our lives alone and meet single-handed the burdens
and misfortunes of earth! It takes but a little frost to nip the root of
all our greatness, and then when our high-blown pride breaks under us we
quickly realize how fragile and insecure are the personal foundations of
our lives. Naturally and reasonably, therefore, did the pagan philosophers
conclude that friendship and friends were necessary to man.

Profoundly aware of this fundamental need of help and support which is a
result of our nature, we habitually stretch out our hands to others, not
only during the years of infancy and childhood, but to a greater or less
extent throughout the whole period of our earthly existence. At first, of
course, it is to creatures that we necessarily look--to parents, relatives,
guardians, teachers, and later on, to friends and acquaintances. Our needs
in the beginning and in early years, though many and imperative, are
comparatively simple; they can be satisfied by those around us. But as we
advance to maturity and take in more completely the meaning of our lives,
and consider not so much the needs of the body as the demands of the soul,
we find that the multiple requirements of infancy and youth, which were
able to be supplied by those that were near, have given way to the fewer,
but vast and unlimited, claims of age, which express the wants of the
spirit. It is when we appeal to creatures for the complete and permanent
satisfaction of these latter necessities of our being, that we seriously
err, and open the way to disappointment and sorrow. Not that we are to
have no cherished and chosen friends, or that we should despise the needs
and gifts, the privileges and blessings of friendship, which in truth our
nature requires; nor again that we are to regard with skeptical,
disdainful eyes the world and human nature; but we must not deceive
ourselves by trying to find in any created being that which it does not
possess. We must not endeavor to get from any creature that perfect
satisfaction which we need, and which the Creator alone can give. Neither
must we seek to fill the unlimited capacity of our souls with those gifts
only, poor and defective at best, which frail mortals like ourselves are
able to supply. It is folly in the highest degree to expect from anyone
less than God that which only God can afford.

The mistake, therefore, is made when creatures of any kind are allowed to
take the place of God; when they are sought and repose