Connecticut western news., 1883-12-19
BEECHER,S BRIGHT THOUGHTS.
Some of the Plymouth P6stOr's Sayings in
 Sunday Discourse on Love.

Some of the Plymouth PsstOr's Sayings in Sunday Discourse on Love. MT. Beecher, at Plymouth Church, took as his text, John xx, 3-10. The passages describe the haste of Peter and John to the sepulchre after Christ had risen. In the course of his sermon he gave utterance to the following: "John and Peter raced! That was a grand and glorious race to the sepulchre. We'll, now you would bet on Peter, every one of you. John was a very modest man, but he cannot forget to put in what no mythical man would ever have put in, that the other disciple .outran Peter r.
 S "Peter loved John loved. John loved with reflective power, Peter with motive. That makes very great diff ference. Peters zeal was not fed from the head; it was the impulse of blood. John was 8 passionate man, but refec- tion grew with him as action tended to grow with Peter, and he lived more and more an inward life than Peter. ''In that race to the sepulchre love and reflection beat love and impulse. So 1t has been ever since. Not that love and impulse are bad; not that either of them should exist alone; but if they are separated and divided to the end of the world love and reflection will beat in activity, in large scope, love and blood impulse
 "There are multitudes of men who feel deeply, but feeling works inwardly, and the more powerfully they feel the less they are disposed to speak or to act. There are men who are like the strings of harp; you connot touch them that they do not answer back again instantly. Feeling works outwardly with them. There are many men who, under heat, boil and bubble and throw off the lid and overflow and put out the fire.
 "When the potato was first carried to England they ate the tops. They didn't know that the real potato lay under the ground, hidden. There are a great many men whose graces grow on the top. They have no bottom roots at all. They are all development.
 ""The power of one common Church is that the Iordliness of love brings to. gether all these gifts and graces that are distributed through various personal. ities, and makes them one in the life ot the Church.
 '"Ihe men of divine, governmental sympathy and the men of human sym. pathy, and the Church needs them both.
 Schools in theology make themselves the arbiters of all Gods decrees and al i. Gods. thought and. admiration. Ths extreme schools judge everything by their tenet, and the lax schools judge everything by their tenet. There ain't one of you right, from the East to the West. You are all imperfect.
 s'In this life we are all fragmentary, and in no direction moreethan in moral government. In no direction are there more different lives of thought possible.
 sfYou will sooner build church that will hold all the population of the globe than you will build one that will hold all the varying beliefs.
 "The law of unity is not the law oi similarity. It is the law of love by which every man receives every other and considers that variation from him self as rich contribution to the unity and the grandeur of the whole, for the Church of Christ must represent the sum total of all that which God has re vealed in this life and the varying dis positions of the men of the earth.
 of we must analyze, divide, separate then of the two choose not zeal, clamor ous and full of exterior activity Choose reflective love, not without ac tivity, but more slow, more continuous deeper, and that puts into the result o activity more of God.
 "Now, take this one thought home It is original-I mean it will be if yo1 practice it in your life and in your home Set yourself not up as the judge of men Accept those around you in everything that is in accordance with love and re fection. Take them to yourself talk yourself to them. In your neighbor hood, everywhere. thank God for tn differences that are this side of wicked ness. Every variation from you is a! accretion to you if you will so accep it."