I esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of religious faiths, being the worship of the unseen through the seen, and excusing many superstitions coloring the need of a personal object of worship. The love and service rendered to persons symbolizes love and service due the Supreme Person; and he must be pronounced deficient in piety who fails of winning the noblest of victories,--a friend. A need of the heart, the best of our life is embosomed in others, much of it taken upon trust in some one or more whom we call by tender names, and whose words accost us with persuasions irresistible. How affectionately one name is pronounced throughout a revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man's friend,--that fairest word in the human vocabulary. "Fair flowery name, in none like thee And thy nectareal fragrancy, Hourly there meets A universal synod of all sweets, By whom it is defined thus: That no perfume May yet presume To pass for odoriferous, But such alone whose sacred pedigree Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee." We crave objects abreast and above us. And are bereft of ourselves without such. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The passionless laws that sway our unseen Personality are not made lovely to us till thus clothed in human attributes and brought near to our hearts, person embracing person. Not some _It_ in our friends, but the sentiment that transfigures the _It_ into _Him_, into _Her_,--this alone makes them ours personally and beloved. Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to the Friend in our friend, thus becoming personally One with the Three, and alone no longer. Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet, In public place, in converse sweet, In holy aisles, at market gate, In learning's halls, or courts of state, Nor persons properly shall find, Save in the commonwealth of Mind; Fair forms herein their souls intrude, Peopling what else were solitude. Persons are love's world. Our Paradise is too fair to be planted out of our breasts. We chase the fleeing beauty all our lives long; "Nor is there near so brisk a fire In fruition, as desire; The niggard sense, too poor for bliss, Pays us but dully with what is." On, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens abreast of us journeying with ever-opening prospects in the distance. THE CHASE. O'er earth and seas, In sunshine, shade, Blest Beauty crossed, Nor stopt nor stayed, Nor temples took, Nor idols hewed, Apart she dwelt In solitude.