Year: 1867

Henry Ward Beecher thus discourses on
this subject:


On the earth there is nothing more beauti
tul than the first breaking of the ground of
young, strong. new, pure love- No flower
has ever blossomed, however fair; NJ fra.
GRANGE that any flower ever emitted, however
sweet; no bravery of the sky no witchery
ot art; nothing that man ever invented or
imagined, is to be compared to the hours of
dawnlng love in the young soul, And it is
a shame that men should be taught to be
ashamed of that which is prophesy of their
highest being and glory. Alas, that it should
ever perish in the using Alas, that man
does not know that to endure, it must rise
higher and higher, since it is only by grow
ing into its full and later disclosures that it
may be saved from quick mortality. 1t must
grow or die for that which sutfces for a be
ginning is hot enough for all, and for all
time. Love. therefore, should be school-
master, 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


latest periods of being. Perhaps it is less
attractive IN novelty, perhaps still less stim
ulatlng than young love but the popular
impression that We love strongest when we
love earliest is not founded on 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 sentiments. 1t is the most interior
school the soul can know. Men NAV know
how to zeal with numbers and solve prob
lens, but that is rarest, the deepest knowl
edge that comes with loving by all the parts
and faculties of the soul


They can only love greatly or fruitfullv
who are good, since the line the direction is
from the flesh toward the spirit. 1t is from
the low toward the high 1t is from the
substantial toward the invisible. And none
can truly love except those whose life is
then unfolding of their whole nature on the
plan Of Christianity.


How pitiful it is to see men building
low | cannot bear to see the young gath
ering together and building their nests as
the birds do. On my lawn | see the larks
and other birds building in the grass, and
know that before the young are fedged the
remorseiess mower, with revolving strokea,
will sweep the ground, and the nests will
be utterly destroyed, and the young cut down
and wasted. And do l not see men build
ing their nests just so? Do | 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 shall easily
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 afhanced loving each other within
the horizon of time. There must be some
thing higher than the eirclngs of this world.
No love is fit to be called by tho name of
love that has not in it something of the
other world and most of immortality. 1t
must rise above an instinct or passion. 1t
must have in it faith and hope. 1t must be
a love that is served by reason, By the i'm
agination, and by all that there is in the
soul.