Attempt > Volume 3

236 THE ATTEMPT.
can we give ourselves, than that of being the means of causing our dearest to rejoice ?
The love of tmth, too, is involved in the word " friendship," and a severe enough test
it is put to sometimes, when it comes to be exercised in the passing of judgment
upon, or giving advice to our friend. This is one of the mutual privileges entailed
in such a connection, and is one of its most delicate duties. We do not believe in
Cupid's blindness ; natxirally, the more we see of a person, the more we must come
to know of faults as well as of virtues ; but if friendship once formed is to be thus
easily damped, it must have been from the first of a romantic and Quixotic tendency.
We generally admire a person for the possession of some quality, in which we
ourselves are deficient, it being most probable that each individual failing in one of
the parties will find its counteracting virtue in the other; following, as a matter of
course, that such an interchange tends to the perfection of both characters.
A certain amount of reserve is, of course, necessary in all social intercourse, but
so small need it be hetween friends that we need scarce impress it upon them.
Tolerance, charity, and forgiveness, too, are verily noble dispositions, and all are
required to carry us throiigh life. The last-mentioned is perhaps among the most
difficult to define or limit—for discreet limit there certainly can be even to a vir¬
tue—carried to excess, there is a possible approach to vice, or, at any rate, to weak¬
ness.
For what piirpose was law—whether divine or human—given, if not to main¬
tain our perfect right ? If these are invaded, we must appeal to justice. When an
injxiry, however, is merely personal, or entails no evil on a third party, the good
man will readily forgive, and, if he can, will forget. To banish absolutely from the
memory is not altogether under our control, but this part of the precept we must
understand as the not brooding over, or acting upon, the remembrances of injiirj^.
How far real forgiveness can be carried when the oSence lowers the moral
character of the offender in our eyes, is a difficult question. It can be measured
only by the feeling that what are we that we should judge our brother, or how are
we better than he 1 A moral offence is one against a higher than we, and if His
forgiveness has been sought and obtained, dare we withhold ours ? Kathleen.