The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-01-28
HENRY WARD BEECHER on LOVE.

The following is from recent SER
mon by the pastor of Plymouth Church
On earth there is nothing more beauti-
full than the first breaking of the ground
of young, strong, new, pure love. No
flower that ever blossomed, however
fair no fragrance that any flower ever
emitted, however sweet; no drapery of
the sky; no witchery of art; nothing
that man ever invented or imagined, is
to be compared with the hours of dawn
ing love in the young soul. And it is a
shame that men should be taught to
be ashamed of that which is the proph-
ecy of their highest being and glory.
Alas, that it should ever 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 mortality. 1t must
grow or die, for that which suffices for
beginning is not enough for all, and
for all time.
Love, Therefore, should be a school
master, carrying its pupils up from
room to room, through the whole uni
versity of the mind. The lower begins
first; it ends first. The higher, begin
ming latest, lasts the longest.
And, hence, true affection is strong
est in the later periods of being. Per-
haps it is less witching, perhaps it is
less attractive in novelty, 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. No one
knows the whole lore of love that does
not know how to love with the reason,
the imagination, and all the moral sem
timents. 1t is the most interior school
hat hn
know how to deal with numbers and
problems but that is the rarest, the in
nermost, the deepest knowledge that
comes with loving by all the parts and
faculties of the soul.
They only can love greatly or fruit
fully who are good, since the line, the
direction, is from the flesh toward the
spirit. 1t is from the substantial to-
ward the invisible. And none can tru-
ly love except those whose life is the
unfolding of their whole nature on the
plan of Christianity.
How pitiful it is to see men build too
low! l cannot bear to see the young
gathering together and building their
nests as the birds do. On my lawn /
see the Iarlzs and other birds building in
the grass, and know that before the
young are f1edged the remorseless
mower, with revolving strokes, will
sweep the ground, and the nests win be
utterly destroyed, and the young cut
and wasted. And do 1 not see men
building their nests just so? Do not
see love beginning to nestle in the flow
ers? But the flowers themselves are
rooted in the dirt down low, close to
the foot that easily shall crush them.
mourn when see a mother loving
her children for time, and for time only.
mourn when see two natures that
should be eternally affianced loving each
other within the horisons of time.
There must be something higher than
the Greetings 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 immortality. 1t
must rise above an instinct or passion.
It must have in it faith and hope. 1t
must be love that is served by the rea-
son, by the Imagination, by all there is
in the sOul