How to Bring Out The Best in Your Friends and In Yourself
Hugh Black
Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1999
(147 pages; $13.95, paper)

The Sophia Institute has provided us with a gem of a book on friendship by reprinting Hugh Black's book, originally published in 1898 by Fleming H. Revell Company.

Black revels in the spiritual nature of true friendship while, at the same time, cautiously warning his readers that only friendship with God will ultimately satisfy their desires for true intimacy and tender affection.

Friendship is a sweet gift from God. It is a spiritual opportunity that God provides in our life for our good. Friendship is "an occasion for growing in grace, for learning love, for training the heart to patience and faith, and for knowing the joy of humble service" (p. 29). God uses our friendships to help us evaluate our own profession.

The test of religion is ultimately a very simple one. If we do not love those whom have seen, we cannot love those whom we have not seen. All our sentiment about people at a distance, our heart-stirrings for the distressed and oppressed, and our prayers for the heathen are pointless and fraudulent if we are neglecting the occasions for service at hand. If we do not love our brethren here, how can we love our brethren elsewhere, except as a pious sentimentality? And if we do not love those we have seen, how can we love God, whom we have not seen? (p. 30)

Black also proves that friendships can ennoble us and lift us higher than we would be if left to ourselves. Not only do they call us to loyalty and commitment to one another, they also are a help against temptation, providing positive peer pressure to keep us from the embarrassment and humiliation that comes from letting our friends down through our own personal sin.

But this all comes at a price and with a risk. However, the alternative is even worse.

A person may make many a friendship to his own hurt, but the isolated life is a greater danger still. Every relationship means risk, but we must take the risk; for while nearly all our sorrows come from our connection with others, nearly all our joys have the same source (p. 53).

Black is realistic in his assessment of how friendships are made and kept. He admits that friendships can't be forced. He also readily concludes that almost all friendships are unbalanced--usually one partner gives more than the other. But this should not keep us from forming friendships, because the real joy of friendship is in giving, not getting.

Most people, if they had their choice, would prefer to be loved rather than to love, if only one of the alternatives were permitted. That springs from the root of selfishness in human nature, which makes us think that possession brings happiness. But the glory of life is to love, not to be loved; to give, not to get; to serve, not to be served (p. 16).

Black continually emphasizes that relationships demand much care, nurture, time, and attention. He notes that the reason that many of us have few friendships is that we are not willing to put in the time or effort. " We would like to get the good of our friends without burdening ourselves with any responsibility about keeping them friends" (p. 22). In order to prevent our friendships from dying due to neglect, we must pay attention to small details and learn to love our friend in big and little things alike--since life consists primarily of little things!

Throughout the book, Black emphasizes certain qualities that sustain a friendship. For example, friends should be honest and not flatterers. However, their candidness should always spring from a sympathetic and understanding heart. Friends must also be patient and forbearing with one another. No one can hurt us more than our friends.

The bitterest disputes in life are among those who are nearest each other in spirit. We do not quarrel with a man in the street, the man with whom we have little or no communication. He has not the chance, nor the power, to chafe our soul and ruffle our temper. If need be, we can afford to despise, or at least to neglect, him... One with whom we have most points of contact presents the greatest number of places where difference can occur (p. 103).

Ultimately, human friendship is limited. No matter how much we long to give ourselves to others, there always remains an aspect of ourselves that we cannot give away, if for no other reason, because we do not understand ourselves well enough to do so in the first place. As much as we fill our lives with others, we ultimately remain a distinct and separate life.

In the depth of the human heart, there is, and there must be, solitude. There is a limit to the possible communion with another. We never completely open up our nature to even our nearest and dearest. In spite of ourselves, something is kept back. It is not that we are untrue in this, and hide our inner self, but simply that we are unable to reveal ourselves entirely. There is a bitterness of the heart that only the heart knows; there is a joy of the heart with which no stranger can meddle; there is a boundary beyond which even a friend who is as our own soul becomes a stranger (p. 122).

Ultimately, all human companionship is fragmentary and partial. Human friendship is meant to lead to friendship with God. Human friendship is a valuable and sweet gift and is able to ennoble and elevate the soul, but ultimately, it is a reminder that only God can truly fill the human heart.

Human friendship has limits because of the real greatness of man. We are too big to be quite comprehended by another. There is always something in us left unexplained and unexplored. We do not even know ourselves, much less can another hope to probe into the recesses of our being... Man's limitation is God's occasion. Only God can fully satisfy the hungry heart of man (p. 127).

This is a great God-centered book on friendship--its ups, downs, limitations, and joys.

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© Richard J. Vincent, December 19, 2000