The world remembers, in that year
A nation’s splendid victory;
The year I first beheld your face
Is all it means to me.
Another year. How could I reck
War, famine, earthquake, aught beside?
My heart knows only one event–
It was the year you died.
When, Lord, shall I be fit–when wilt
Thou call me friend?
Wilt Thou not one day, Lord?
When Jesus called his disciples his friends, he meant that he was also their friend. Then he intimates something of the meaning of his friendship to them when he says that he called them no longer his slaves, but his friends. There is a vast difference in the two. The slave does not have the Master’s confidence. He is only a piece of property. He has no rights, no privileges, is never consulted about anything, and has no share in the matters considered, no liberty of opinion, even regarding his own work. A friend, however, is taken into equality, into comradeship, then into confidence. He is conferred with, is a partner in his friend’s affairs. Friendship with Christ gives thus the highest exaltation possible to any man. How commonplace are the loftiest elevations of earth compared with the privilege of being a friend of Christ!
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