and I shall be next unto thee.”
Every friendship is unique; and no individual can hope to be a satisfying friend to every one, or even to a very large number of persons. Now and then, however, a soul enters this life with rare gifts for friendship,-with a genius for it. Such an one was Hannah Pipe. The secrets of her power as a Friend seem to me three. She had much to give; she gave generously; she could be absolutely trusted. And as years went on, her power for friendship grew, because she took trouble and care to have ever more and more to give, and to expand her power of loving. In loving as in other things, practice makes perfect … “Friendship's privileges are also duties”; she wrote in a letter from Veldes to Lady Huggins,-“because they are privileges, I have throughout my whole life failed to see that they are duties. I have never given myself to my friends. I have denied myself to them, and I thought it right because I denied myself. The self-denial blinded me to the denial. You have taught me better, and have thereby widened, enriched, and probably lengthened my life beyond your own thought.”1 [Note: A. M. Stoddart, Life and Letters of Hannah E. Pipe, 424.]
4. We are deeply impressed with the fidelity with which, on Jonathan's part, this friendship was maintained even in the face of personal dangers. When Saul's heart was stirred against David, and was filled with murderous intent regarding him, Jonathan was placed in a very difficult and perplexing position. He was called to decide between his father and David, and he was true to his friend, without being unfilial to Saul. His fidelity was soon called into action by the insane rage of his father against David. He interceded for his life, at first with success. Then the madness returned, and David fled. It was in a secret interview during this flight, by the stone of Ezel, that a second covenant was made between the two friends, of a still more binding kind than the first, extending to their mutual posterity-Jonathan laying such emphasis on this portion of the compact as almost to suggest the belief of a slight misgiving on his part of David's future conduct in this respect. It is this interview that brings out the character of Jonathan in the liveliest colours-his little artifices, his love for both his father and his friend, his bitter disappointment at his father's unmanageable fury, his familiar sport of archery. With passionate embraces and tears the two friends parted to meet only once more; that one more meeting was far away in the forest of Ziph, during Saul's pursuit of David. Jonathan's alarm for his friend's life is now changed into a confidence that he will escape: “He strengthened his hand in God.” Finally, and for the third time, they renewed the covenant, and then parted for ever (1Sa_23:16-18). And David, though an exile and poor, had the happier lot of the two. The weary years of Jonathan were years of wild and painful tragedy. His father had frequent spasms of insanity; gusts of madness swept over him, and he was a madman with a king's unlimited power, breaking out frequently in fits of ungovernable ferocity, flinging his deadly weapons at those who happened to be nearest, raging against all who disputed his word. Surely if ever there was a case in which a son's disobedience would have been pardonable, it was this. None can tell what Jonathan had to endure through those sad, dark years. Yet he held on to his father to the last. Not a breath of disaffection stains the fair page of his story. There are few examples in history like it, though there are many examples of a son's loyalty to a worthy father.
To his father's person and memory, Mr. Gladstone's fervid and affectionate devotion remained unbroken. “One morning,” writes a female relative of his, “when I was breakfasting alone with Mr. Gladstone at Carlton House Terrace, something led to his speaking of his father. I seem to see him now, rising from his chair, standing in front of the chimney-piece, and in strains of fervid eloquence dwelling on the grandeur, the breadth and depth of his character, his generosity, his nobleness, last and greatest of all-his loving nature. His eyes filled with tears as he exclaimed: ‘None but his children can know what torrents of tenderness flowed from his heart.' ”1 [Note: Morley, Life of Gladstone, i. 19.]
Let me not mourn that my Father's Force is all spent, that his Valour wars no longer. Has it not gained the victory? Let me imitate him rather; let his courageous heart beat anew in me, that when oppression and opposition unjustly threaten, I too may rise with his spirit to front them and subdue them. On the whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was pleased to give me such a Father; that from earliest years, I had the example of a real Man (of God's own making) continually before me? Let me learn of him; let me “write my Books as he built his Houses, and walk as blamelessly through this shadow-world”-(if God so will), to rejoin him at last. Amen!-Even among these, such a sight is growing daily rarer. My father, in several respects, has not, that I can think of, left his fellow. Ultimus Romanorum! Perhaps among Scottish Peasants what Samuel Johnson was among English Authors. I have a sacred pride in my Peasant Father, and would not exchange him even now for any King known to me. Gold, and the guinea-stamp; the Man, and the Clothes of the Man! Let me thank God for that greatest of blessings, and strive to live worthily of it.2 [Note: Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle, i. 10.]
5. Both in the purity of his friendship and in the strength of his faith and submission Jonathan stands here above David, and is far surer than the latter himself is of his high destiny and final triumph. It was hard for him to believe in the victory which was to displace his own house, harder still to rejoice in it, without one trace of bitterness mingling in the sweetness of his love, hardest of all actively to help it and to take sides against his father; but all these difficulties his unselfish heart overcame, and he stands for all time as the noblest example of human friendship, and as not unworthy to remind us, as from afar off and dimly, of the perfect love of the First-born Son of the true King, who has loved us all with a deeper, more patient, more self-sacrificing love.
Other literary work which occupied Miss Nightingale a good deal at this time (1870) was undertaken either to help Mr. Jowett or in accordance with his advice. In July she writes to him:-“I think that Faraday's idea of friendship is very high; ‘One who will serve his companion next to his God.' And when one thinks that most, nay almost all people have no idea of friendship at all except pleasant juxtaposition, it strikes one with admiration. Yet is Faraday's idea not mine. My idea of a friend is one who will and can join you in work, the sole purpose of which is to serve God. Two in one, and one in God. It almost exactly answers Jesus Christ's words. And so extraordinarily blessed have I been that I have had three such friends. I can truly say that, during the 5 years that I worked with Sidney Herbert every day and nearly all day, from the moment he came into the room no other idea came in but that of doing the work with the best of our powers in the service of God. (And this tho' he was a man of the most varied and brilliant conversational genius I have ever known-far beyond Macaulay, whom I also knew.) This is Heaven; and this is what makes me say ‘I have had my heaven.' ”1 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, ii. 222.]
Let any one who has drunk deeply of this well-spring of happiness [friendship] look back and ask what has been the sweetest ingredient in it: let him recall the friend of his heart, whose image is associated with the choicest hours of his experience; and then let him say what is the secret and the soul of his satisfaction. If your friendship has been of a high order, the soul of it is simply the worth of him you are allowed to call your friend. He is genuine to the core; you know him through and through, and nowhere is there any twist or doubleness or guile. It may be a false and disappointing world, but you have known at least one heart that has never deceived you; and, amidst much that may have happened to lower your estimate of mankind, the image of your friend has enabled you always to believe in human nature. Surely this is the incomparable gain of friendship-fellowship with a simple pure and lofty soul.… In real friendship there is always the knitting of soul to soul, the exchange of heart for heart. In the classical instance of friendship in the Old Testament, its inception is exquisitely described: “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” A union like this is formed not to be broken, and, if it is broken, it can only be with the tearing of the flesh and the loss of much blood.1 [Note: J. Stalker, Imago Christi, 95.]