Can I forget at this moment, befriended as I have been in the past scene of my labours, that among the virtues which some would leave to the heathen, together with the patriot spirit and the courage to maintain it, Friendship has been made to share the sentence of exclusion? At this rate the noble-minded Jonathan could not be added to the list of worthies, to recount which St. Paul found the day too short. But the glowing pen of David has inscribed the name of his generous and ever-constant friend with the sons of faith, in characters which no time shall efface. And what then? Had our blessed Lord no family of friends which brought him even weeping to the grave of Lazarus? Was it for nothing that it was then said, “Behold how he loved him?” Had our Lord no disciple who was laid in his bosom at the paschal feast; to whom also He gave his last charge concerning her who should be blessed among women? Most gladly, therefore, shall I pay the debt of friendly obligation on my removal from among you, and cherish that good property of mind which has so many moral motives for exciting its first growth, and brings forth so many moral fruits in its maturity which may be stored in everlasting garners. But as strange as that distinction is which would cast out real virtues from the Christian code, I may now warn you from an opposite extreme. Thus have words of _counsel_ been exalted above the word of the _commandment_. Let us weigh this also for a moment; it has been, and continues still to be, the nurse of many fond conceits. If you strive to put more into a vessel which is already well replenished, will you not displace some of its contents? And if this be done where the hand of the Lord hath filled the vessel, that we may drink and thirst no more, but live for ever, the loss (not to name the sacrilege) will outweigh the gain a thousand-fold. The boastful young man, who would not accept the word of the commandment at our Lord’s lips as a full reply to his inquiry, but said, “All this have I kept from my youth up; what lack I yet?” did not receive, in answer to this pretension, a word of counsel. Our Lord showed him plainly what the true breadth of the commandment was. Thus he required no more of him than that which became the bounden duty of many in the days of trouble which succeeded. Many were made to feel the force of that never-changing precept, which demands the sacrifice of all things sublunary, where the bond of Truth cannot otherwise be kept. There was no sacrifice, then, proposed to this aspiring youth, nothing counselled, beyond the verge of the commandment; and the test to which he was put was but the fruit of his overweening zeal.