The history of Jerome and Paula suggests another reflection,—­that the friendship which would have immortalized them, had they not other and higher claims to the remembrance and gratitude of mankind, rarely exists except with equals.  There must be sympathy in the outward relations of life, as we are constituted, in order for men and women to understand each other.  Friendship is not philanthropy:  it is a refined and subtile sentiment which binds hearts together in similar labors and experiences.  It must be confessed it is exclusive, esoteric,—­a sort of moral freemasonry.  Jerome, and the great bishops, and the illustrious ladies to whom I allude, all belonged to the same social ranks.  They spent their leisure hours together, read the same books, and kindled at the same sentiments.  In their charmed circle they unbent; indulged, perchance, in ironical sallies on the follies they alike despised.  They freed their minds, as Cicero did to Atticus; they said things to each other which they might have hesitated to say in public, or among fools and dunces.  I can conceive that those austere people were sometimes even merry and jocose.  The ignorant would not have understood their learned allusions; the narrow-minded might have been shocked at the treatment of their shibboleths; the vulgar would have repelled them by coarseness; the sensual would have disgusted them by their lower tastes.

There can be no true harmony among friends when their sensibilities are shocked, or their views are discrepant.  How could Jerome or Paula have discoursed with enthusiasm of the fascinations of Eastern travel to those who had no desire to see the sacred places; or of the charms of Grecian literature to those who could talk only in Latin; or of the corrupting music of the poets to people of perverted taste; or of the sublimity of the Hebrew prophets to those who despised the Jews; or of the luxury of charity to those who had no superfluities; or of the beatitudes of the passive virtues to soldiers; or of the mysteries of faith to speculating rationalists; or of the greatness of the infinite to those who lived in passing events?  A Jewish prophet must have seemed a rhapsodist to Athenian critics, and a Grecian philosopher a conceited cynic to a converted fisherman of Galilee,—­even as a boastful Darwinite would be repulsive to a believer in the active interference of the moral Governor of the universe.  Even Luther might not have admired Michael Angelo, any more than the great artist did the courtiers of Julius II.; and John Knox might have denounced Lord Bacon as a Gallio for advocating moderate measures of reform.  The courtly Bossuet would not probably have sympathized with Baxter, even when both discoursed on the eternal gulf between reason and faith.  Jesus—­the wandering, weary Man of Sorrows—­loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus; but Jesus, in the hour of supreme grief, allowed the most spiritual and intellectual of his disciples to lean on his bosom.  It was