Scottish-American theologian (1868-1953)
The true insight after all is love. It clarifies the intellect, and opens the eyes to much that was obscure.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The practice of sympathy may mean the cultivation of similar tastes, though that will almost naturally follow from the fellowship. But to cultivate similar tastes does not imply either absorption of one of the partners, or the identity of both. Rather, part of the charm of the intercourse lies in the difference, which exists in the midst of agreement.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Sentiment does not amount to much, if it is not an inspiring force to lead to gentle and to generous deeds when there is need.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Trust is the first requisite for making a friend. How can we be anything but alone, if our attitude to men is one of armed neutrality, if we are suspicious, and assertive, and querulous, and over-cautious in our advances?
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Disease and sorrow exist, but health is the normal, and joy is the natural, and it is a privilege to live.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
The only permanent severance of heart comes through lack of a common spiritual footing. If one soul goes up the mountain top, and the other stays down among the shadows, if the two have not the same high thoughts, and pure desires, and ideals of service, they cannot remain together except in form.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
From the purely selfish standard, every fresh tie we form means giving a new hostage to fortune, and adding a new risk to our happiness. Apart from any moral evil, every intimacy is a danger of another blow to the heart. But if we desire fulness of life, we cannot help ourselves.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The joy that comes from a true communion of heart with another is perhaps one of the purest and greatest in the world, but its function is not exhausted by merely giving pleasure. Though we may not be conscious of it, there is a deeper purpose in it, an education in the highest arts of living. We may be enticed by the pleasure it affords, but its greatest good is got by the way. Even intellectually it means the opening of a door into the mystery of life. Only love understands after all. It gives insight. We cannot truly know anything without sympathy, without getting out of self and entering into others.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
To appear for a little time and then vanish away, is the outward biography of all men, a circle of smoke that breaks, a bubble on the stream that bursts, a spark put out by a breath.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
We do not ask to forget; we do not want the so-called consolations which time brings. Such an insult to the past, as forgetfulness would be, means that we have not risen to the possibilities of communion of spirit afforded us in the present.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Sympathy is not a quality merely needed in adversity. It is needed as much when the sun shines.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
If you have ever made a point of questioning both sides impartially, seeking to see the point of view of both, you must have been struck with the distrust amounting almost to fear of both contracting parties.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
Another common way of choosing friends, and one which also meets with its own fitting reward, is the selfish method of valuing men according to their usefulness to us. To add to their credit, or reputation, some are willing to include anybody in their list of intimates. For business purposes even, men will sometimes run risks, by endangering the peace of their home and the highest interests of those they love; they are ready to introduce into their family circle men whom they distrust morally, because they think they can make some gain out of the connection.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Fear is the first Primer of the race. It was the first bond which bound men together, bound them into tribes and nations for mutual defense. Fear had its use in early society, and even now in the first stages of individual life it is still a legitimate motive of action. The primitive instinct of dread has still its abode in life, but it represents a lower motive and a lower bond of union among men. Fear made men gather together for protection, for support, and played a useful and necessary part in the building up of society, but if it is still the dominant note in any society it no longer helps but hinders development. Instead of being the inspiring, coalescing power it once was, it becomes a destructive, disintegrating force, fatal to social progress, putting an end to true harmonious evolution.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
We must have been struck with the brilliancy of our own conversation and the profundity of our own thoughts, when we shared them with one, with whom we were in sympathy at the time. The brilliancy was not ours; it was the reflex action which was the result of the communion.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
All forms of disunion are of the devil.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
All connections based on selfishness, either on personal pleasure or on usefulness, are accidental. They are easily dissolved, because, when the pleasure or the utility ceases, the bond ceases.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Friends are born, not made. At least it is so with the higher sort. The marriage of souls is a heavenly mystery, which we cannot explain, and which we need not try to explain.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
And if trust is the first requisite for making a friend, faithfulness is the first requisite for keeping him.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
To denounce happiness as selfish, for example, is because it is defined merely in terms of pleasure, and pleasure is defined merely in terms of sense. It is true that pleasure is built on sense and that happiness is built on pleasure, as the acorn is rooted in the soil and the oak grows from the acorn. But you cannot explain the oak by calling attention to the process, still less is the oak degraded by the connection; and happiness is neither explained nor degraded because of its natural history being traced back to sense.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness