And if we know that we are selfish in the matter,—­what then?  We cannot make ourselves unselfish by a wish; we cannot win love at will.  But, though we cannot gain love, we can give it; we can learn to love so well, that we are satisfied by the happiness of those we love, even though we have nothing to do with that happiness.

“How hard a thing it is to look into happiness with another man’s eyes!” but it can be done.  People do sometimes live, “quenching their human thirst in others’ joys.”

Although our craving for sympathy is wrong if it be allowed to lame our energies, yet in itself we cannot say it is wrong.  “To become saints,” says F.W.  Robertson, “we must not cease to be men and women.  And if there be any part of our nature which is essentially human, it is the craving for sympathy.  The Perfect One gave sympathy and wanted it.  ’Could ye not watch with Me one hour?’ ‘Will ye also go away?’ Found it, surely, even though His brethren believed not on Him; found it in St. John and Martha, and Mary and Lazarus:”—­

    “David had his Jonathan, and Christ His John.”

Some people are quite conscious that they do not “get on” with others; and they are tempted to be morbidly irritable and exacting, or else to shut themselves up and say, “It’s no use, no one wants me.”  If no one wants you, it is your fault; for if you were always ready to be unselfish and thoughtful for others in small ways, you would be wanted.  You need not fret because you are not amusing to talk to, and think that therefore you cannot win affection.  As a rule, people do not want you to talk; they want you to listen.  Now, any one can be a good listener, for that requires moral, and not intellectual qualifications.  Sympathy to guess somebody’s favourite subject, and to be really interested in it, will always make that somebody think you pleasant; but the interest must be real:  if you only give it for what you can get, you will get nothing.

The right person always is sent just when needed.  I do not believe in people missing each other—­though it may very well be that we are not fit to be trusted with the affection we should like, and that God knows we should rest in it if we had it, and never turn to Him, and so He keeps it from us till we are ready for it.  The longer we live the more we are struck by the apparent chance which threw us with the right people.

There is a Turkish proverb which says, “Every only child has a sister somewhere,” and F.D.  Maurice, in his beautiful paper on the “Faery Queen,” declares his belief that all who are meant to be friends and to help each other will find each other at the right time, just as Spenser’s knights, though wandering in trackless forests, always encountered each other when help was wanted.