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ought to give to God. It is such a love as man should give to his fellow-man for God's sake. "If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye?" asks our Lord; "for even sinners love those that love them." A love or a friendship that is conditioned on an equivalent return is not friendship-love, except in name. That love which is represented to us in the Bible as of God, and from God, and due toward God and toward those who are God's, is friendship-love-the purest and best of loves.

It is agape, a "love without desire" or craving, not philia, a love which goes out "longingly" for the possession of its object, that seems to be recognized in Bible usage as friendship-love, and that would be better thus translated. "Friendship-love is of God; and every one that [thus] loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God." "God is friendship-love; and he that abideth in friendship-love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.”

The closest attainable union of man with God is a union in friendship - love,—such a union as God proffered to his loved friend Abraham, and as is a possibility, through the Friend of friends, to every one who by faith is a child of faithful Abraham. The divinest exhibit of God-likeness in man is in this friendship-love, of which the Apostle Paul sounds the praises so glowingly: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not friendship-love, I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not friendship-love, I am nothing. And if I bestow

1 See Excursus, p. 389 f.

all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not friendship-love, it profiteth me nothing. Friendship-love suffereth long, and is kind; friendship-love envieth not; friendship-love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly; seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Friendship-love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. . . . But now abideth faith, hope, friendship-love, these three; and the greatest of these is friendship-love."

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EXCURSUS

ON THE NEW TESTAMENT WORDS FOR "LOVE"

AND "FRIENDSHIP-LOVE.”

Failing to perceive clearly the distinction between a love that instinctively grows out of a relationship, or that is based upon a natural desire for possession, and a voluntary and distinguishing love that goes out unselfishly and admiringly toward its chosen object, New Testament critics and commentators generally have been confused in their minds, while seeking to account for the apparent difference between the two words-philia and agape-employed in the sacred text for the designation of "love." It is practically admitted by all that philia was a word in common use, in New Testament times, as expressive of the love between parents and children, and brothers and sisters, and also of craving love between the sexes. It is also admitted that the word agape comes into a new prominence in New Testament use, as applicable to man's love to God and to love that is otherwise peculiarly pure and sacred. But these two words seem at times to be employed interchangeably; and many an eminent scholar has confessed his inability to see the real difference between the words in their using, as accounting for the often indicated superiority of agape, in spite of the greater warmth and intensity of philia.

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Cremer, in his "Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek," covers the important facts in the case when he says: "We find agape used to designate a love unknown to writers outside of the New Testament,-love in its fullest conceivable form; love as it is the distinguishing attribute, not of humanity, but, in the strictest sense, of Divinity." Trench, in seeking to differentiate the meaning of the two words agape and philia, says: "The first expresses a more reasoning attachment, of choice and selection (diligere deligere), from seeing in the object upon whom it is bestowed that which is worthy of regard; ... while the second, without being necessarily an unreasoning attachment, does yet oftentimes give less account of itself to itself; is more instinctive, is more of the feelings, implies more passion." Woolsey, after an exhaustive study of the history of the two terms, says of Trench's definition : We believe that this is a true statement of the difference between the two words and notions." And all this is in confirmation of the claim made in this volume that philia represents a love that grows out of relationship or craving, while agape represents a love that goes out voluntarily without any intermingling of selfishness, the one being ordinary love, and the other the higher form of friendship-love.

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As has been already stated (page 17, ante), the Sanskrit makes a similar distinction to this, in its use of lubh = covetousness or "greed" for "love," as over against pri=" unselfish love" for "friendship." And there are other reasons for believing that there were many outreachings of the human heart, all the world over, in the direction of an unselfish friendship-love, as nobler

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