CHRISTIANITY AND HUMAN NATURE. 357 



evening, and its long and gloomy night, is but the pre- 

 lude to a day placid and unchanging, in which our sun 

 shall never be clouded and never go down ! The more 

 my experience of life and of man, the deeper my con- 

 viction of the truth of Christianity. It is so entirely 

 fitted to our nature and to our wants. I do not think 

 it possible for us to form a thorough attachment to any 

 except individuals of our own species ; we may have 

 some little regard for inferior natures, and may bow be- 

 fore a superior with awe and adoration ; but it is on a 

 human breast only that we can, as it were, rest our 

 whole souls ; and what but human sympathies alone 

 can meet and mingle with ours ! The deist may bend 

 before his God, but can he for a moment entertain the 

 thought that there is aught of amity in the feeling with 

 which he looks upwards, and the feeling with which that 

 imaginary being looks down ? He did not " know what 

 was in man " who first made such a religion. How 

 well it is for us that there is so complete an adaptation, 

 in this respect, between our nature and the nature of 

 Him in whom we believe ; that He whom we worship 

 as God is also man, one whose tears burst out over the 

 grave of a dead friend and whose bosom supported the 

 head of a living one ; one who has endured sorrow and 

 suffered pain, one who was born like ourselves, feared 

 death as we fear it, and died as certainly as we must 

 die. God grant, my dear madam, that we may have 

 Him for our common friend ! He loves us much better 

 than we can love one another, and can sympathize with 

 us more sincerely. But He can do more than love and 

 sympathize, and we cannot. He can comfort and heal. 

 The man who wept over the tomb of Lazarus, com- 

 manded as God that Lazarus should come forth, and the 

 dead came. I know you will not be offended with me 



