is overtaken, thawed,
subjugated, sanctified. Their manner softens, their words become more
gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As swallows who have found a
summer, as frozen buds the spring, their starved humanity bursts into
a fuller life. They do not know how it is, but they are different men.

One day they find themselves like their Master, going about and doing
good. To themselves it is unaccountable, but they cannot do otherwise.
They were not told to do it, it came to them to do it. But the people
who watch them know well how to account for it--"They have been," they
whisper, "with Jesus." Already even, the mark and seal of His
character is upon them--"They have been with Jesus." Unparalleled
phenomenon, that these poor fishermen should remind other men of
Christ! Stupendous victory and mystery of

REGENERATION

that mortal men should suggest _God_ to the world!

There is something almost melting in the way His contemporaries, and
John especially, speak of the influence of Christ. John lived himself
in daily wonder at Him; he was overpowered, over-awed, entranced,
transfigured. To his mind it was impossible for any one to come under
this influence and ever be the same again. "Whosoever abideth in Him
sinneth not," he said. It was inconceivable that he should sin, as
inconceivable as that ice should live in a burning sun, or darkness
coexist with noon. If any one did sin, it was to John the simple proof
that he could never have met Christ. "Whosoever sinneth," he exclaims,
"hath not seen _Him_, neither known _Him_." Sin was abashed in this
Presence. Its roots withered. Its sway and victory were forever at an
end.

But these were His contemporaries. It was easy for _them_ to be
influenced by Him, for they were every day and all the day together.
But how can we mirror that which we have never seen? How can all this
stupendous result be produced by a Memory, by the scantiest of all
Biographies, by One who lived and left this earth eighteen hundred
years ago? How can modern men to-day make Christ, the absent Christ,
their most constant companion still?

The answer is that

FRIENDSHIP IS A SPIRITUAL THING.

It is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time. That which I love in
my friend is not that which I see. What influences me in my friend is
not his body but his spirit. He influences me about as much in his
absence as in his presence. It would have been an ineffable experience
truly t