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those elements of character and feeling which the other lacks, the man being formed for activity, enterprise, labour, and to meet the brunt of life; the woman for endurance, tenderness, and domestic duties. It is not of course dissimilarity alone which constitutes the tie (dissimilarity, if the dissimilars be not related to one another, is only another name for discord), but dissimilarity of such a kind, as to make one sex the complement and helpmate of the other. The man needs sympathy and confidential friendship, which the woman supplies; the woman in her turn needs support, protection, counsel, which it is the man's part to furnish. And thus, to accommodate to our purpose the words of the Apostle on a different subject, the abundance of the one is a supply for the want of the other, that the other's abundance also may be a supply for his want. It short, the principle which brings persons together in human friendship, resembles the principle which lies at the foundation of commercial intercourse. A. produces what B. wants; and B. in his turn produces what A. wants. This mutual want of one another's productions draws together A. and B., and inclines them to exchange commodities, and to live near one another in mutual interdependence. Well; it is the same with character as with commodities. The characters of all want some element which the character of some other might supply. When we find that other, and are drawn towards him by an instinct which assures us that his disposition and

qualities are the complement of our own,-the attraction is called friendship or love, according as it subsists between persons of the same or of different sexes. In either case the secret of the attraction is precisely the same.

We do not speak of friendship among material objects; but affinities are observable among these, which rest upon the same principle of mutual interdependence. We will take one of these analogies in the lower world, to illustrate our subject further. Trees, then, are fed by the air and light of heaven, much in the same way as our bodies are kept alive by appropriate sustenance. Exclude all light and air from a tree, shut it up in a close and dark chamber, and it will speedily wither. Bring it forth again into the fresh air and sunlight, and the pores of its leaves will drink in the nourishment congenial to them, and seem to revive. No two objects can be more dissimilar than the tree and the air,—the one a solid trunk of wood, never shifting from its place, the other a most subtle and imperceptible fluid which every wind sets in motion. Yet there is a secret affinity between them, which makes them necessary to one another, by which the two hang together in the marvellous system of Nature. The air is charged with its gases, by which it stimulates and quickens vegetation. The plants, on the other hand, need the circulation of this fluid through their veins. The air bestows itself upon the plants for their nourishment. The plants, on the other hand, make a

return to the air, in the shape of the perfumes which some of them exhale. This is one out of many instances of an affinity in nature, by which things mutually supplement one another. It is on a similar affinity, higher up in the scale of creation, that what we call friendship or love is founded.

This being premised, we now observe that the fact of man's being required in the Holy Scriptures to love God, indicates an affinity between man and God, by which man stands in urgent need of God, and God too has need of man, for the manifestation of His infinite perfections.

1. First, man, though a poor child of earth, fast rooted in this low and filthy soil, has an urgent need of God in His nature, just as the tree has a need of light and air. When this need makes itself felt in a man's consciousness, he then realizes the experience of the Psalmist: "My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God." And he is then arrested by, and disposed to listen to, the offer made by the Son of God: "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink."

But let us trace man's need of God more particularly, and seek to understand in what it consists.

In a certain sense, of course, all things have need of God, in order to their continuance in being and in wellbeing. He is the Preserver as well as the Creator of all things, and upholds them (in the Person of the Son) by the word of His power. If the Heavenly Father ceased

to work even for a moment, if His energy and the support of His arm were for a moment withdrawn, the colours would fade from the robe of nature, and the lights of the firmament would be extinguished, and the waters of the earth would fail and dry up in their channels, and the whole fabric of the universe would collapse, as an arch falls to pieces when the keystone is withdrawn. God is not only the ground, but the momentary support, of all existence.

It is clear, however, that the need which man, as man, has of God must be something which distinguishes him from the inferior creation. Inanimate and irrational creatures never are, never could be, exhorted to love God; and those who, like men, are so exhorted, must have some special affinity to God, some special need of Him, in virtue of which the love of God becomes for them at once a possibility and duty.

In what then does this special affinity stand? Consider the craving of man after the Infinite, so that his understanding is never satisfied with the truth which it discovers, nor his appetite with the good that it finds in created existence.

(1) First his understanding is never satisfied with the truth which it contrives to reach. The present is an age of discovery. The secrets of Nature are more and more explored, and yield themselves up, one after another, to the scrutiny of man. Now the point to which we call attention at present is the thirst of man after knowledge, to which this ceaseless scrutiny bears

witness. It is true, indeed, that Arts are founded upon the Sciences, and that most of the important discoveries which are made have some bearing upon our condition,—— tend to furnish human life with conveniences, comforts, and luxuries. But it is not only the desire of a more comfortable existence, of a better-furnished life, which stimulates the discovery. There is a nobler stimulus than this behind; the thirst for knowledge which is inbred in the human mind. There is nothing more deeply interesting to an intelligent man than discovery. It is as if God had proposed to us in Nature, in life, in our own hearts certain enigmas, and had challenged human ingenuity to the solution of them, according to that word of King Solomon's: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” But observe how, immediately upon a discovery being made, it loses its interest, and the vivid colours fade in which it was dressed while our minds were making it. Truth once established palls upon us; and we immediately go in quest of some fresh truth. It would seem that just as the pleasure of hunting is not derived from the game which is caught, but from the exercise and excitement of the pursuit, so it is not truth which interests man, or at all events not the truth which he contrives to reach by his natural faculties, but only the quest of it. You see the restlessness of this quest in the pursuit of religious as well as of scientific truth. The inbred curiosity of the mind, which desires above all

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