God is the only satisfying portion of the soul. Every theory of human happiness is defective and incomplete which falls short of the aspirations of our immortal natures. Born with capacities for the infinite, man naturally spurns the finite. No satellite, with its borrowed light, will compensate for the loss of the sun. You may as well expect the caged wild beast to be happier within the iron bars of his den than roaming lord of the forest, as for the human spirit to be content with the present and the finite as a substitute for the immortal and the infinite! The water-brooks alone could slake the thirst of that roe on the mountains of Gilead. You might have offered it choicest pastures. You might have bid it roam the sunniest glades of the forest, or repose under the majestic shadow of the monarch-oaks of Bashan; it would have spurned them all; and, with fleet foot, have bounded down the valley in search of the stream. So with the soul. Nothing but the stream flowing from the Everlasting Hills will satisfy it. You may tempt a man, as he is hurrying on his immortal way, with the world's pastures,--you may hold out to him the golden sheaves of riches,--you may detain him amid the sunny glades of pleasure, or on the hill-tops of fame (and he is but too willing for a while to linger)--but satisfy him they cannot! When his nobler nature acquires its rightful ascendancy he will spurn them all. Brushing each one in succession away, as the stag does the dewy drops of the morning, he will say--"All are insufficient! I wish them not. I have been mocked by their failure. I have found that each has a lie in its right hand;--it is a poor counterfeit--a shadowy figure of the true. I want the fountain of living waters--I want the Infinite of Knowledge, Goodness, Truth, Love!" "In the LORD put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"[17] [17] Psalm xi. 1.