Exodus 18:7

Exodus 18:7

I. This world is not a scene adapted or intended to afford the pleasure and benefit of friendship entire.Men cannot collect and keep around them an assemblage of congenial spirits, to constitute, as it were, a bright social fire, ever glowing, ever burning, amidst the winter of this world. They cannot surround themselves with the selectest portion of humanity, so as to keep out of sight and interference the general character of human nature. They are left to be pressed upon by an intimate perception of what a depraved and unhappy world it is. And so they feel themselves strangers and pilgrims upon earth.

II. It is contrary to the design of God that the more excellent of this world's inhabitants should form together little close assemblages and bands, within exclusive circles, detached as much as possible from the general multitude. On the contrary, it is appointed that they should be scattered and diffused hither and thither, to be useful and exemplary in a great number of situations; that there should be no large space without some of them. Thus it is a world that dissociates friends. Nevertheless friends do sometimes meet; and then it is quite natural to do as Moses and Jethro did: "ask each other of their welfare."

In the meeting of genuine friends, after considerable absence, these feelings will be present: (1) Kind affection. (2) Inquisitiveness. "They asked each other." (3) Reflective comparison; not an invidious, but an instructive, one. (4) Gratitude to God for watching over them both. (5) Faithful admonition and serious anticipation.

J. Foster, Lectures,2nd series, p. 208

References: Exodus 18:7. A. K. H. B., Towards the Sunset,p. 127. Exodus 18:13. S. Cox, Expositor's Notebook, p.52. 28 Parker, vol. ii., p. 141.