d all this gayety vanishes like the sparkles from a
stream when a storm comes up. The soul that has depended upon outward
congenialities for its happiness has no permanent principle of
happiness; for that is the distinction which religion bestows. He who
cannot retire within himself, and find his best resources there, is
fitted, perhaps, for the smoother passages of life, but poorly prepared
for all life. He who cannot and dare not turn away from these outward
engrossments, and be in spiritual solitude,--who is afraid or sickens at
the idea of being alone,--has a brittle possession in all that happiness
which comes from the whirl and surface of things. One hour may scatter
it forever. And poorly, I repeat, is he prepared for all life,--for some
of the most serious and important moments of life. These, as I shall
proceed to show, we must meet alone, and from within; and therefore, it
constitutes the blessedness of the Christian religion that it enables
man when in solitude to have communion, consolation, and guidance. In
fact, it makes him, when alone, to be not alone,--to say, with glad
consciousness, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me."

To illustrate this truth, then, I say, that so far as the communion and
help of this outward world and of human society are concerned, there are
many and important seasons when man must be alone. In the first place,
in his most interior and essential nature, man is a solitary being. He
is an individual, a unit, amid all the souls around him, and all other
things,--a being distinct and peculiar as a star. God, in all the
variety of his works, has made no man exactly like another. There is an
individual isolation, a conscious personality, which he can share with
no other; which resists the idea of absorption; which claims its own
distinct immortality; which has its own wants and woes, its own sense of
duty, its own spiritual experiences. Christianity insists upon nothing
more strongly than this. Piercing below all conventionalisms, it
recognizes man as an individual soul, and, as such, addresses him with
its truths and its sanctions. Indeed, it bases its grand doctrine of
human brotherhood and equality upon the essential individuality of each
man, because each represents all,--each has in himself the nature of
every other. It demands individual repentance, individual holiness,
individual faith. One cannot believe for another. One cannot decide
questions of conscience for anoth