Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1867-03-07
Choife 9lisfellany.
Henry Ward Beeoher ON Love.


The following is from recent sermon
by the pastor of Plymouth church:
On earth there is nothing more beauti-
full than the first breaking of young,
strong, new, pure love. No flower that
ever blossomed, however fair; no fra
GRANGE that any flower ever emitted, how
ever sweet; NO bravery of the sky; no
witchery of art; nothing that man ever
invented or Imagined. is to be compared
with the hours of dawning love in the
young soul. And it is shame that men
should be taught to be ashamed of that
which is the prophecy of their highest
being and glory. Alas, that 1t should ev-
er perish in the using! Alas, that men
should not know that to endure it must
rise higher and higher, since it is only by
growing into its full and later disclosures
that it may be saved from quick mortal
ity. Itmust grow or die; for that which
suffices for a beginning is not enough for
all, and for all time.
Love, therefore should be schoolmas-
ter, carrying its pupils up from room to
room through the whole university of
the mind. AS the lower begins first, it
ends first. The higher, beginning latest,
lasts the longest.
And, hence, true affection is strongest
in the later periods of being. Perhaps
it is less stimulating than young love
but the popular impression that we love
strongest when we love earliest is not
found in truth or analogy. NoOne knows
the whole lore of love, that does not
know how to love with the reason, the
imagination and all the moral senti-
ments. 1t is the most interior school that
the soul can know. Men may know how
to deal with numbers and solve prob
lens: but that is the rarest, the innermost,
the deepest knowledge that comes with
loving by all the parts and faculties of
the soul. r'
They only can love greatly or fruitfully
who are good, since the line, the direc
ton is from the flesh toward the spirit
1t is from the low toward the higHs 1t is
from the substantial toward the invisible.
And none can truly love except those
whose life is the unfoldingo of their whole
nature on the plan of Christianity.
How pitiful it is to see men build too
low! i cannot bear to see the young
gathering together and building their
nests as the birds do. On my lawn l see
the larks and other birds building in the
grass, and know that before the young
are fiedged the remorseless mower with
revolving strokes, will sweep the ground,
and the nests will be utterly destroyed,
and the young cut and wasted. And do
/ not see men building their nests just so :?
Do l not see love beginning to nestle in
the flowers? But the flowers themselves
are rooted in the dirt down low, close to
the foot that easily shall crush them.
mourn when see mother loving
her children for time, and for time only.
l mourn when l see two natures that
should be eternally affianced, loving each
other within the horizon of time. There
must be something higher than the cir
clings of this world. No love is fit to be
called by the name of love that has not
in it something of the other world, and
much of ofimmortality. 1t must have in it
faith and hope. 1t must be a love that is
served by the reason, by the inagina-
ton, by all that there is in the soul. '.