may cling, on which his desires may fasten and rest, by which his heart
may be blessed, which shall be authority for his will, peace for his
fears, sprinkling and cleansing for his conscience, light for his
understanding, shall be in complete correspondence with his inward
nature--be water for his thirst, and bread for his hunger.

And as thus, on the very nature which each of us carries, there is
stamped the signature of dependence, and the necessity of finding an
external object on which to rest; and as, further, men will not be
tutored even by their own miseries or by the voice of their own wants,
and ever confound their wishes with their wants and their whims with
their needs, therefore it comes to pass that the appetite which was only
meant to direct us to God, and to be as a wholesome hunger in order to
secure our partaking with relish and delight of the divine food that is
provided for it, becomes unsatisfied, a torture, and unslaked, a
ravening madness; and men's needs become men's misery; and men's hunger
becomes men's famine; and men's thirst becomes men's death. We do dwell
in a dry land where no water is.

All about us there are these creatures of God, bright and blessed and
beautiful, fit for their functions and meant to minister to our
gladness. They are meant to be held in subordination. It is not meant
that we should find in them the food for our souls. Wealth and honour
and wisdom and love and gratified ambition and successful purpose, and
whatsoever other good things a man may gather about him and achieve--he
may have them all, and yet in spite of them all there will be a great
aching, longing vacuity in his soul. His true and inmost being will be
groping through the darkness, like a plant growing in a cellar, for the
light which alone can tinge its pale petals and swell its shrivelling
blossoms to ripeness and fruit.