Friendship, Ties of—Easily Broken – Charles Spurgeon

WITH very many, friendship sits very loosely: they could almost write as Horace Walpole does in one of his letters. He says he takes everything very easily, “and if,” says he, “a friend should die, I drive down to the St. James’s coffeehouse, and bring home another,” doubtless as cordial and enraptured with the new friend as with the old. Friends in this world are too often like the bees which swarm around the plants while they are covered with flowers, and those flowers contain nectar for their honey; but let November send its biting frosts, the flowers are nipped, and their friends the bees forsake them. Swallow friendship lives out with us our summer, but finds other loves in winter. It has always been so from of old, even until now; Ahithophel has deserted David and Judas his Lord.