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.