JESUS' FAREWELL TO HIS FRIENDS
XIV. JESUS' FRIENDSHIPS AFTER HE AROSE
XV. JESUS AS A FRIEND

All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God.
BROWNING.

But lead me, Man divine,
Where'er Thou will'st, only that I may find
At the long journey's end Thy image there,
And grow more like to it. For art not Thou
The human shadow of the infinite Love
That made and fills the endless universe?
The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown,
Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
And all the worlds that people starry space.
RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE HUMANHEARTEDNESS OF JESUS.

O God, O kinsman loved, but not enough,
O man with eyes majestic after death,
Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
Whose lips drawn human breath;

By that one likeness which is ours and thine,
By that one nature which doth hold us kin,
By that high heaven where sinless thou dost shine,
To draw us sinners in;

By thy last silence in the judgment hall,
By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree,
By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall,
I pray thee visit me.
JEAN INGELOW.

There is a natural tendency to think of Jesus as different from other
men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as
our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in
the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life
could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is
difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as other
children have to learn. We find ourselves fancying that he must always
have known how to read and write and speak. We think of the
experiences of his youth and young manhood as altogether unlike those
of any other boy or young man in the village where he grew up. This
same feeling leads us to think of his temptation as so different from
what temptation is to other men as to be really no temptation at all.

So we are apt to think of all the human life of Jesus as being in some
way lifted up out of the rank of ordinary experiences. We do not
conceive of him as having the same struggles that we have in meeting
trial, in enduring injury and wrong, in learning obedience, patience,
meekness, submission, trust, and cheerfulness. We conceive of his