Man is a _social_ as well as a sentient, intellectual, and moral being; and as such he will have joy in the presence of God in heaven. We are made for brotherhood. It was in reference to this original craving of the heart for society that God said of man when he came perfect from His hands, "It is not good for him to be alone." The fact of solitariness is, indeed, unknown in God's intelligent and moral universe. With reverence, I remark, that God has existed as Father, Son, and Spirit, three Persons in the unity of the Godhead. We cannot, indeed, conceive of God, whose name is love, existing from eternity without a person like Himself as an object of His love. Certain it is, however, that for the creature to have joy in himself alone, is impossible. Isolation would, in time, produce insanity. The heart will lavish its affection upon the lowest forms of animal creation, or upon ideal beings, rather than feed upon itself. But there can be no solitude to him who knows there is a God, nor who possesses any religion; for religion is love to God. And even where the society of men is shunned, and solitude fled to by the weary, this is often, after all, but an unconscious protest in favour of brotherhood; the bitterness of one who, having sought it from men in vain, feels as if robbed of his brother's affections, which he had a right to possess as a portion of his inheritance. But while God has planted in every breast this passion for congenial society, and has supplied to so great an extent its want by the family institution into which we are born in our early years, and by the "troops of friends" who accompany us during our pilgrimage, and by the fellowship of the Christian Church, in proportion as that fellowship is not a mere name, but expresses the intention of Christ in gathering His people into a society,--there are, nevertheless, innumerable drawbacks here to anything like its full gratification. Take away the time consumed in the necessary and often absorbing labour of life, and during the unavoidable separations and partings from those we know and love, how little is left for the cultivation here of the truest friendships. We are, moreover, severed as yet by death from all congenial minds among past generations, and from those who are yet to come. Of the many now alive whose hearts would beat to ours, could we only meet and know them, how few can stand together on the small space allotted to us on the earth's surface. Then, again, of those whom we know best and love best on earth, and who know and love us best too, oh, what mutual ignorance must necessarily exist of innumerable thoughts and feelings lying deep clown in our inner man, half hidden, half revealed, even to ourselves, but altogether incommunicable and unutterable by word or sign to others! We may at times be conscious that we stand with them on the same lofty summit, and gaze on the same prospect, but the atmosphere is too rare to permit of any heard communication between us.