"And it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves. It is our refuge from pride. More than all else, comradeship teaches us to walk humbly with God. For while God's trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and self-complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable gratitude. We may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due; we may have competed for the world's prizes, and been filled with gratified ambition at securing them. But however high we rate ourselves, in the hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know that God's great infinite gift of human love is something we have never earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal Fatherhood; and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come again to us as the lives of little children." _Comradeship_, MAY KENDALL. Friendship AUGUST 7 "Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day." CHARLOTTE BRONTË. "Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another." THOMAS HUGHES. "Friendship cannot be permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must be fellowship in the deepest things of the soul, community in the highest thoughts, sympathy with the best endeavours." HUGH BLACK. Friendship AUGUST 8 "Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend." EMERSON. "The end of friendship is for aid and comfort through all the passages of life and death." EMERSON. "Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy. A friend shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy, and makes it double." JEREMY TAYLOR. "He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need. If thou sorrow, he will weep. If thou wake, he cannot sleep. Thus in every grief in heart He with thee doth bear a part." SHAKESPEARE. Friendship AUGUST 9