The higher grades of comradeship are seen in artistic, literary, and scientific societies, which pursue their objects for the love of the subject, and not for commercial or other material ends. The intellectual communion which they yield to their members is a pleasure of a very high order, and an additional and valuable advantage which they possess is that they bring workers in the same fields of unselfish pursuits together, soften the asperities which ignorance of each other’s personalities might allow to remain, and often pave the way for warm and abiding friendships. Those men of science or artists who hold themselves aloof from such reunions usually do so through self-distrust or undue sensitiveness, and sin both against their own happiness and the prosperity of their favorite employment. Both the religious and the moral life――they are not the same――should find their chief activity in the sphere of comradeship. It was the beautiful ideal of George Fox that the Church of the future should be a Society of Friends. The ideal is too lofty for human nature; but it is quite possible and should be a daily occurrence that the members of a church or a society united for the development of the benevolent or religious sentiments should display as much mutual good feeling and as warm a personal interest in the common purpose, as, say, dog-fanciers who belong to the same kennel club. Friendship is far rarer than Comradeship, because it is more delicate and requires a higher type of character. Most men are incapable of it, and therefore cannot distinguish it from a mere community of tastes. It goes much farther, embracing the whole nature, and lifting the relation out of the plane of interests or tastes into that of sentiment and spiritual sympathy. No one is capable of friendship who thinks what use he can make of it. Friendship is free trade, and knows neither charity, robbery, nor reciprocity. It keeps neither a debit nor a credit account, and it leaves no room for ingratitude, because the credit of each party is unlimited. The completest friendship is that in which the utmost sympathy is united with the utmost independence. The differences must not be so great as to prevent a thorough understanding, nor so small as to do away with admiration for the personal qualities of each other, and some desire to emulate them. These phrases do not mean that we should look for perfection in friends. Quite the contrary. What could be more fatiguing than perfection? Its monotony would be unendurable. The affection for friends is not a tribute paid to their merits. Their very faults often endear them. We do not wish them removed. For ourselves, it may be well to retain some of those defects which give our friends pleasure; though this is to be taken with reserve; for, on the other hand, a great charm in a friend is that he brings us not what we expected, but something equally pleasant which we did not expect.