"No man can be without his god. If he have not the true God to bless and sustain him, he will have some false god to delude him, and to betray him. The Psalmist knew this, and therefore he enjoined so closely our forgetting the name of our God..... and holding up our hands to some strange god.

For every man has something in which he hopes, on which he leans, to which he retreats and retires, with which he fills up his thoughts in empty spaces of time -- when he is alone -- when he lies sleepless on his bed -- when he is not present with other thoughts.... to which he betakes himself in sorrow or trouble, as that from which he shall draw comfort and strength -- his fortress, his citadel, his defense -- and has not this "good" a right to be called his "god"?

Man was made to lean-on the Creator; but if not on Him, then he leans on the "creature".... in one shape or another. The ivy cannot grow alone; it must twine round some support or other -- if not the goodly oak, then the ragged thorn -- round any dead stick whatever, rather than have no stay or support, at all.

It is even so with the heart and affections of man -- if they do not twine round God, they must twine around some meaner thing."