The highest and closest relation possible between any two is friendship. The basis of friendship is sympathy, that is, fellow-feeling. The atmosphere of friendship is mutual unquestioning trust. In the original meaning of the word, a friend is a lover. A friend is one who loves you for your sake alone, and steadfastly loves, regardless of any return, even return-love. Friendship hungers for a closer knowledge, and for a deeper intimacy. Friendship grows with exchange of confidences. Friends are confidants. "As in a double solitude, ye think in each other's hearing." A man's friendships shape his life more than aught else, or all else. Now this is the tender relation which God Himself desires with each of us. Did Jesus ever speak more tenderly than on that last Thursday night when He said to those constant companions of two years, "I have called you _friends_, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you"? Out of his own experience David writes, "The friendship of the Lord is with those that reverently love Him, and He will give evidence of His friendship by showing to them His covenant, His plans, and His power." And David knew. Abraham had the reputation of being a friend of God. He even trusted his darling boy's life to God when he _could not_ understand what God was doing. And he found God worthy of his friendship. He spared that darling boy even though later He spared not His own darling boy. It thrills one's heart to hear God saying, "Abraham _my friend_." Friendship with God means such oneness of spirit with Him that He may do with us and through us what He wills. This and this alone is the true power--God in us, and God with us free to do as He wills. Now trust is the native air of friendship. A breath of doubt chills and chokes. If one is filled and surrounded by trust in God as the atmosphere of his life his touch with God then becomes most intimate. Satan cannot breathe in that atmosphere. It chokes him. Air is the native element of the bird. Away from air it gasps and dies. Water is the native element of the fish. Out of water it chokes and gasps and dies. Trust is the native element of friendship--friendship with God. A constant feeling of confidence in GOD that believes in His overruling power, and in His unfailing love, and rests in Him in the darkness when the thing you prize most is lying bound on the stony altar. The Spirit of God is a friend, a lover. He is ever wooing us up the heights. Let us climb up. He is every wooing us into the inner recesses of friendship with Himself. Shall we not go along with Him? This is the secret of a life ever fresh with the presence of God. It is the only pathway of increasing youthfulness in the power of God. "And in old age, when others fade, They fruit still forth shall bring; They shall be fat, and full of sap, And aye be flourishing." A Bunch of Keys.